It’s insane that August is 2/3 of the way over. What have I accomplished this year? It feels like very little. I’m having a week where I question my ability to doctor, which doesn’t help.
We all know that I intended to do more with acupuncture and rehab than I have. I did treat a patient with suspected disc disease who could not afford referral. I haven’t found time in the schedule to offer acupuncture the way I learned it using the traditional Chinese medicine approach, but I treated him with points based on his exam and Western diagnosis. He got better. It took lots of reminding his family that it would not be over night, but within weeks, he was back to himself, using all of his legs and not painful. I have a second little patient I have treated a couple of times. His owner seemed happy after his first 3 visits. We’ll see if he keeps coming in for sessions.
In addition to those two patients, I’ve tried to suggest some rehab exercises to a few patients coming in with cruciate injuries or some signs of weakness. Whether or not their owners follow through and do the exercises at home, I don’t know. I hope they do, and I hope the movement helps their pets. Some days, that’s the best one can do.
Rookie’s hematoma saga ended in late March. (He did receive some acupuncture for that, among all of his other treatments.) His left ear is slightly crinkled at the tip, but it’s mostly flat. He’s comfortable. He, amazingly, still allows me to touch his ears. He’s found new ways to make me nuts over his health over the summer.
In early June, Rook started intermittently acting nauseous or like his abdomen hurt. He would hesitate to eat breakfast. He’s always been a bilious vomiter if his stomach is empty, but he started doing that with seemingly more frequency. One morning, I thought he may be trying to bloat. He would occasionally have soft stools, with or without frank blood and mucous. He was normal 99% of the time, but that other 1% made me feel crazy. I definitely experienced a little PTSD from Flint and was partially convinced that my Rookster had something horrible happening inside.
The horrible thing happening inside Rookie turned out to be giardia. I don’t know what 12 year old dog besides him is ever clinical for giardiasis, but here we are. I treated him (and also had my colleague ultrasound his belly, just to be sure there were no other surprises), and he’s fine now. It has been determined that his innards look “perfect.” Thank goodness. He also now gets a bedtime snack that was started during all of that drama and most nights will not allow me to forget it.
About 2 weeks after finishing treatment for giardia, I noticed that Rook was favoring is right hind leg. He didn’t care about that though and continued to be his typical wild self. I did use some of my rehab knowledge for that problem and have been feeding both dogs their dinner in the “doggie gym” in my basement, encouraging hindlimb stability and weight bearing and core strength. If he’s still lame, it’s not noticeable at this point. He’s always had a funny little gait, so sometimes I find it very hard to tell if he’s “off” at all. Both Rook and Magic love rehab dinner days and are sometimes too overzealous, knocking over cones and cavaletti poles left and right.
Rook has been super excited (and Magic very sad) the last two Mondays because he has been swimming at grandma’s house, which is something he always loves to do in the summer. We didn’t make it over there at all last year. Life, I guess, got in the way. Magic has not been able to come along because my mom has 4 dogs of her own plus my brother and his dog living at her house right now, and Magic has yet to meet two of my mom’s crew and doesn’t see my brother’s dog all that often (so far, only in local parks). She sometimes gets overwhelmed with too many other dogs running around at once and does better with a slightly slower, more relaxed introduction than we can manage at my mom’s house right now.
Thankfully, Magic has been staying out of trouble. I took off a small lipoma from her chest earlier this summer at her dental just because I kept bothering with it while petting her. She managed to lose two more teeth this year, despite her dental diet, dental chews, pretty much daily tooth brushing, and annual dentals. Just goes to show the importance of regular, thorough oral assessments. It’s unfortunate that they require anesthesia, but they help keep them healthy and, ultimately, happy.
The other critters in the household are all status quo. Our car situation is mildly out of control right now, but we’ll figure it out. Four weeks ago on Saturday, I came home from work and said to Justin, “Remind me to change my head light bulbs this weekend.” He said he’d do it right after lunch and offered to also change out my spark plugs, as he had recently done it for his own car and wanted the chance to use the knowledge and tools again. Sure. Great. Go ahead.
That nice gesture turned into a, “No good deed goes unpunished,” situation. Wanda started turning off after about a mile of driving when the car would decelerate/start to idle. Justin played around with a few things, but we scheduled her with a mechanic to have a look. They cleaned out the air intake, which fixed that problem, but they found several other, expensive issues, some with very hard to find parts. We went back to our regular mechanic for a second opinion. They ultimately told us they thought it would not be worth putting the money into her. Justin continues to debate whether or not he wants to try and replace Wanda’s front axles and fix her differential leak, in part just to learn and in part because maybe someone will pay us more than $200 for a manual AWD vehicle if we can take care of the major problems.
The issues with my dying vehicle are that 1. I will only drive a manual transmission, which is becoming harder and harder to find 2. I hate car shopping 3. I did not want to spend money on a car because it’s not cheap and a big commitment. I’m indecisive over any major life choice I have to make in almost all circumstances.
Justin knew that he wanted a truck and has been keeping an eye out for one pretty much since we paid off the house. He feels it’ll be very helpful with yard and house projects. Since it took a couple of weeks for me to decide to look for a different car and then to decide what I might want, Justin pulled the trigger on purchasing a truck almost 3 weeks ago. We had already decided that we would keep his Forester, Karen, as his daily driver to the train station/as a back up third vehicle.
Meanwhile, I narrowed my choices to a Toyota GR86, a Subaru WRX or Honda Civic Si. None of these cars was everything that I wanted, meaning I had to go back and forth and change my mind a minimum of 16 times about which would be the best option for me. After 2 weeks of driving Karen and encouragement from some of my coworkers, I found myself leaning towards the WRX. I love that Subaru as a company likes the outside and dogs, two of my favorite things. I love the AWD feature. Having two older, mid-size to large dogs, having a real backseat and rear doors appealed more than the GR86 coupe. I am sad about premium gas and wish that it got better gas mileage, but it is a racecar, making that an unrealistic expectation. (Those were both cons on my list for the GR86 as well.) On the other hand, being a racecar, it is super fun to drive.
Before committing to the WRX (and driving 2 hours to look at one that popped up in my online searches), we went to the local dealership Saturday morning and test drove a brand new one. That sold it. Wanda has served me well and been extremely practical since I took her over from Justin back in July of 2015. She’s not much fun though. Before her, my cars were a Jeep Wrangler and a Mercury Capri convertible. I like a fun car. When Justin had the Volvo C30, that was also a fun car to drive. I didn’t realize how much I missed that. I thought that I just hated driving now because of where I live and traffic and terrible, rude drivers all around. It wasn’t true. A fun car makes it so much better (at least in my honeymoon phase).
I contacted the dealership with the 2024 WRX I had been eyeing online and learned it was still available. Because it was located 2 hours away, we have full time jobs and obligations this upcoming Saturday, we decided to just drive up and see the car, intending to bring it home if everything checked out. Because we were cutting things so tight timewise, I actually didn’t drive that car when we got there. We walked around it, sat inside and filled out the paperwork. I hesitate to say that I love him yet because I haven’t had to fill his gas tank yet, but I really like Zeke. I find myself smiling while going through the gears again. He sounds like a tiger and has a very satisfying feel to the gearshift. Honestly, thinking about driving the car makes me happy.
I am sad about Wanda. As I said, she’s served me very well, and we’ve been together for a long time now. I have known her for her whole life since Justin bought her brand new in 2008. I hope that she does have a little bit of life in her for someone else. Even if it turns out that she doesn’t, she’s been a very solid little car, and I will miss her for her good qualities. I think it’s pretty apparent that I do form quite the attachment to my cars. They may not be living things, but they are a big part of my life from the daily commute to road trips. They hold a lot of memories, and we spend a lot of time together, especially since I keep them for so long.
Now I feel better, writing about something not (entirely) work-related and actually using this website that I pay annually for and have failed to update in many months. There simply isn’t enough time in a day or a week to do everything you both need and want to do. All you can do is the best you can to fit things in.
“If everything seems under control, you’re just not going fast enough. ” ~ Mario Andretti
