(320/366) Darbi-Dog

11

November 15, 2012 – Meet little Darbi. She’s a strange little dog, but a sweet one too. And right now she just misses her human, she has had to settle for me this week, and next week she will have to learn to get along with other dogs in a new, temporary, home until her human gets back on her feet. The two of us have been figuring each other out this past week, and it took a bit for her to warm up to me. Once she figured out that I was the keeper of the food, she made friends pretty quickly. But walking her is a mystery to me, it’s like walking a fish on a rod. She goes this way and that, and occasionally randomly spins for no apparently reason. I got her in front of me on a narrow snow covered path and her tail dropped and she kept looking back at me as if I was following her and she didn’t know why. She’s an odd little duck.

I’ve been trying to figure out why I’ve continued with my photos this past week rather than just drop it altogether, and the conclusion I came to is that a little bit of normalcy in an otherwise upside down situation can help, just a tiny bit. So can seeing someone from your surrogate family. Because she came back into town and contacted me to let me know she was here, I had the chance to sit down for a couple of hours with someone not of my family, not of my mother’s friends, but someone who was a part of my UBC life for a great many years and who has one of the kindest hearts I’ve encountered. A drive out of town to an area where we used to own 40 acres of bush, and which is now farm/ranchland, took me to a place where I could just ‘be’ for a couple of hours. It doesn’t change the difficulty of the situation, but it was a badly needed reprieve, and it was wonderful to be greeted with nothing more than a long and generous hug.

I needed that.

Today was a step forward, and a step backwards. So I feel that we are in the same place still. A breakfast tray was delivered, but nothing on it appealed to Mom, except the porridge (I hate that stuff!), and only a few teaspoons of that even went in. Lunch didn’t fare much better. She was tired and frustrated, and didn’t like the food. The nurse suggested turning down the food that is being delivered via the tube, to try and get her a bit hungrier and stimulate her appetite. When the nutritionist came by he wasn’t pleased with her intake so she will now have an Ensure drink delivered to get the important nutrients into her, and we will continue to try and work to increase her intake of solid food. So that was a small step forwards.

The step backwards had to do with the MRI. We have been trying to get one for several days, and today the lab found a slot for her. But it was canceled at the last minute because of the IVC filter she had to have installed the other day to protect her against the clot in her leg. A metal filter and a gigantic magnet are not really two things you want to put together, particularly when the piece of metal lies inside one of your major veins. So that was a major disappointment, more so when they tell you it will be up to six weeks before they can run the test.

So not a great day.

But at least Darbi was happy to see me home.