End of career note

Well folks, today is the second to last day for me at old Thornridge. More so, I think it's the end of my teaching career. It has been a strange and wonderful journey. Starting at Bloom Trail, quitting to contemplate priesthood and then realizing it wasn't for me, enrolling at UIC for grad school because it was the last one still open for admissions, getting called to interview at Thornwood from my old ISU RA, teaching a year, meeting Mary, getting RIFFed, being off a year and then getting called back to teach at TR. That's the journey in a nutshell. What I did in my career was multifaceted. I started teaching english, theatre, stagecraft, speech, radio and tv and then I became a librarian and then the AV Guy and then a librarian again. I retire as Conan the Librarian.

In the meantime, Mary and I reunited and eventually married, had Nora and of course Daisy Grace. Nora just graduated from Augustana with a degree in English and Speech Communications Ed. She is looking for a job in a very tough market. If you have any leads... It's kind of exciting to be joining Mary in retirement just as Nora enters the profession. I like that kind of symmetry.

Well, I'm sort of killing time in the library waiting to go to lunch with my friend Dave who is also retiring. I guess that's been a kind of pattern for me writing this blog. So, what are the plans? First, it's to get out with my dignity. I really haven't been too tempted to do anything inappropriate, but there's still next Tuesday when I get to address the faculty for the last time. It will probably be a speech full of hope and gratitude. I am truly thankful for the life I have had thus far. Mary and I will be doing some traveling: initially to see Sean in Murfreesboro, then Dan and Nancy in North Carolina on the beach, and then to Italy with Aunt Deb and then to see Carole and Daniel for an extended stay in Florida sometime this winter.
I plan to play a lot of guitar. In fact, I hope to secure my street performer's license next week as soon as I can get to the Mayor's office to plunk down my $100.00. My goal will be to recoup that money by playing on the street. We'll see... I want to play some golf with Dave and his dad, Bill Meder and Nora. I want to fish and kayak. I haven't really spent too much time in that pursuit lately and I really want to do some exploring on the Fox, the Au Sable, the Kank and Hennipen. I even want to try some back waters of the Mississippi and the Rock river down by the quad cities.
Nora is staying down there for the summer so I hope to get down there to visit and play some with her. Hopefully she will be coming up here a bit for interviews. Keep praying for that.
We currently have Charlie, the "grand dog" for a couple of weeks while Nora settles into her new temporary digs in Rock Island. Charlie has had a positive impact on Daisy Grace. She really perks up when he's around. It's not that she likes him, but she knows she better be on her A game or else she might get her food stolen or miss out on going outside or a treat. Daisy's recovery has been remarkable. She's kind of like her old self again, just old. She gets a little wobbly on her feet sometimes and gets confused as to which foot to put forward first, but she can still hop up the front stoop when she comes in.

So, that's it for now. If you would like to visit, give us a call, drop a line or catch me on facebook. If you want us to come see you, do the same. We intend to visit all of our friends and family we have put off for this time in our lives. Keep in touch. We want to see you and we thank you for your friendship, love and concern.

Peace to you and to those you love.
Mary, Rob and Nora and Daisy Grace and Charlie

Spring Break 2010

So things have been pretty hectic:

• Daisy Grace has improved immensely. She is eating, gaining weight and doing most of the things dogs do on a regular basis and it all looks regular. We don't know how long all this is going to last, but for now we are thankful.

• Mary, Daisy and I along with Aunt Debbie traveled to DuBois, PA to facilitate an operation on Bette's eye. This involved driving to Pennsylvania, getting a hotel room, staying one night, checking out and loading up the luggage and Bette and her stuff into the old van and driving to Shadyside (a neighborhood of Pittsburgh) checking int0 a suite, unloading, making dinner, getting up and checking out, repacking the van, taking Bette to the hospital for her operation, checking her out and then driving to the airport to pick up Debbie and then driving back up to DuBois to get Bette settled, get us checked into a hotel and then get something to eat. Whooo! Then there was a week of recovery and then another trip to Pittsburgh for post op and then dropping Debbie off at the airport and then back to DuBoise for some more Bette care. Eventually, home.
• We had a nice Easter dinner at Aunt Nancy's and Uncle Sam's. We had a nice visit with Paul and Judd and that's pretty much it.
• So, all is well with Bette's eye. The trip was a success.

Up to this point people have been asking me if I am counting my days until retirement. I had been too busy with contest play and all to care. However, when I get back to school on Monday, I think I will start the countdown. Frankly, I am getting a bit excited.

That's it for now. There is a new link for this blog so if you follow it, please change your link.
Thanks for reading and for caring.
Peace to you and to those you love.
Rob

This blog has moved

This blog is now located at http://norazdadfamilychat.blogspot.com/.
You will be automatically redirected in 30 seconds, or you may click here.

For feed subscribers, please update your feed subscriptions to
http://norazdadfamilychat.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default.

Daisy Grace

Daisy wants all to know she is not ready to join "All dogs who go to heaven". Her eating has greatly improved. I added a little shredded cheese to her diet and yesterday I made chicken soup and gave her some of the soft cooked dark meat. She absolutely loved it. This morning I gave her a teaspoon of yogurt, a table spoon of soup chicken and a table spoon of shredded cheese and she ate it all. This is a big deal. Also there was no evidence of any fluids passing during the night. That is also major. So, we're thankful for some semblance of normalcy. Maybe those Hail Marys and positive thoughts are helping.

It's amazing how she can look to be on death's door one day and actually even a little perky the next. I am sure eating helps. We'll take it day by day.
Peace and thanks for the positive thoughts,
Rob, Mary and Daisy Grace

Daisy Grace Update

The poor thing is feeling very poorly. She's not really eating much. There is vomiting and some runny stool. She's just kind of lying in the bed I set up in the kitchen. She looks up now and then, but she's mostly sleeping. She does not look to be in any pain. It's very sad to see her this way. She was, and in her spirit is, a wonderful dog that borders more on puppy than "old girl".
Peace to you and to those you love.
Daisyzdad

Daisy Grace Update

Not much to report other than we're feeding her Yoplait Peach yogurt. The net doctors all said that flavored yogurt has too much sugar so I bought plain. She won't eat it, but loves the peach. Go figure. Life's too short to eat shitty yogurt. She's also liking the shredded chicken. I have not had to do the Sub Q thing yet, but I may take her in today after school to get her re hydrated and to learn how to do the procedure. She's still a skinny little thing...all skin and bones but she still seems to enjoy her regular routines: Hanging out with Mary, sitting on her lap to watch TV or to read, listening to me play guitar in the basement, waking me up at 4:00 in the morning to pee, etc.

Mary is doing well. She's doing a great job of taking care of Daisy during the day. I am very thankful.

Nora only has one more month of student teaching. She's starting to realize that it's all coming to an end and that her new life will begin sooner than she may feel she's ready for. Transition from college will be a challenge that I am sure she will be up to.

For me, it's a Friday and I will be glad with the 3:00 bell rings.

Peace to you and to those you love.

Daisyzdad

So it's been a while...

I know that I've been lax in keeping up this blog, but just as it helped me work through the pain and recovery of Mary's Lymphoma and ultimate bone marrow transplant and my transition to and from AV Guy and back to Conan The Librarian, I fully intend to use this blog to work through the very painful situation with our little Daisy Grace.

I think I want to start with the tick. Geoff, our groomer or our greuhmer, found a tick in Daisy's face last year. He removed it as it was pretty well embedded in her cheek by her eye. The darned thing would scab over and puss up and then I would drain it, add some Neosporin and go through this whole process over and over again for about three months. When I took her in for her annual, the vet didn't really mention anything other than ticks can take along time to heal. We never talked about lyme or any other tick borne disease or parasite. We probably should have. We didn't notice any major changes in Daisy's health or disposition. She never showed any signs of being sick or lame which often accompanies lyme. She obviously enjoyed staying with Nora this summer as evidenced in Daisy's Christmas letter.

We had been noticing that Daisy was losing weight but we thought that was natural as she was getting older...you know kind of skinny old lady syndrome. Well things really got dicey during Christmas. There was a lot of company: Neffs, nieces, little kids, Charley, etc. She was getting very finicky about eating. I thought it was because of those fools at Purina were messing with her good old ProPlan. "New and Improved" rarely is. We tried regular dry, senior, shredded...where she just ate the shredded and left the hard and dry. It was kind of pissing me off. You know, it's not my fault that the dog won't eat. Anyway, the vomiting started shortly after Christmas. Now Daisy would throw up occasionally just like any other dog, but it was never chronic and it usually coincided with overeating or stealing something she shouldn't have. One time she ate a piece of baked potato that I had dropped off of my fork at dinner and it threw her into a bout of pancreatitis. In the most severe cases we would have to take her to the vet and he/she would give us some pepsid and antibiotics and $200.00 and a week later Daisy would be back to normal.
Well, this time it didn't actually go that easily. When Daisy stopped eating I started to make her something she might like like boiled chicken and beef and rice. She would eat for a day or so and then stop or vomit and stop and man it was frustrating. The proverbial straw happened when we were downstairs playing guitar and she walked into my guitar case and puked...a bunch. Needless to say it was gross, but I wasn't mad because I knew that something was really wrong. So wrong, I didn't resist when Mary and Carole told me to taker to the vet NOW! I did and they tested her and gave her fluids and gave her an antibiotic and some Pepsid and sent us home.

I gave her the meds, continued to cook for her and we essentially treated her like she had and would recover from her usual pancreatitis. Maybe by now I was a little disgusted about my guitar case...but I at least thought she would recover. Things did not improve. Daisy continued to not eat, throw up what she did, drink too much water and throw that up in huge puddles in the kitchen. She also was waking me up two or three times in the night to go out to pee like a skinny old man. Things did not get any better, and she was definitely losing weight. On Sunday we decided to follow the protocol of withholding food and water for 24 hrs before we went to see the vet. This time the vet did the exam and took blood and came back with dire results. Both Daisy's BUN and Creatin were off the charts. These results pointed to a diagnosis of canine renal failure.

What was the prognosis and what were our options? The prognosis is that this is terminal news for a 14 year-old dog...but not today. Our options included a vet hospital stay for several days to rehydrate her and to try to get her levels back down. This would only be a temporary fix and once she was off the IV, the levels would surely return to dangerous levels. I refused. Daisy would not tolerate being in the hospital. In her weakened condition she would check in but would not check out. She would bark herself horse if she could and cry herself to death. No way was I going to let that happen. The plan is hydration and food.

One of the problems with the vomiting is that it is not for lack of appetite, but rather the nausea created by the toxins building up in Daisy's system. The Pepsid helped, but it was in pill form and Daisy would not just take the pill, she needed some food to make it go down and then it just came up again. I asked the doc if the pepsid came in liquid and indeed it did. My plan was to give her the liquid orally a little while before we fed her and then maybe it would have time to work and she would eat and keep the food down. Our pharmacy was wonderful enough to compound the stuff for us and save over sixty bucks from the formulary. With that in mind, we are pretty dedicated to a diet of boiled chicken, yogurt, hard boiled eggs and cottage cheese. We might try some actual dog food sometime down the road if she processes this food well.

Now the hydration is another challenge. Mary thought of adding a little cranberry juice to water to maybe help flush out some toxins. Daisy seems to like it and is keeping it down. The thing is the amount. Tiny little sips throughout the day seems to be the plan. If that doesn't work I will have to learn to inject fluids SUB Q.

As you can imagine, all of this is very disturbing to me and Mary and Nora and maybe anyone Daisy touched, licked or barked at. I am going to chronicle this experience here on old family chat if for no other reason than it may be cathartic for me to work through this process as difficult as it may be and maybe it might help someone else facing a similar situation.

So, if you believe in Hail Marys for dogs, throw a few up for Daisy, if not for dogs, then for us and if not Hail Marys, then please share your good thoughts and healing wishes.

Peace to you and to those you love,
Rob