Poor Ben

We got Ben from a rescue in January and he quickly moved into our hearts. He "talks" to us constantly, which I think makes him seem a little more... human, for lack of a better word, than the others. They all howl and bark and seem to know what we say, but Ben just has something about him that touches my heart. We took them in for their heart worm tests in April and we found out that Ben was heart worm positive. Stupid me, thinking the treatment was no big deal. Let me tell you something, it's a big deal.

Since he's an older dog, probably 10 and maybe 11, Dr. J suggested we give him his heart worm in staggered doses. We took him in for his first treatment, which is a shot in the back, very deep in the muscle. He was so sore for about 3 days. This time he had to have 2 injections, one on either side of his spine. He spent 2 days at the vet and came home last night in a lot of pain. He couldn't even find a comfortable way to lay down without whining. Today he's a little better, but he actually bit me when I tried to pick him up this morning. Poor sweetheart. His pain pill sends him over the edge, all he does is sit and stare. I feel so bad for him. My poor Benny...

Odd dreams and thunderstorms

I had a dream about my grandparents last night. I've actually dreamt about them a lot lately for some reason. In this dream, Missy, Mel and I were at their house and I was trying to fix dinner, but my grandpa had gone to the store and not brought home any meat. I remember he had cinnamon rolls and cereal, but no meat, so I sent him back to the store. My grandma told him to get cube steak so I could make "crispy meat" (her words not mine). I guess she was trying to say she wanted me to make breaded meat because when he got back from the store I tried to make it, but they had no Italian bread crumbs, Parmesan cheese or garlic, so what I made was pretty awful. Then, while we were all sitting around in the kitchen eating a huge thunderstorm blew up. You had to have known my grandmother to realize what a disaster that was. The woman was terrified of thunder, lightning, anything related to stormy weather. How she survived for 80 years in tornado alley, I'll never understand. Anyway, last night in my dream she absolutely went off in hysterics about the impending storm. I grabbed her by the shoulders and just yelled at her, "It is what it is! All the crying and wailing in the world isn't going to stop the storm so go to the basement and get over it!" It was just such a bizarre dream. I can still feel her shoulders in my hands when I grabbed her. Isn't that odd? I remember one time when I used to listen to John Edward he said that our loved ones come back to visit us in our dreams, but not all the dreams we have of them, just the ones that stay with you. I guess if that's the case I had a visit from grandma and grandpa tonight. Funny thing - we're expecting some pretty good storms tonight and tomorrow. Odd.

Then tonight, after we had just finished a wonderful steak dinner I got a phone call from my dad. He was having trouble breathing and was having some chest tightness. He told me it was the second time that it had happened and he had gone to the hospital the first time and they sent him home with some anxiety medication, but it wasn't helping. I asked him if they had done an EKG or anything and he said no. Hello? Of course this was the same hospital where the ER doctor told him to put heat on tendinitis, so I didn't have much faith in what they told him. So I asked him if he wanted me to take him to the hospital and he said yes. Let me tell you, if my dad thinks he needs to go to the hospital, I'm worried. He's a typical male (and an old one at that) who never goes to the doctor. So, Meg and I went out and got him and took him to the hospital. What? Oh, yes. He is married. And his wife was home. Don't even get me started on that one.

We spent about 3 hours at the hospital, they did an EKG, which was fine, but they're keeping him overnight to keep tabs on his cardiac enzymes and then he's having a stress test first thing in the morning because he has some cardiac risk factors, he's 74, he's diabetic, he's an ex-smoker, and he has a family history of heart disease (my grandfather died from complications of a heart attack that went untreated for over 8 hours). So, dad is spending the night at the hospital with Meg sleeping in the chair next to him. I can't possibly spend the night in a recliner or I wouldn't be able to move tomorrow. I'm just hoping that everything is okay with his heart and it's just some anxiety and/or depression. But.... It was really hard for me to see my dad in the hospital hooked up to all those stupid monitors. It struck me, again, that my dad is getting old. My dad who I always looked up to as my "superman" is, well, an old man. He totters when he walks sometimes, he has problems with his memory, he's diabetic, old, gray, and looks to me for direction. My superman is human after all. And that makes me sad.

It's Sew (not) Easy

I went to the fabric store on Saturday night and got some stuff to try and make a new sling for Toby's cart. I hate to sew. I manged to put it off yesterday because of Matt's birthday, but today I think Steve thought I should have been doing some sewing instead of sleeping until 11 and then doing some cleaning before work. So, tonight he drug out the sewing machine and decided to try his hand at a belly band - hey, anybody can whip one of these things out in about 15 minutes right? Hahaha. First, he couldn't get the bobbin thread to come up, so he completely took apart the bobbin casing (which isn't supposed to be taken apart), then he couldn't get it back together. Then, the bobbin thread quit "coming up", so I quit working a second time to go figure out what the problem was, I still don't know what the problem was, it threaded right away for me. Then the needle fell out. Sigh. Yeah, his 10 minute job has taken him a little over 2 hours now. And he wonders why I don't sew more often. Ha!