And I thought the flu was bad...

   I started getting sick Wednesday, with a sore throat and cough. By today, I had lost my voice. And by the time I left work today, I was sure I had the flu. Dizziness, chills, headache, sneezing, sore throat, cough, fatigue, body aches, and fever. Good times. But I simply couldn't have stayed home; I had to deliver and submit performance reviews, and attend some crucial meetings. I was too concerned about how much I'd miss. Had I realized how sick I really was, I would have reconsidered.

   So by the end of the day, I couldn't wait to get home and go to bed. At 6:15, I curled up on the couch and planned to crash there, and Mr. Tay hopped up and curled up against me.

   As soon as I put my arm around his stomach, I knew I had an emergency on my hands. He felt and looked like he had swallowed a basketball! His chest and abdomen were rock-hard, and his stomach completely distended. I'm no vet, but I knew that this could be gastric torsion (bloat),  from which most dogs die within two hours; or a puncture to a lung that was causing air to leak into his body. Both thoughts were terrifying. I rushed him to my vet's office.

   Dr. Davis felt Tay's abdomen and immediately suspected a massively enlarged liver based on how it felt. I braced, not sure of the ramifications if that were true. Only an ultrasound could say for sure. The vet tech wheeled in the machine. I got to see my boy's lungs, stomach, gall bladder, spleen, liver and intestines (which would have been fascinating, under less tense circumstances). Fortunately his liver was fine... His abdomen was FULL of air.

 Next the vet intubated him, to see if he could get the tube all the way into his stomach. If not, we were looking at torsion. It was necessary, but very difficult to watch. But fortunately, despite Taylor's discomfort, the tube went down and a little air came out.
   For some time, I've noticed that he burps a lot, retches but nothing comes up, and has a lot of gas. I had been attributing all this to: 1) he's a boy; 2) he gobbles his food and water; 3) he eat veggies with every meal, to promote weight loss; 4) he eats poop... how could that not make you gag?? I hadn't realized these were potentially dangerous symptoms of a larger issue until his stomach became huge tonight.
   Unfortunately all this may mean that Taylor has an incurable neurological problem in which his stomach doesn't contract properly, moving the contents through as it should.  Now when he has gas, it's a GOOD thing; it means things are moving through the ol' pipes. Never thought I'd wish for THAT!
   So instead of a quiet evening convalescing (aka sleeping), I spent hours at the vet. I feel so sick and uncomfortable, but my guy is alive. I need to monitor him closely and give him only small amounts of food and water many times a day, and make sure the air is expelled. I sure hope this doesn't turn out to be congenital.

Spoke Too Soon

   Today started out mega-awesome, but started to turn sour when I left work. I had planned to stop by the e-vet to pick up Atom's remains. I allowed almost a month to pass, thinking I was past the raw emotion from grief. I was wrong. The recpetionist was so quiet and kind; she went in the back to retrieve my box, and lovingly placed it in my hands, saying, "I am sincerely sorry for your loss." It was so sweet, but I wasn't ready. I had to put my sunglasses on as I left the building, to conceal the steady stream of tears rolling down my cheeks once again.
    I composed myself in the car and headed home. On Shawnee Mission Parkway, ironically RIGHT in front of the Toyota collision department building, a guy in the pickup in front of me slammed on his brakes and came to an *extremely* abrupt stop. I followed suit, but my brakes didn't get me there fast enough, & I rear-ended him.
    We both got out of our cars, and he greeted me in an understated but very friendly way. I asked him how bad the damage was, bracing for his answer. "My truck is fine," he said. "I've got a hitch on it. Unfortunately your car didn't fare so well."

    Yep, I had a hitch embedded in my front bumper. Groan. We exchanged cars and he told me that he didn't intend to report the accident to the police or the insurance company. " I have no damage to report," he said. Fortunately, me damage was minor—a dimple on the bumper. Although I don't think there was any way I could have avoided this (other than not being there right then!), the rear-ended is always at fault, right?
    He told me he hoped I'd have a better weekend and we left. As I drove home, I thought about how lucky I was for his hitch: although it damaged my car worse than it may have otherwise, at least it protected his car from harm.

   I came home and noticed a slip of paper tucked under the lid of Atom's box. It was a copy of "The Rainbow Bridge." Hello, uncontrollable tears of sadness. I stood in my kitchen bawling again, with my three pets wondering what the hell was wrong with me.
    Well, looking at the bright side, my weekend can only get better, right? :I

An Expensive Lesson

- One pack of Orbit gum with Xylitol: $1.37
- Trip to emergency vet from Midnight to 3 am to induce vomiting
   and to run bloodwork: $149.00
- Day at the veterinarian for monitoring and 3 blood screenings: $59.00
- Bringing your best friend back home with tail wagging: Priceless!

   Here's my Public Service Announcement. The following foods are poisonous to dogs and should never be fed to them: chocolate, grapes, raisins, avocado, onion, garlic, mushrooms, macadamia nuts, fat trimmings, caffeine, alcohol.

   Poinsettias and Easter lilies are poisonous too.

   Cooked bones, and fish bones are dangerous because they can splinter and lacerate the dog's insides.

   Xylitol and pennies are extremely dangerous because both are broken down quickly and can destroy the liver in a matter of hours.

   All should be kept well out of a dog's reach. I would have thought my gum was safe hidden in a bag on a high counter, but the tropical fruit scent was too alluring, and somehow, he nabbed it. Fortunately I acted quickly when I discovered that Taylor had eaten the gum, and so far he seems to be doing well. We'll know how his liver fares in a few days.

The patient, resting comfortably

Getting comfortable-er...

Hittin' the Bottle

   I've been parked on the family room sofa ALL DAY trying to finish the Art Unleashed t-shirts. And around 11 pm, fading fast, ready to go to sleep but trying to power through. Then I heard rustling upstairs and went to investigate. I found a smug Mr. Taylor and a few remaining scraps of paper and foil from a brand new pack of gum.
   I knew this could be very bad, and confirmed that the gum contains Xylitol, which is poisonous to dogs (miraculously, the ingredients were one shred of packaging that he didn't eat, so I knew for sure). A call to the very helpful Erica at Mission Med Vet told me I needed to administer 1 T of Hydrogen Peroxide, and wait. And thus begins Vomit Watch 2011. My boy needs to throw it all up to avoid being rushed to the vet. Nothing's happening yet.
   We're outside, and thunderstorms are imminent. I need to finish these t-shirt designs. I need to get to work early to finish preparations for my business trip. I need to know my boy will be okay before I go. I need a break here... :(

    This $1.37 pack of gum has already cost me an additional $150 and I'll rack up more today. Sigh. But if my boy's okay, that's all I could ask for. I can make more money, but this bratty dog is definitely one of a kind.

Random Hallmark Moments: Twister

   It got all crazy up in here in KC today! It was just before noon, and I was standing in the doorway of my manager's office, on my way down to the café to grab a salad for lunch. Suddenly we were interrupted by a voice on the loud speaker... a woman from Crown Center Security telling us that we "shouldn't leave any of the building and we should head to our designated safe area immediately." Something like that. At first we didn't know what to think; the way she worded her message was a little funny. But suddenly crowds of coworkers started gathering on our floor. I joked to Laurie, "I'm going to grab lunch—don't want to die on an empty stomach!" and headed to the stairs.

   The stairwells were already lined with people so deep that it was tough to pass. But I sneaked through and got down to the café to discover... that everyone had already evacuated. No one at all—not even a single employee. It was clear that when the announcement happened everyone fled immediately: chairs were still pulled out from tables. Remnants of lunch were left. A full bottle of Diet Coke next to a half-eaten salad.

    I reflected for a moment on a couple of things. One was that if I were evacuating, I'd sure as hell take my food and drink with me. The other was how eerily silent it was, and how much this reminded me of a scene from any zombie movie. I didn't want to be stuck there alone when the hordes arrived!

   Since there was no one to pay for lunch and I didn't feel like looting, I headed back upstairs. There were even more people gathered now, in the central area furthest from the very few windows that even exist on this floor. People were trying to call family but there wasn't reception. I was able to get an email out to my family just to give them a heads-up about the situation. (Kristin's response via text? "jeff and i get taylor.") I chatted with a few people. Then I saw that Don and Dave were there with us. They seemed very calm and were talking as if this were nothing out of the ordinary. So apparently my department on the 6th floor was THE safe area. On one hand, I felt safer knowing that, but on the other, if they came down here, we might really be in for something.

   It's funny, until that moment I hadn't been worried. It was a false alarm, surely. How could a tornado destroy Hallmark? But as I stood there, looking around at all these people that I've known for so many years, people that I care about just as if they were my own family... and Don and Dave there too. This was serious. Something COULD happen.

   I've been considering my own mortality quite a bit lately, between finally drawing up an estate plan, and hiring a real financial adviser to prepare me for retirement. It wasn't until I started swimming and Scuba diving and snowboarding and hiking alone, etc. that I also began to realize how immortal I'm not. But surely I was not meant to die from a tornado in a collapsed building with thousands of coworkers. I never pictured it that way. There's no way to know how it will happen, but that just didn't sound right.
   Well, it wasn't right, at least not for today. The storms blew over, we went back to work in an hour, Dave left mock-harassment notes in my chair; Gary and Gary and Dave and Melissa and Ginny and me laughed like crazy—and that was that. A rather normal day after all.
   In talking with Ginny, whose family is from the rural towns around KC and who have experienced tornadoes, lightning, and the like firsthand, we agreed that events like these are so random. You could do the "right" thing and be killed, or the wrong thing and be spared. So all  you can really do is live: enjoy every minute, move forward without regret, and take it as it comes. Ultimately it made me appreciate my life and my Kansas City family more than ever.
   And I celebrated being alive with Maureen over sushi at Kyoto.

Daikon roll

Salmon, Python roll, and Magic Mushrooms

Another early-morning wake-up call

How glad am I that it's a 3-day weekend and I can sleep in a little?

   I've been in the living room sewing all evening & had fallen asleep on the couch watching a DVD around midnight, when I heard a loud BOOM that woke me just now—about 3 am. It sounded a little like thunder, but more manmade if that makes any sense. I had no idea what it was. The dogs barked wildly, which is honestly one big reason I wanted dogs—so they could make noise & help keep me safe. I looked out the front door but saw nothing. (I've asked the city of OP for a streetlight in front of my house for the last 5 years, to no avail. Even the 4 halogen lights on the front of my house barely matter. When it's dark, it's super-amazingly-dark.)
   So I headed upstairs. Just a few minutes later, flashing lights right outside my house jolted me back up. I looked out the window to see an ambulance, a fire truck & 3 police cars. Bob & Laura were standing out on their lawn. A red compact car was smashed into Bob's son's truck, which had been parked on the street in front of my house... which was now plowed in front of their house!
   I ran out to talk to them to make sure they are alright, and they are—they had been sound asleep too. The car's airbags had deployed and there was glass absolutely everywhere. I came back inside. All I know now is that a young woman was driving the car, and 15 minutes later they are still trying to extract her from it. 
   It makes my heart heavy to think about what just happened, and I'm humbled to think about how tired I was driving back from Santa Fe by myself, and that by some miracle I made it back in one piece. I was nodding off & had set my Blackberry alarm to go off loudly every MINUTE to keep me alert. This girl is going to be leaving in the ambulance. I hope she's okay.
   Update: I found out that the accident was caused by DUI. No word on the girl's condition.