Three years since She-Wolf left for other worlds.

Photo copyright Wings, 2021; all rights reserved.

Impossible that it's been three years already. But it has.

Three years since She-Wolf left for other worlds.

I know that photo looks like she's saying goodbye, but she's not; Wings took that in August of 2015. She'd just stood up after lying in the grass, yawning hugely, and was just checking in with us as she always did.

She-Wolf found us, way back in 2008 when she was still a puppy. She and Raven were cousins, at the very least, perhaps half-siblings, even, and they were both abandoned and starving, and made their way to our gallery door separately from each other. Unbeknownst to each other, we were both feeding them on our respective shifts and allowing them to sleep by the warmth of the fire. And while it would take a few more months for her brother, she came hoe with us on the night before Thanksgiving of that year.

But the damage had been done by her first months of starvation; she had barley survived to find us. And by the time that photo was taken, she had already been diabetic for two full years, a product of that early and deadly neglect, and already she had outlived all the predictions in more ways than one. When she was diagnosed in the fall of 2013, by which time we knew she'd had it for a few months, the vet warned us that her eyesight was already failing, and that she would be "completely blind" within two months at the very outside, probably sooner. But while her vision was somewhat impaired by the time that photo was taken (it's why she tracked us so closely), we were able to save most of it for the better part of four and a half years.

Until the cancer that took her suddenly in 2018. It would turn out to be interstitial carcinoma of the bladder, a sudden-onset, fast-moving, very aggressive kind of cancer in a place that was not really reachable even had surgery been an option, and by the time we found out, it wasn't. Never had been, really, and we actually discovered it pretty quickly, but when they say "sudden-onset," "fast-moving," and "aggressive," they're not understating it in the slightest. But again, our great big wolf girl with the mountain-lion paws defied all the odds. When we took her to the vet in early 2018, her prognosis was clear, and very, very ugly; we were warned she'd be lucky to last three more weeks.

She lasted three more months.

And they were good months; we made damn sure of that. She had everything she needed, everything she wanted, too, and we used an aggressive treatment regimen that, while there was really no chance of it saving her life, in fact kept her very comfortable and happy and even active, and gave her those three months in which to be and do it.

And then on the night of the 26th, the tumor ruptured, as we had been warned it would do. She threw up masses of blood in an instant, and we thought that would be it, but she was not quite ready. We called all over, and no one would come out that night; our own vet wasn't even the one on call, but he did come out first thing the next morning. And at 9:27 AM, as I and the vet tech together held her in our arms (she was a BIG dog), with Wings hanging over us, his hands on her soft fur, she let the vet do his work without protest, and simply, trustingly went to sleep. They helped us lay her to rest amid their own tears, and ours.

And so this morning, I did as I have always promised Wings that I would do and I took her everything she needed to know that we remember her, that the hole in our hearts has made a space in our spirits for hers.

We love you, She-Wolf. Our spirits hold that space for you always.

All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2021; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.    

Two years since this sweet girl left us.

Photo copyright Aji, 2020; all rights reserved.

It's been two years today — at 9:27 this morning, to be exact. After all that's happened over these two years, it seems impossible that so much time could have passed, but it's true. Two years since this sweet girl left us.

in the same way that Raven was slightly more my dog, She-Wolf was slightly more Wings's. Not unusual for female dogs to bond more, or at least differently, to male humans and male dogs to female humans, but She-Wolf was such pure love that it never felt less, only different. She tagged after Wings while he worked; when she was sick, she came to me for help. And she fought so much in her life just to live.

She showed up one day at the shop while I was there, not yet a year old, scrawny, starved, a pint-size bag of bones that would eventually grow into a 65-pound healthy dog. She was whip-smart, having absolutely no commands but nevertheless understanding instinctively what was wanted, and she would come to be fed and then lie at my feet or by the fire to escape the cold. She went home with us on the day before Thanksgiving in 2008, still more puppy than not, full of energy and mischief.

By the fall of 2013, she wasn't feeling so hot, and we suspected we knew what it was; her formative months, filled with starvation, come back to haunt her by way of a damaged metabolism. It took a few weeks to get her in to the vet; sure enough, she was diabetic, and he warned us that she had no more than two months' worth of sight left at the outside, probably less, because in retrospect we knew that she had been showing symptoms for a while. He also grilled me about whether we were prepared to take on the "burden," because apparently a lot of folks would rather put their dogs down than deal with it. But we're both intimately familiar with the disease, and we knew what to do.

She got tested twice a day, and injected twice a day. Normally, I did it at 9 AM and 9 PM, and if I got busy and too many minutes passed beyond the 9:00 mark, she would come and find me, because her internal clock was scary-accurate, and she knew it was time for her test and her shot. She never fought the needles, never whimpered; the first insulin injection in the vet's office had made her feel SO much better in the space of five minutes that she made the connection instantly and never looked back. And with a lot of work, we saved her eyesight for more than three years. Even once it was, for all practical purposes, gone, she navigated just fine in daylight, knowing her home sand land so well that she didn't need to see it.

We didn't know that something worse was on the way.

At the very end of 2017, the last day or next-to-last day of the year, we came downstairs to find what looked like a little blood on the dining room rug, with perhaps some urine. We couldn't tell whether it had come from her or Raven, or indeed what it actually was; both were perfectly capable of getting into thing outside and winding up with nicks or scratches, too. Everyone seemed fine, so we didn't worry unduly, but we kept watch.

It appeared again a few days later, and still we couldn't tell which dog was responsible. I followed them both as much as possible, and we eventually determined that it was She-Wolf. We were hoping diabetes- related UTI (and worrying about diabetes-related kidney failure). What it was was much worse.

She had interstitial carcinoma of the bladder, a very aggressive, very fast-moving, very lethal form of cancer in dogs. By the time we knew anything was wrong, it was already too late. The vet (our regular vet's partner, who treated her all the way through it, and was wonderful) warned us to expect her to have days at most.

We gave her three months. Good ones.

When the night came that she threw up blood, we knew. We called the vet at dawn, and our regular vet came out with the tech, who She-Wolf knew well and loved. Together, we held her in our arms, and through their own tears, Ted and Natalia helped us send her to the spirit world, where she would have no more pain. It was time, and it was easy, and she had no pain in the process.

And she is still in our hearts every single day. When I say She-Wolf was pure love, I mean exactly that. She just . . . LOVED. Everybody. Everything. But especially her pack and her world. And I miss her terribly. And so today I did as we always do, and I took her sweet spirit her offerings: cedar and smoke, tobacco, water. Wings left her some jerky, too.

We love you, She-Wolf. The gift you gave us, sweet girl, doesn't disappear; you and it live in our hearts.

All content, including photos and text, are copyright Aji, 2020; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.

It's been a year already.

Photo copyright Aji, 2019; all rights reserved.

It's been a year already.

That was one of the last good photos I took of She-Wolf, three days before we lost her. it had been a while coming; we gave her three months beyond what anyone thought was doable, and they were good months. She had only the one night that was not so great, and the vet came out the next morning.

At 9:27 AM, I went out and gave her cedar and tobacco and fresh water at her resting place. It's still impossible to believe she's gone, much less that she's been gone a year, this little girl who showed up at the gallery one day and never really left. She was about as close as it gets to pure love, and given the diabetes of her last few years (a result of being starved so badly her first year of life), her eventual blindness (which we managed to stave off, mostly, for nearly three years beyond what they said could be done), and then the fast-moving cancer that took her from us too soon, we were blessed to have her as long as we did.

We love you, She-Wolf. You're never out of our heart, baby girl.



All content, including photos and text, are copyright Aji, 2019; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.

Pure love and joy begin their journey. She-Wolf, on her way to the Spirit World.

Photo copyright Aji, 2018; all rights reserved.

A man and his dog. Two spirits I love more than life itself. 

About 9:27 this morning, we had to send She-Wolf to start her journey to the Spirit World. She began fading Monday night, fairly drastically, and we knew then that it was a matter of not if, but when. We didn't expect her to make it through Tuesday, but she wasn't ready to go yet: She rallied, and let us know that she wanted more time with us, with Raven, with her adopted feral pup, Cricket, with her treats and marrow bones. I took the photo above two evenings ago, sitting with her favorite person in the whole world.

I imagine anyone reading this already knows the story, but in case not, here's the short version: She-Wolf came to us near the end of 2008, a starving rez pup who'd been completely abandoned to fend for herself or die (Raven, too; in fact, we think they're cousins by blood). She began coming to the gallery, and she was so loving and so fiercely intelligent; not a single command in her repertoire, but she intuited what I wanted her to do immediately and without fail, and she would sit and lie down and just generally behave. And I'd give her some of my lunch, and she'd lie in front of the fireplace to get warm. After I'd been doing that a few weeks, I learned that Wings had begun doing the same thing, and so we decided that we should just bring her home, which we did the night before Thanksgiving. We pegged both her and Raven's birth dates at roughly January 1st, 2008, so she was a little more than ten years old now.

At any rate, in late 2013, she began deteriorating, and it finally became clear that she was likely diabetic, a product of the extreme starvation of her formative months. She was more Wings's baby girl (and Raven was more my boy), but I wound up being the one who took her to the vet to be diagnosed (yes, she was diabetic, and severely so), and that bonded her to me very nearly as tightly. The vet told us that she'd be completely blind within two months, four at the very outside (but she'd already had it for at least a couple of months, so two was the real estimate). Of course, we're bullheaded, and so I buckled down and dug around for supplements to save her site, and we managed it for three more years almost to the day. Even now, she was not 100% blind, although very nearly so, but her other senses were so highly developed and she knew her environment so well that no one could tell, not even us most of the time. 

Back in October, when we first began sleeping in the house at night, I began noticing something sticky in the doorway and on the tile. The crew were coming in and out constantly, and I thought they were spilling something. Then in November I got so sick that everything else became, well, not even really an inconvenience, even when she had an accident on the kitchen rug a couple of times (although at that point, we weren't positive that it was her and not Raven). Then in late December, there was a fairly large puddle on the rug, and on New Year's Eve, there was one with blood in it. It took a couple weeks of following them around to establish that it was indeed She-Wolf and not Raven, and in the third week of January, we made an appointment with the vet.

The news was bad — very bad. Not merely a diabetes-induced UTI gone haywire; he suspected something worse, and did an ultrasound. She had multiple masses in the bladder area: transitional cell carcinoma of the bladder, which under the best of conditions is a highly metastatic and fast-moving cancer. Add into it the location of her particular masses, and the fact of her diabetes, and the additional fact that her diabetes had already caused significant thickening of the bladder wall, and the outlook was worse than grim. Unless you're willing to put your dog through surgery and chemo and radiation, the established treatment is pharmaceutical, and her age and diabetes meant that the former protocol would be putting through agony to no purpose. We told the vet that we wanted to give her the best possible quality of life for whatever time she had left, and that we would go with the drug regimen: Piroxicam, Prednisone, and Amoxicillin. Unfortunately, the Pred raises blood sugar, a lot, and so we knew that the two might work against each other. In fact, the vet only gave us a 20-day scrip for the Piroxicam, because, as he admitted to us later, he never thought she'd have this kind of time left.

So in addition to BG testing and insulin shots twice a day, she now got bladder-control kibble, three separate meds, and eventually, a switch to raw meat to keep her BG numbers down. The last few weeks, the pressure from the masses caused enough involuntary leakage that every evening, we taped puppy pads to her dog bed, and every morning, we mopped up what they didn't catch. Jeff was shocked and thrilled, and told us that she'd lasted this long because of us. And she remained happy and engaged and loving her life, and we gave thanks for every additional day we had with her.

But as I said, she began fading on Monday night, and then last night, just after seven, she threw up twice: two massive amounts of blood. At her last vet visit, Jeff told us he thought her spleen might be a bit enlarged, and didn't want to talk about what that would mean unless and until we had to deal with it. I'm reasonably sure that it ruptured last night, and we really didn't expect her to make it through the evening, much less the night. We called around, though, and couldn't get hold of anyone on call, so all we could do is wait it out with her. She seemed to be in no pain, just very weak and tired, but still thumping her tail every time she perceived that we were nearby. This morning, we called the vet, and the practice owner was the one on duty (we've taken our animals to both vets there). He only does house calls on a very discretionary basis, but he did one for us back in 2007 when we lost BearGirl, and even though he had appointments later this morning and surgeries this afternoon, he came out with Natalia, the vet tech who had been taking care of She-Wolf. It was an unanticipated $200 out the door, but we owed it to her to make sure she didn't suffer.

She-Wolf has always been the spirit who was closest to pure joy, and pure love, of any we've ever known. It turns out she also has (had) one of the strongest hearts, both figuratively and literally. It took three tries; on the first, the vein apparently blew; he was worried that the second might be insufficient, and added a third dose. She felt none of it, had no pain, and was completely at peace, lying in the grass with her head cradled in my arms and Wings stroking her face while even Raven, who is always terrified by these things, came up and licked her once. She's buried with everything she'll need, including two of her beloved buffalo marrow bones.

And there is a new, 83-pound, She-Wolf sized hole in both our hearts. Also in Raven's, and in little Cricket's, who had imprinted on her as his adoptive mother.

I took this shot on the evening of the 24th, with one of her marrow bones (what we thought then would be her last but was not). I want to remember her this way, looking alert and beautiful and happy.

Photo copyright Aji, 2018; all rights reserved.

We love you, She-Wolf. You'll never be out of our hearts.

Wings has asked me, explicitly, to thank everyone who has prayed for our girl, sent good vibes, and pulled for her all the way: thank you from him personally, and thank you from me, as well. You helped us keep her with us an extra three months, all pain-free and with wonderful quality of life, and that's the best thing we all could have gotten right now.

All content, including photos and text, are copyright Aji, 2018; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.

Herbs for She-Wolf. New stuff at various places. Sales/shares badly needed.

Photo copyright Aji, 2017; all rights reserved.

She-Wolf with some of her "meds": We went out into one of the fields this afternoon where the mullein, thanks to the lack of real winter, is still amazingly fresh, at least with regard to the leaves. The tiny birds are still getting seeds off the stalks on the daily. And Wings dug up several roots, which are what he's holding in his hand in the photo, and I now have it drying on the floor by the larger woodstove. Mullein root has anti-cancer properties, and so once dry, I'll grind it into powder and mix it, in small amounts, with her wet food. (Yes, I do still do my herbal stuff, like always.) For today, she's had her Piroxicam, her prednisone, her amoxicillin, and half her special kibble; she'll get the other half tonight after her glucose testing and shot. Her BG was way high this morning, so I'm guessing that the Piroxicam (and possibly the new kibble) are the culprits (pred doesn't jack her sugar much, especially not at this dose), so we moved the medication all to morning, and we'll see tomorrow morning how she does with the kibble tonight.

On another front, Wings is rockin' in the studio; he's got some really good momentum at last, mostly because without crew here or holiday stuff encroaching on his time and space, he can actually concentrate. I posted one of his new works at his site earlier today (it's so gorgeous that he made me a smaller version like it), and in the days to come, I'll have more pairs of earrings, another ring, a pin, and a couple of bracelets. And that's just for starters, so watch this space.

For me, it's still very much a rollercoaster. It's been nice to have a few stretches in each day where I don't have to be connected to the O2 concentrator, but then my battery runs out and here I am again with the cannula on. Last night was the first night on the double dose of the LDN, and I did sleep more than I have lately (although still very intermittently), so maybe it's the med, or maybe I'm just beat. I'm still tired all the time, and every single thing I do leaves me short of breath and off-balance, so the rest is mostly cut and paste, because I my focus is now gone.

A slightly longer thing at my site tonight; no big deal, but it's built around kind of a cool image, I think. Here's the the Ko-Fi thing. Instead of a cup (or more than one) of coffee, think of it as part of one of She-Wolf's anti-cancer meds.

So, yeah, that's another big expense, although thankfully we have today's sale to help with that. But there's a lot of uncertainty with the new year now (and a lot of worry on more fundamental levels than just paying bills and so forth). For now, we still need to make sales, and they will be harder than usual not merely because Christmas is essentially over, but because there is no real tourist traffic, much less spending. We made it through the last week of the year, but looking ahead for this year, we don't have what normally gets us through the rest of the winter (and the weather will change, even if it's only to get really, really cold), much less for the emergency medical expenses of the last six weeks (which included a new bill two days ago for nearly five figures). Forget what remains to be done on the house for now; it's all the rest. But sales are not just what's going to keep me alive and Wings healthy; it's going to help other folks, too. Given the circumstances, I'm leaving up the donation link, too, and the registries have some new items on then, mostly lower-priced, to replace stuff damaged by the RV or given away when we first moved into it seven years ago. And as soon as I can get the folks at Wordpress who were happy enough to take my money to correct their various errors, I'll have a means to subscribe, donate, and eventually buy some things outright on the new site. So please share our links, because we've got to make some sales:

• Wings's direct PayPal link;
• Wings's site, for sales;
• Wayfair gift cards, to replenish all the furnishings that the RV has destroyed in one way or another.
• Partial registry #1, from Bed, Bath and Beyond. There are new kitchen-y things on it now, stuff that I didn't realize we'd need to replace (either because the RV ruined it or because we gave it away when we had to downsize).
• Partial registry #2, from Wayfair. Still waiting for them to resolve this fulfillment/shipping problem they have with their site. Even so, I've added some things (kitchen/dining room stuff mostly), most of which are comparatively reasonably priced. Now, it's going to be mostly odds and ends that make this place more liveable, because of the sheer volume of stuff destroyed by too many years in the RV (e.g., by the oven and stovetop, by the wiring, by the water, by the mold, etc.), or that we simply gave away seven years ago because we had no room and no place to put them and despaired of ever being able to use them again.  

As I've also been saying, I am still catching up, and will be now for a while. But this is the holiday season, and the sales/commissions from these few weeks are what keep us alive throughout the whole long winter and spring months (to say nothing of what's in the offing medically), so please continue to share the links. And please refer folks to Wings's site (and if you have an endorsement, too, so much the better). I'll be trying, slowly but, I hope, steadily, to get caught up over the course of this week. We have some massive expenses coming down the pike, and a lot of testing yet to be done before I'm out of the woods. So please keep sharing all our links. For now, I'm just so damn grateful to be alive, to have a healthy heart, to be back home with the love of my life and our dogs, the whole world is beautiful, even in spite of my terrible depression. Thanks again, to everybody; we love you all. And, if wishes can make dreams come true, a blessed Spirit Moon, the ability to sit atop the mountain and face the world below, and a happy, healthy new year to all of us.

All content, including photos and text, are copyright Aji, 2018; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner. 

A very long, arduous day, but a medicated (and mostly happy) She-Wolf. Sales and shares badly needed.

Photo copyright Aji, 2017; all rights reserved.

A very, very long day today. Errands required ten (count em, 10) separate stops, and while my O2 levels stayed mostly stable (with some help from canned spray oxygen), I'm really wiped out now.

We couldn't leave as early as we wanted (although fortunately, it all worked out okay), because we were waiting on a delivery of firewood. We have plenty of piñon and cedar at the moment, but they're very pitchy, and they will gum up a flue a lot faster than a clean-burning wood like aspen. So even back with the old manufactured home, we consistently burned aspen in the woodstove too so that it would keep it clean and in good shape. This was an aspen delivery, and it's really good stuff (also nice and dry). More than that, the kids who brought it were great, one of whom Wings found on the other side of the pickup, lying on the grass with She-Wolf to pet her. 

Before they got here, though, She-Wolf and Raven both got a special treat: part of a buffalo brain Wings acquired last year to use in tanning a hide. He wound up not needing it (at least not right this moment), and so he gave them this mostly because buffalo and elk (especially raw, including organs and blood) have always been very healing for the dogs. When Lilith was battling cancer (she lasted just shy of three extra years), one of the things that would help bring her back when she started to slip away was buffalo or elk blood and raw meat. And I think this helped She-Wolf today. She has certainly been acting as though she feels pretty good. We also picked up her other med today, and some treat/kibble samples that Jeff (the vet) had set aside for her that are designed to promote urinary health in dogs. The idea being, of course, that since tumors cause inflammation and thereby invite opportunistic infection and other problems, the healthier we can keep her bladder and urinary tract overall, the better potential she has for fighting the cancer. She's already had her amoxicillin and her pred, and she'll get the Piroxicam and some of the sample stuff with her shot and food tonight.

We are, at long last, home, and inside, and we've eaten something, and I've gotten a few more tasks off my plate, and we're both hoping that we don't have to go anywhere at all all weekend long. We need some downtime; Spirit knows I need some rest, since Im still not really sleeping. Tonight I double my LDN dose, and we'll see if that makes it better or worse. At least I didn't spend as much of the day fighting back tears. She-Wolf is good at the moment, Wings is good, I did better than expected, so Im calling it a win for the day.

I'm still beat, and the rest is mostly cut and paste, because I just can't focus my eyes and my brain anymore.

Only a small thing at my site; and here's the the Ko-Fi thing. Ive had to cut my actual coffee consumption way back since this stuff that no one can identify has started with me, so instead of coffee, think of it as She-Wolf's anti-cancer meds.

So, yeah, that's another big expense, although thankfully we have today's sale to help with that. But there's a lot of uncertainty with the new year now (and a lot of worry on more fundamental levels than just paying bills and so forth). For now, we still need to make sales, and they will be harder than usual not merely because Christmas is essentially over, but because there is no real tourist traffic, much less spending. We made it through the last week of the year, but looking ahead for this year, we don't have what normally gets us through the rest of the winter (and the weather will change, even if it's only to get really, really cold), much less for the emergency medical expenses of the last six weeks (which included a new bill two days ago for nearly five figures). Forget what remains to be done on the house for now; it's all the rest. But sales are not just what's going to keep me alive and Wings healthy; it's going to help other folks, too. Given the circumstances, I'm leaving up the donation link, too, and the registries have some new items on then, mostly lower-priced, to replace stuff damaged by the RV or given away when we first moved into it seven years ago. And as soon as I can get the folks at Wordpress who were happy enough to take my money to correct their various errors, I'll have a means to subscribe, donate, and eventually buy some things outright on the new site. So please share our links, because we've got to make some sales:

• Wings's direct PayPal link;
• Wings's site, for sales;
• Wayfair gift cards, to replenish all the furnishings that the RV has destroyed in one way or another.
• Partial registry #1, from Bed, Bath and Beyond. There are new kitchen-y things on it now, stuff that I didn't realize we'd need to replace (either because the RV ruined it or because we gave it away when we had to downsize).
• Partial registry #2, from Wayfair. Still waiting for them to resolve this fulfillment/shipping problem they have with their site. Even so, I've added some things (kitchen/dining room stuff mostly), most of which are comparatively reasonably priced. Now, it's going to be mostly odds and ends that make this place more liveable, because of the sheer volume of stuff destroyed by too many years in the RV (e.g., by the oven and stovetop, by the wiring, by the water, by the mold, etc.), or that we simply gave away seven years ago because we had no room and no place to put them and despaired of ever being able to use them again.  

As I've also been saying, I am still catching up, and will be now for a while. But this is the holiday season, and the sales/commissions from these few weeks are what keep us alive throughout the whole long winter and spring months (to say nothing of what's in the offing medically), so please continue to share the links. And please refer folks to Wings's site (and if you have an endorsement, too, so much the better). I'll be trying, slowly but, I hope, steadily, to get caught up over the course of this week. We have some massive expenses coming down the pike, and a lot of testing yet to be done before I'm out of the woods. So please keep sharing all our links. For now, I'm just so damn grateful to be alive, to have a healthy heart, to be back home with the love of my life and our dogs, the whole world is beautiful, even in spite of my terrible depression. Thanks again, to everybody; we love you all. And, if wishes can make dreams come true, a blessed Spirit Moon, the ability to sit atop the mountain and face the world below, and a happy, healthy new year to all of us.

All content, including photos and text, are copyright Aji, 2018; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner. 

Overall, a pretty crappy day. She-Wolf has cancer. Sales/shares badly needed.

Photo copyright Aji, 2017; all rights reserved.

If you can't tell, that's a shot of the two dogs sacked out beneath the tree today, unaware of what's coming. We'll get to that in a minute.

It was . . . not a good day.

I woke up with a migraine. I'm always grateful now just to wake up, in light of what's going on with me, but that was tempered a bit by the sledgehammer blows inside my head. Thanks to Wings working on my head and neck and back (this all comes from the damage to my neck in the accident decades ago), it took the edge off enough for me us to attend our friend's memorial this morning, at least.

After leaving the memorial, we had a rather unpleasant experience, especially for me: yet another example of a white woman inserting herself where she didn't belong, co-opting Wings's father and exploiting his memory, saying something that apparently turned out to be a lie but that was incredibly hurtful to me personally, and openly erasing me while demanding a hug from Wings, getting my name wrong, and then telling me she probably couldn't remember it because it's so strange. Yeah. I walked away. but the amount of pain inflicted on me in that exchange runs very deep. 

Then we had to renew the rental for the O2 concentrator. They don't currently have a portable in stock (it's $400 a month anyway, instead of $150). Wings wanted to order one to buy outright, but that's more than $3K, and they need something like half down, and we don't have it. We wont't have it for a while, either, because of what else happened today.

It was indeed She-Wolf with the bleed New Year's Eve morning; Wings caught it this morning. Could have been something as simple as a bad UTI, but likely not; could also have been a bladder stone, but we had prepped ourselves to hear the worst. It's not the absolute worst, but it's not far off. She-Wolf has cancer: transitional-cell carcinoma of the bladder. It's not early-stage, either; it's through most of her bladder, and that organ's walls have thickened immensely. It looks as though the walls of her intestines have thickened, too, and her spleen is very enlarged, so we already have metastasis — or it may just be inflammatory response. Her prognosis is not good. at best, she probably has months, not years, and there's always a chance that things could go suddenly sideways very fast. If that happens, it will break our hearts and absolutely destroy Raven. But there have been some studies of off-label prescribing of Piroxicam (an anti-inflammatory) in dogs with TCC of the bladder, and in a significant percentage, it's helped. A very few have gone into full remission; a decent number of the others have had it back off enough to buy them quite a bit more time and good quality of life, apparently. Those dogs, however, were not, AFAAK, diabetic. She-Wolf is.

That said, the vet (who is our regular vet's partner, in half the week) is a straight shooter and a hell of a good guy, and he's comfortable with our level of knowledge and expertise and ability to work with her. he did tell us that we had every right to try a veterinary cancer center, to ask him for chemo, whatever, and I asked him point-blank which would give her the best quality of life (we suspected it would be the pharmacological option). He said, "For that goal, if it were my dog? I'd go with the meds." So. Almost $250 today for vet visit, ultrasound, and X-ray; heaven knows how much tomorrow for the Piroxicam and some supplements they found that are indicated for this (it's new territory for all of us). We already have veterinary mox and pred on hand for the horses and dogs, and he's okayed using that, one course of mox and 10mg of pred per day consistently along with the new drug.

And we'll see.

Prayers, good vibes, whatever you got for our beautiful little girl would be welcome, too. Needless to say, some of my stuff's getting back-burnered, because hers is emergent.

I'm completely wrung out at this point. I need to eat, I need to spend some time hooked up to the O2, and I just need not to start bawling now, so the rest is all cut and paste; sorry.

[Added, because I'm forgetting everything today: all that's up at my site; the Ko-Fi thing. Sorry, everyone; I'm not all here tonight.]

So, yeah, that's another big expense, although thankfully we have today's sale to help with that. But there's a lot of uncertainty with the new year now (and a lot of worry on more fundamental levels than just paying bills and so forth). For now, we still need to make sales, and they will be harder than usual not merely because Christmas is essentially over, but because there is no real tourist traffic, much less spending. We made it through the last week of the year, but looking ahead for this year, we don't have what normally gets us through the rest of the winter (and the weather will change, even if it's only to get really, really cold), much less for the emergency medical expenses of the last six weeks (which included a new bill two days ago for nearly five figures). Forget what remains to be done on the house for now; it's all the rest. But sales are not just what's going to keep me alive and Wings healthy; it's going to help other folks, too. Given the circumstances, I'm leaving up the donation link, too, and the registries have some new items on then, mostly lower-priced, to replace stuff damaged by the RV or given away when we first moved into it seven years ago. And as soon as I can get the folks at Wordpress who were happy enough to take my money to correct their various errors, I'll have a means to subscribe, donate, and eventually buy some things outright on the new site. So please share our links, because we've got to make some sales:

• Wings's direct PayPal link;
• Wings's site, for sales;
• Wayfair gift cards, to replenish all the furnishings that the RV has destroyed in one way or another.
• Partial registry #1, from Bed, Bath and Beyond. There are new kitchen-y things on it now, stuff that I didn't realize we'd need to replace (either because the RV ruined it or because we gave it away when we had to downsize).
• Partial registry #2, from Wayfair. Still waiting for them to resolve this fulfillment/shipping problem they have with their site. Even so, I've added some things (kitchen/dining room stuff mostly), most of which are comparatively reasonably priced. Now, it's going to be mostly odds and ends that make this place more liveable, because of the sheer volume of stuff destroyed by too many years in the RV (e.g., by the oven and stovetop, by the wiring, by the water, by the mold, etc.), or that we simply gave away seven years ago because we had no room and no place to put them and despaired of ever being able to use them again.  

As I've also been saying, I am still catching up, and will be now for a while. But this is the holiday season, and the sales/commissions from these few weeks are what keep us alive throughout the whole long winter and spring months (to say nothing of what's in the offing medically), so please continue to share the links. And please refer folks to Wings's site (and if you have an endorsement, too, so much the better). I'll be trying, slowly but, I hope, steadily, to get caught up over the course of this week. We have some massive expenses coming down the pike, and a lot of testing yet to be done before I'm out of the woods. So please keep sharing all our links. For now, I'm just so damn grateful to be alive, to have a healthy heart, to be back home with the love of my life and our dogs, the whole world is beautiful, even in spite of my terrible depression. Thanks again, to everybody; we love you all. And, if wishes can make dreams come true, a blessed Spirit Moon, the ability to sit atop the mountain and face the world below, and a happy, healthy new year to all of us.

All content, including photos and text, are copyright Aji, 2018; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner. 

Sometimes you just have to count your blessings:

Photo copyright Wings, 2014; all rights reserved.

Wednesday was a milestone for this little girl.

On November 19th, she was diagnosed with diabetes. [That's the result of starvation and severe malnutrition the first year of her life, before she found us.] She already had a cataract forming at the back of her right eye. The vet told us then that she would be fully blind in both eyes within two months.  

She passed that marker on January 19th.

Of course, I asked whether there was anything we could do to prevent it, and was told that the absolute best we could hope for, at the very outside, was four months before it her blindness complete. At that point, we knew with benefit of hindsight that she'd already been ill for more than a month, so effectively, that left no more than about 2.5 months for her vision.

Of course, when I want something, I've got a skull like a buffalo. So I did my research. Besides the dietary changes and insulin injections, she's getting daily supplements.

And at the moment, the right eye seems no worse, and there's no evidence of change in the left.

It's probably only buying time, but every day that She-Wolf can still see her beloved world is a good day.