Up next, our Week In Review

[outsdr]

It's Sunday morning, 1 a.m. I'm working the hotel and I have drunk wedding guests that I've had just about enough of; the next time I have to talk to them it will be with a local sheriff at my side.

Ahem.



Jinx surveys his domain.

The Wyoming Press Association conference wrapped up today. It turns out that my editor and I won with an ad that had been submitted; one of her accounts.



It's funny- I designed this ad in 2006, and I think it's been submitted every year for the past five years; this year, it finally won. The judges every year are different. (To qualify, ads must have been published at some point in the previous year. This ad is updated and run again each year.)

I'll admit that I'm disappointed that my columns didn't win, but we are in a tough category, up against one of the top newspapers in the state. However, if an ad first designed six years ago can finally win, I can hold on to hope for my writing!

The book I'm laying out and paginating for John Gilmore is supposed to go to press mid-February. So far, I've gotten maybe a fourth of it to work on. I have a feeling a lot of it is going to be done last minute.

My father was doing much better the last time I talked to him; he sounded like his old self. His girlfriend rattled off some numbers to me; I'll see if I can make some sense of them here.

While in the hospital, he was on a pain killer called Dylahtin (I have no idea what this drug is acutally called; I'm spelling it phonetically. Doing a search on Google for anything that includes the word "pankiller" is futile, unless you WANT to only see results from shady pharmacies.) He was on an IV drip that he was able to control, so that they could measure how much painkiller he actually needs, and translate that to pill form.

His Gleason score is a 7. About Gleason scores:

Based on the most common pattern of differentiation, the pathologist will assign a number 1 through 5. Then based on the second most common pattern of cell differentiation, the pathologist assigns a second number of 1 through 5. The sum of these two numbers is your Gleason score. Your Gleason score can range from 2 through 10. Most of the prostate cancer cases diagnosed today have Gleason grades of 5, 6, or 7. The more aggressive forms of prostate cancer have scores of 8, 9, or 10. Prostate cancer cases with a Gleason score below 4 are very rare, as they usually do not warrant the biopsy in the first place.

So, fairly high. Something else in his body has a level of 333; I'm not sure what it was but I guess that's fairly high too. He also has an elevated white blood cell count, so there's still and infection crawling around in there as well, although this could also be caused by the catheter. Yeah, his plumbing is pretty much shot.

However- the good news is that there are still treatment options. It's not going to be cured, but it's progress can still be slowed. Apparently, this cancer feeds on testosterone, so hormone therapy is an option. Chemotherapy has not been ruled out, but it's probably a last ditch effort in that the cancer has spread through his bones so far. Chemotherapy is a lot like using a shotgun to kill a fly on the wall- sure, the flies dead, but so is a lot of the surrounding wall. A bone scan and cat scan were not totally conclusive, but the oncologist thought that the cancer was beginning to show in his lungs and his kidneys.

Sigh.

Let's take a break and watch Ike dream in his sleep:

He was VERY deeply sleeping. Sometimes, he makes noised and little "woofs" in his sleep, which is just too cute for words.

I'm going to try to go back east either in the spring or summer for a visit. No one knows how long Dad has left- it's completely impossible to determine at this point. But I don't want to go see him on his deathbed; I want to see him one last time while he still has some life in him. And I don't even know if it will be my last time seeing him.

It's been bitterly cold here the past week, and we got six inches of snow Tuesday night. Ike likes snow; he walks around in it, and will roll around in it as well. He doesn't care for the cold, but after the first cold snap where he had to wear his boots, he's been doing really well.



What is this interference in my walk?



I will investigate further.

(That dark spot in his fur really looks like a horrible bruise. It's not.)



The gate is still there, so all is right in the world.



Ghost doggy!

His spirit is still good, he's not suffering, but ...

The Neutricks is having no effect that I can see. He still poops inside. What has been happening for about the last month is that, in the evening, he will start to get worked up and distressed. I know what's coming- he needs to pitch a loaf. But no matter how many times I put him outside, or even if I go along, he won't do it. He'll just sit at my desk, getting more worked up, until finally the logjam breaks. Afterwards, he's still distressed and mopey for awhile, but then he cheers up and goes back to his normal self.

So, this tells me that he can still sense when he needs to go. However, I don't know what is causing the distress or why he won't do it outside. It could be pain, either from the anal tumor or because he's lost so much muscle in his hindquarters that it's difficult for him to squat like he needs to when he goes. This also is beginning to be a problem with urination; he loses strength before his bladder is empty. When he gets up in the morning he does well, but as the day progresses he gets worse.

I'll be talking to the vet about it next week. Pain can be managed; there's nothing that can be done about the muscle loss, however.

Time to cheer myself up again. Let's look at a picture of Kai Owen with his pants down:



*sigh* Maybe he'll be my next pet.

I'm not really thinking about that much. I know it will be awhile until I get a dog again after Ike (Ike came along three years after my previous one, and I didn't feel I was ready yet then.) Plus, like Dad, I'm not really sure how much time Ike has left.

On to the next subject: me.


My. Aren't we fierce?

(That's from Heavy Metal the Movie. You'll have to take my word for it, because I can't find a clip of it online.)

My hands are getting worse. My fingers tend to go slower than I thnk they are, and i make a lot of typos as a rsult; also,  don't seem to always push a key as far down as I think I have, resulting in missed leters. (The previous sentence was left verbatim without corrections, like I normally do.)

What to do. I've been taking more of my medicine, because there's been more pain as well. I can't really go see my doctor about it, because, for various reasons, he's not practicing medicine at the moment. I'm also totally fed up with the clinic he used to be a part of, but as long as they're willing to call in my prescriptions for my hands, I'll put up with them. I may need to find a new doctor soon regardless, because I want to get a life insurance policy, and I'm sure, at my age, I'll need a physical. Yay.

The life insurance policy is meant to help take care of things if anything happens to me. I want to split it up so that both my nephews have a savings account with a good chunk of money in it for college (their parents are loaded, but every bit helps), also leaving a good chunk of money to Andy to carry on his life if I'm gone, and to leave money just to tie up all the loose ends of my life, such as getting my estate in order and my body back to Maryland for burial. I always said previously that I wanted to be cryogenically frozen which is prohibitively expensive, unfortunately, or cremated, so at least someone can get some use out of me when it snows and they walk needs traction. However, after Dad built the family cemetery plot to hold Mom on the homestead, the idea of being buried there is appealing to me.


Crap, it's late, and i have work to do. Gonna wrap this up for now.