Our dog Casssie feel suddenly ill last week. Tuesday morning she was fine, happy and jumping around. Tues evening, subdued and a bit off center. We thought she had pulled a muscle romping round in the back yard, but when Sharon got home from work on Wed evening and saw her deep-red pee in the back yard, she immediately took her in.
She developed an extremely aggressive case of IMHA, an auto-immune disorder characterized by the relently shredding of red blood cells by natural antibodies. The vet said it was the worst case she had ever seen, and that as far as complications and extensions of this condition went, Cassie developed virtually all of them.
She had a stable and slightly encouraging night Wed - the vet called us around 6AM Thurs morning and said she seemed to be improving a little, after a course of steroids to jump start her red blood cell production. But she quickly turned far worse in a matter of hours, and by about noon, Sharon and I were saying our goodbyes, as the poor animal - semi-comatose and shockingly jaundiced - began having seizures. We had to let her go.
She was the first dog that I could ever call my own. Lovable, not too bright, eager to please, not a mean or sour bone in her body, and absolutely thrilled to have a family and a home...every waking minute.
We will miss her always.
Sunday, January 9, 2011
Thursday, January 6, 2011
Gerry Rafferty RIP
I will have to confess a probably lifelong weakness for Gerry Rafferty's "Baker Street", both as hook-addicted to that terrific sax riff by Raphael Ravenscroft, but also its particularly winsome, third-person reflection on aging and giving up the chase for buzz and women and glitter, in favor of solitude and peace and quiet and sanity.
It came at a particular time, too, the summer I worked as a none-too-responsible barkeep on a tourist ferry between Nantucket and Hyannis, a job that I parted ways with on mutually suspicious terms, right after stepping through a ship hold and landing, with full body weight, on the hatch's iron lip, driven pitilessly up into my scrotum. That was about 32 years ago, and it still hurts.
That experience - the job - did not end particularly well, but "Baker Street" conjures pleasant and reassuring memories of that time, in a way few songs or artists of that period ever could.
Anyway, RIP Gerry Rafferty.
It came at a particular time, too, the summer I worked as a none-too-responsible barkeep on a tourist ferry between Nantucket and Hyannis, a job that I parted ways with on mutually suspicious terms, right after stepping through a ship hold and landing, with full body weight, on the hatch's iron lip, driven pitilessly up into my scrotum. That was about 32 years ago, and it still hurts.
That experience - the job - did not end particularly well, but "Baker Street" conjures pleasant and reassuring memories of that time, in a way few songs or artists of that period ever could.
Anyway, RIP Gerry Rafferty.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)