3.29.2011

I don't have hundreds of friends, not even on Facebook. But in the past three weeks, it seems that way too many of my small circle have been hit by pain and suffering.
  • Two friends lost their mothers to illness.
  • My brother-in-law (husband to one of Jim's sisters) lost a brother to suicide.
  • One of the bridesmaids in our wedding was diagnosed with Stage IV colon cancer.
  • The "trail walks leader" at our shelter was attacked and severely injured by a dog that had just arrived at the shelter.
Religion might be helpful right now, but I abandoned that nearly two decades ago, with assistance from the Sisters of Mercy. Instead of the word of God, I now read poetry when sorrow arrives.

But mostly I just stand in the dark field,
in the middle of the world, breathing 

in and out. Life so far doesn't have any other name
but breath and light, wind and rain. 

from "What Is There Beyond Knowing" by Mary Oliver 

3.15.2011

Pit bull girl no more

When you don't have a job, it seems as though you have to craft an identity for yourself, a response to the inevitable "And what do you do?" at parties. A big piece of my self-image for the last two years came from being a member of the shelter team that took long-termers--mostly pit bulls and pit mixes--on two-mile group walks. Team membership is limited to the best dog handlers among the many volunteers who work with the shelter's canine population.

I liked the image of myself as a tough, middle-aged woman who could walk two pit bulls at at time; it counteracted the reserved, ex-librarian stereotype. I've been jumped on, leaned on, slobbered on, and given extravagant kisses by pit bulls. But as much as I love pits, I never lost sight of the fact that they are physically strong and--if untrained, as many dogs who end up in shelters are--can be strong-willed.

Last Saturday, one of my charges was acting out. For the first time on these walks, I feared for my own and both dogs' safety, particularly since we were near a busy street. Curiously, the other team members, including the staffer who leads the group, just continued walking while I tried to get the female pit bull under control. Eventually the entire group was out of sight. By the time they finally realized I wasn't with them, I had been nipped repeatedly and the dog who was behaving (sort of) had blood streaming out of one of his eyes. It was a horrific experience that could have been averted if even one other person on the team had offered me some assistance.

I resigned from the team the next day, losing a piece of myself in the process.

2.24.2011

A taste of the future?

In the past 17 days, I've had a physical, an ultrasound, a biopsy (benign), and, just to top things off, stomach flu. I also have a fistful of referrals for various medical procedures (mammogram, colonoscopy, bone scan, carotid artery scan). Jim has been home for the last two days with a bad cold. Our conversation has centered around health-related topics.

It's beginning to feel like an old folks' home, and I'm not talking one of those active lifestyle retirement communities.

2.17.2011

Irish literary humor

Earlier in the week, I took a break from (hopefully needless and definitely obssessive) online reading about thyroid cancer and purchased a subscription to the London Review of Books so that I could catch up on the annual publication of Alan Bennett's diary for the preceding 12 months. (In addition to the print version, the subscriber gets online access to the Review's archives.)

Following my biopsy this morning, I treated myself to reading Bennett's 2010 diary. He made me laugh for the first time in days with this anecdote:

I pass the house in Fitzroy Road with the blue plaque saying that Yeats lived there . . .

It was this house where Eric Korn heard someone reading out the plaque as being to ‘William Butler Yeast’. ‘Presumably,’ Eric wanted to say, ‘him responsible for the Easter Rising.'

2.14.2011

Love in Renaissance Flanders

I loved the work of the 15th century Flemish painter Jan Van Eyck long before we moved to Belgium. I'm particularly fond of his portrait of a young couple, Giovanni and Giovanna Arnolfini, and of Robert Lowell's spot-on description of the pair in his poem "Marriage."

They are rivals in homeliness and love;
her hand lies like china in his,
her other hand
is in touch with the head of her unborn child.
They wait and pray,
as if the airs of heaven
that blew on them when they married
were now a common visitation . . .

2.11.2011

Medically induced crankiness

I really liked the internist I found when we moved to Colorado. Dr. B. was smart, funny, and had a great bedside manner. Unfortunately, she moved back to Virginia to care for her elderly mother.

Dr. B. was replaced in the two-person practice by the newly minted Dr. H. Although I would have felt more comfortable seeing middle-aged Dr. K., when I called for an appointment for my 2010 annual physical, the receptionist said that I had to schedule it with Dr. H.

Someone has to give these young doctors a chance, I thought.

Dr. H. was pleasant and brisk during appointments. She correctly diagnosed a horrendous rash I had earlier this year as a drug allergy. But after calling me on Tuesday to report that I needed a thyroid biopsy, she (or her staff) dropped the ball. I never heard from the practice's referral staff or from the hospital where the biopsy will be performed.

I finally called Dr. H.'s office this morning. The biopsy order had never been sent, which made me hit the roof. One of the MAs said that she'd fax it immediately--marked "URGENT"--to the hospital. She also gave me a number to call to schedule the biopsy.

I waited half an hour for the fax to go through and then called that number. It was the wrong number.

When I was transferred to the correct number, they had not received the fax from my internist, nor could they schedule an appointment without it. They asked where the films of the ultrasound were, and I had to report that I had no idea if they were at my internist's office or the imaging center. Apparently the diagnostic radiologist has to actually see the films first in order to determine if s/he can even do a biopsy.

I know that the chances of my thyroid nodes being cancerous are small. But after losing family and friends to various forms of cancer, even the chance of it is unsettling. Uncertainty is not my best milieu, and the hassle of trying to resolve that uncertainty (i.e., just getting the biopsy scheduled) is raising my blood pressure, one of the few health measures I can report is in perfect condition.

2.09.2011

I feel bad about my neck thyroid

During a routine physical on Monday, my internist, Dr. H, dragged me over to the full-length mirror in the exam room. "Can you see it?" she demanded.

I mumbled, "Yes," although the only thing I really saw was the big red mark she left on my neck from her examination of my thyroid.

Which is how I found myself immediately after my physical at a diagnostic imaging center having a thyroid ultrasound. Fortunately that didn't involve drinking gallons of water and "holding it," as I had to do for ultrasounds during my pregnancy. Unfortunately, after holding my head back for 35 minutes in a position that would fully expose my thyroid for the ultrasound, I had a stiff neck.

Dr. H, who's only a few years out of med school and needs some practice in giving patients potentially bad news, called yesterday with the test results. There are four growths on my thyroid, one of them "pretty big." So next up on my calendar of things to look forward to (right behind that trip to Paris in the fall) is a needle biopsy of the cells that have invaded my thyroid.

If you had asked me just a week ago to point out my thyroid, it would have like asking me to point out the exact spot of Morocco on a map of Africa. I know it's on the continent's north coast, and then I get a little fuzzy. But I can guarantee that after that needle biopsy, I'll know exactly where my thyroid is.

2.04.2011

"You can't save them all"

One of the hardest parts of volunteering at an animal shelter--apart from trying to get certain pit bulls with heads the size of bowling balls to walk nicely on a leash--is accepting the fact that you can't rescue every dog that tugs at your heart.

With only two dogs in the house, we aren't at Arvada's three-dog legal limit. I'd passed on adopting the puppy mill dog the week before. But when I spotted Fawna, a tiny stray, while I was volunteering at the shelter last week, I offered to adopt her. A wise shelter worker suggested that I "foster to adopt" instead.

We renamed the five-pound mutt with the sweet face and huge ears "Orphan Annie." She proved to be smart, mostly house-broken, and a world-class snuggle bunny. She was also determined to be the alpha dog.

From the start, Annie tried to put herself between the humans and the other two dogs in the house. She literally attempted to shove Buzz and Jenny aside, a move that worked with nine-pound Buzz, but was futile with 70-pound Jenny. If Buzz was in my lap, Annie would leap on top of him to get him to move. She took toys and food right out of his mouth. Then, two days ago, while I was tossing balls for the two small dogs, Annie turned the competition to be the first to retrieve a ball into a terrifying dog fight. I couldn't get them apart by yelling, "Stop!" Finally I grabbed Annie around the hips and hauled her off Buzz.

I was stunned. In all the years of having multiple dogs in the house--our own and friends' dogs that we were dog-sitting--we've never had a dog fight.

I cried when I returned Annie to the shelter yesterday.

2.01.2011

The first best book of 2011

When I'm in the midst of a wonderful book, life acquires an extra sheen. The weather might be frigid, the foster dog might be throwing up in our bed, and I might go all day without speaking to a human being, but I will still be content as I go back and forth between reading and the rest of life.

Here's a few samples from "The Weird Sisters" by Eleanor Brown, which I (sadly) just finished. I expect that I'll end up owning the library copy, which the foster dog really did hurl on while I was reading it in bed the other night. A small price to pay for such pleasure.

We were fairly certain that if anyone made public the various and variegated ways in which being an adult sucked eggs, more people might opt out entirely.

We were never organized readers who would see a book through to its end in any sort of logical order. We weave in and out of words like tourists on a hop-on, hop-off bus tour.

We think, in some ways, we have done this our whole lives, searching for a book that will give us the keys to ourselves, let us into a wholly formed personality as though it were a furnished room to let.

1.25.2011

God Save the King (and Grant Him Many Oscars)

Although my Irish ancestors would be horrified, I have been an Anglophile since I was old enough to read The Secret Garden and A Little Princess. So, despite Christopher Hitchens' complaints about the film's historical inaccuracies (none of which had to do with the relationship between George VI and Lionel Logue), I was inordinately pleased that "The King's Speech" received 12 Academy Award nominations today.

1.23.2011

Sheep bites dog

For the third year in a row, we attended the stock dog trials at the National Western Stock Show, the "Super Bowl of Livestock Shows," a two-week long event that has been held in Denver for over a century.

If a herding dog nips any of the three sheep it has to guide through a variety of herding challenges, the dog is immediately disqualified. Apparently, however, if the herdee bites the herder, as one decidedly feisty sheep (twice) did a visibly astonished Border Collie yesterday, the dog doesn't score compensatory points.

1.20.2011

A Three-Dog Life?

I've volunteered at the animal shelter for two and a half years, and only adopted one shelter dog--Jenny. We weren't supposed to have more than one pet (Hana) at our first Colorado house, a rental, although we did add Buzz to the family when we knew that we would be moving to our own home. Hana and Buzz co-existed peacefully, and Jenny learned to be a Gillette dog from both of them, although some of the psychological effects of the abuse she suffered in her former life remain. Life with three dogs could be tiring, particularly since our dogs have always gotten two walks a day.

Now Hana is a box of ashes sitting on the mantel beside her picture. Life with the "Odd Couple" (a Papillon and a Pit Bull mix) is calm, and affection flows among all parties. (Jenny is still not fully comfortable with Jim, but we can literally see her pushing herself to get over her fear, which is rooted in the five years of her life before she came to us. She will deliberately choose to go and sit next to Jim sometimes, shaking all the while.)

So why am I looking for a third dog? And why, when I went to look at a dog at another shelter this afternoon, did I even let myself hold her when I found out that she had been removed from a puppy mill less than three weeks ago?

The view from my desk chair:
Buzz has his own bed nearby,
but often chooses to sleep near Jenny.

1.14.2011

Brother and Sister II


Patrick and Alison are 28 years old today. This photo was taken at the hospital with my dad, whose wide girth proved ideal for holding his first two grandchildren.

1.13.2011

Brother and Sister I

December 1958

I don't see my brother, my only sibling, much anymore. Once he graduated from law school and moved to Minnesota, we've never lived closer than 700 miles apart. Aside from a joint trip to Paris with his daughters while I lived in Belgium, these days we see each other only at events: weddings, funerals, graduations.

My brother had a meeting in Denver this morning, so he spent last evening with us. Given the number of times I've been ready to strangle him over the past decade (example: on the way to Our Lady of Sorrows to plan our father's funeral, I threatened to make him get out of the car and walk after a particularly wounding comment), it was good to be reminded that remnants still remain of the strong bond we shared as children.

1.08.2011

Favorite Books, 2010 Edition

Annie was comfortably dug in to her burrow of books.

Cathleen Schine, The Three Weissmanns of Westport

I read fewer books in 2010 (87) than in 2009 (120). The move, the addition of two new dogs to the family, and the dubious joys of home ownership (mowing the lawn! interviewing contractors!) ate away at my reading time.

Unlike 2009, there doesn't seem to be any common theme to my 2010 favorites, although many of the quotes that I jotted down in my reading journal seem to be about parenting (2010 was a difficult year for me as a mother) or accepting (in my case, at 56, perhaps belatedly) one's true self.

Parents are the mystified criminals, blinking in the docks, making it all the worse for themselves with every word they utter.

Michael Cunningham, By Nightfall

In the order in which I finished them, here are my favorite reads from last year; I make no apologies for the two doorstops (451 pages* and 766 pages**) of novels that were guilty pleasures.

Dreaming in Hindi (Kathleen Russell Rich)
Where the God of Love Hangs Out (Amy Bloom)
The Happiness Project (Gretchen Rubin)
Committed (Elizabeth Gilbert)
The Season of Second Chances (Diane Meier)
Angelology* (Danielle Trussoni)
The Lonely Polygamist (Brady Udall)
The Passage** (Justin Cronin)
The Cookbook Collector (Allegra Goodman)
Slow Love (Dominique Browning)
The Blind Contessa's New Machine (Carey Wallace)
Cutting for Stone (Abraham Verghese)
Let's Take the Long Way Home (Gail Caldwell)
This Must Be the Place (Kate Racculia)
The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating (Elisabeth Tova Bailey)
The Widower's Tale (Julia Glass)

"Hammock or chaise lounge?" Randeane said.
Ray said that he was more a chair kind of person, that hammocks were unpredictable.
"Oh, life's a hammock," Randeane said.
"Exactly my point. I'll take the chair."

Amy Bloom, Where the God of Love Hangs Out