9/14/24

 Saturday, September 14, 2024

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In bed at 8:45, awake around 3 and up by 3:20 to let Lilly out.   I let her out again at 5:00.  

Prednisone, day 123, 7.5 mg., day 2.   Prednisone at 5, morning meds at 9:10. 

Lilly is 3 weeks shy of her 15th birthday.  The life expectancy of a dog her size is about 12 years.  Her sister/litter-mate Olive died a couple of years ago from a seizure of some sort.  Lilly is 5/8ths chocolate lab and 3/8ths white standard poodle which produced her coat the breeder call 'cafe au lait.'.  Chocolate labs have a life span of 10.7 years, perhaps because their coloration is the result of a recessive gene in labrador retrievrrs.  Standard poodles have a life span of 12-15 years.  I mention this because it is clear that Lilly is failing and we are deallilng with the issue of euthanizing her.  It appears that she is nearly totally deaf and we suspect her vision is also failing.  I think this may account for her long hesitancy on the front stoop or sidewalk when we let her out into nighttime darkness.  Her major problem however is the inability of her hind legs to support her weight; they collapse under her when she stands still for any length of time.  We're recalling that our beloved cat Blanche lost the use of her hind legs when we had her euthanized years ago.  Geri is dealing with this issue more responsibly than I am.  I tend to go into denial over her increasing decrepitude; Geri deals with it directly, if painfully.  When Blanche was in her last days, it was Geri who cared for her every day, even transfusing her each day on our ironing board to keep her hydrated.  At the end, it was Geri who called me at the HOP to tell me, tearfully, that Blanche was struggling to drag herself across the floor with only her front legs, and now she is seeing a similar condition in Lilly.  We took Blanche to the Shorewood Animal Hospital to be euthanized.  I cried.  It's been some time now since Lilly has been able to get into the car on her own; she needs to be lifted in by the two of us.  We will have her euthanized at home and I suspect I will cry again.  I'm almost crying as I type this.     

Spring and Fall

BY GERARD MANLEY HOPKINS

to a young child

Márgarét, áre you gríeving

Over Goldengrove unleaving?

Leáves like the things of man, you

With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?

Ah! ás the heart grows older

It will come to such sights colder

By and by, nor spare a sigh

Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;

And yet you wíll weep and know why.

Now no matter, child, the name:

Sórrow’s spríngs áre the same.

Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed

What heart heard of, ghost guessed:

It ís the blight man was born for,

It is Margaret you mourn for.

Tua Tagovailoa meets Damar Hamlin, the morality of football.  On Thursday night, the Miami Dolphins played a home game against the Buffalo Bills.  In the third quarter, Miami quarterback Tua Tagovailoa on a scramble lowered his head and crashed into Bills cornerback Damar Hamlin.  In doing so, he sustained his third professinally diagnosed brain concussion since 2022, his fourth since his college days.  Damar Hamlin is the player who suffered a life-threatening cardiac arrest in January 2023 on a routine tackle in a game against the Cincinnati Bengals.  Hamlin has chosen to continue to play in the NFL.  Tagovailoa was playing his second game since signing a $212 million contract with the Miami team and may or may not choose to continue to play once he clears the NFL's 'concussion protocol.'  At age 26, he is already at substantial risk od CTE, chronic traumatic encephalopathy.  [WARNING: shameless virtue signally ahead.]  I stopped watching footfall several years ago and I've been experiencing withdrawal symptoms ever since.  I stopped in disgust over the NFL owners' behavior in defending themselves against claims by former players for compensation for CTE.  I also stopped because I thought it was unacceptable to continue to contribute to the NFL's main source in income, i.e., television revenues, by watching Packers games on TV.  It also seemed to me, and still does, that watching men engage in an activity in which they inflict severe injuries on one another is wrong, a contemporary variation on gladiatorial contests in imperial Rome.  There was something iconic and sickening in the fact that it was 26 year old Tagovailoa and 26 year old Hamlin involved in the play that may end the former's football career.  Will Tua choose to return to playng NFL football?  My guess is 'yes.'  Will the NFL permit him to return?  My guess is 'yes.''  Tua's $212 million contract extension tells us what the NFL (and major college football) is all about: big money. So it goes.