I just looked at the calendar and realized an important anniversary is here.  One year ago Hubby and I were frantically seeking emergency help for our dog Maggie (Mag Pie, The Pie, The Puppy Pie, Her Pieness, Her Pieness on Her Throne).  We love all our dogs, but every so often in a person's life one dog comes along who is truly amazing and captures your attention like no other.  Maggie is that kind of dog, and has been from the moment we laid eyes on her in her cage at the SPCA.  She is the most stoic dog I've ever seen.  All the other dogs were barking and howling while flinging themselves at the cage bars.  Maggie just looked at us calmly as if she were saying, "Yeah, so what?  You're out there and I'm in here.  Whaddaya gonna do?"  Nothing disturbs her calm.  Well, except for a big thunderstorm.  :-)

I awoke on this morning last year around 6:30 a.m. hearing panting.  I assumed it was our older dog, Chica, who tended to pant a lot while she was dreaming.  The more I listened, the more something just seemed wrong.  Then I realized it was Maggie, not Chica making all that noise, and she was on the floor instead in the bed with us as usual.

Trying to keep quiet so as not to wake up Hubby (he's a total Grinch if something wakes him up) I got out of bed and put my hands on Mags.  "WHAT?!!"  She was burning up.  My yell woke up Hubby who launched out of bed with his hair on fire.  "WTH are you doing?!!"  It took a few seconds to get the lights turned on and get Hubby convinced that the house hadn't been invaded by armed gangstas, but that Maggie was seriously ill.  Her gums were white and all she could do was breathe.

So what does Hubby do?  He goes to take a freakin' shower.  A shower!!  Just as he got in, I discovered something wrong with Maggie's rear end.  There was about 1" of some kind of a stick hanging out of her rectum.  In her entire 4 years, I had never seen Maggie chew on anything that wasn't a Mom-approved dog toy.  So just how did this... thing, get into her body?  Well, I started screaming at Hubby to get the H*** out of the shower.  We had to find help right now.

I called the emergency vet that is all of 5 minutes away from our home and is supposed to be manned until 7:00 a.m.  I placed the call at 6:45.  "Well, it was really quiet so all our vets just left for the day.  No, we can't call them to come back in."  There followed an hour that I'll never forget.  There are several vet clinics in our immediate vicinity, none of which had a doctor available at that hour.  We drove around with the cell phone dialing away while Maggie lay dying in my lap in the back seat of the car.  Finally, we found a vet at 8:00. Dr. Ansari was the first of many vets who saved Maggie's life that day.  Bless his heart, he cancelled every appointment he had that morning so he could devote himself entirely to Maggie's emergency.

We went home and paced the floors waiting to hear... whatever.  We knew it was bad.  As it turned out, Maggie hadn't eaten anything.  She had impaled herself on a bamboo plant stake out by the back fence - probably jumping at a possum in the middle of the night.  We never heard a thing.  That poor dog had 13-1/2 inches of bamboo in her body, and she jumped back in through the dog door, went back to our bedroom and just laid down to die.  Not a peep out of her.  How's that for stoicism?

Dr. Ansari cut her open and removed the stick (stake).  It had punctured through her lower large intestine and he couldn't reach the area to repair the hole.  Spilled fecal material already had a case of peritonitis started in her abdomen.  Our choice was to either put her down right there and then, or take her to Gulf Coast Veterinary Associates in Houston.  No choice there.  We paid the $1,000 owing to Dr. Ansari for his incredible work, and hauled butt down to GCVA.

Gulf Coast is the kind of facility that humans would be more than happy to stay at during an illness.  Every bit of equipment is state-of-the-art, and every imaginable specialty is represented.  They met us at the door with a gurney and whisked Maggie off to prep her for surgery.  In a perfect brain fog, we listened as the surgeon told us not to get our hopes up.  If she couldn't reach the intestinal injury through her belly, she would have to split Maggie's pelvis.  Estimated cost of treatment:  $8,000 depending on a lot of different factors.  We certainly didn't have eight grand lying around doing nothing, so thank God for good credit.  Maggie wasn't giving up and we couldn't give up on her.  For the second time in one day, we went home to wait for bad news.  I think that was the longest three hours I've ever endured.

The phone finally rang around 4:30 with the first ray of hope.  Maggie had made it through her second major surgery of the day, and without a split pelvis.  The hole was repaired, so all we could do was wait for the massive amounts of IV antibiotics to deal with the peritonitis.  So many things could have gone wrong, but they didn't.

Maggie shocked everyone.  She was in ICU for 4 more days, and we actually got to take her home that Saturday.  The vets were amazed at her rapid recovery.  Another week or so of quiet and tons of oral antibiotics at home, and we took her in to have the gazillion staples removed from her belly.  You'd think Maggie would run screaming from the building.  Nope.  She knew right where to go and led the way to the elevators and down into the bowels of the hospital grinning all the way.  And that was the end of that.  Well, except for the $6,000 hit to Master Card.  Oh well, it was better than the estimated $8,000. :-)

Mags is now five years old and just as active as she ever was.  She loves life and makes us happy.  She was, and is, worth every last penny spent to save her life, and earned a new nickname in the process: Maggie the Miraculous Wonder Pie.  

Last week we received the news that our long-time friends and former neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. T-, decided to separate.  Actually, it was the Mrs. who decided it was time to leave the family castle.  Their son is finally home safe from his second and final tour in Iraq, and their daughter was recently married and moved out of state.  The irony of Mrs. T-'s choice of Indepence Day for her move out date is stunning.

While the cracks in their relationship have been visible off and on for some time, I never quite believed that two people in their mid-fifties who had survived raising children and paying off the mortages and all the other mundane necessities of marriage would actually split the sheets.  They've been together since high school, so why blow it apart now when they can finally relax and have some time to themselves?

I've said often enough that the only two people in a marriage who know the truth of that marriage are the respective spouses.  Nobody else on the planet can really know what a relationship is by outside observation.  In this case,the motivation is particularly elusive.  They're both good, solid people.  So what in the world happened?

We invited Mr. T- to come over for the day yesterday thinking he probably wouldn't want to hang around while his home was torn apart with his wife's move.  It's not often that I've seen a grown man cry, and Mr. T- ripped my heart out and left it in bloody strings.  Bless his heart, he tried to put on the strong front in front of the guys, but at one point he sought out a private moment with me to talk.  Next thing you know, his head is on the table and he's sobbing his heart out.  I hope I was able to say something right and give him some momentary comfort, but I sense many months of tears are before him.

Anyone who knows this man understands that his entire adult life has been about his wife and family.  He has done, and will do anything necessary for their happiness - even at the expense of his own.  That's what makes this split so awful: neither party has done anything wrong, but something went awry and they can't figure out how to fix it.

I hope and pray that this separation will give them both time to think.  Mrs. T- herself can't explain why she had to leave.  If she could at least give Mr. T- a reason it would be a bit easier to take, but there isn't one.  There isn't another man.  They've got financial security.  There's no drug or alcohol issues.  So what gives?  If two people ever deserved happiness, it's these two. God help them both.

I suppose it could be worse news, but it ain't great either.  Hubby's scope went for over an hour because he has polyps all over the first part of the colon on the right side (the cecum).  The Doc resected the biggest one and sent it to pathology.  He's pretty sure it's benign, but wants to recheck that entire area in 90 days.  The polyp was a kind of flat one, and the cecum tissue is very fragile, so there is a definite possibility of the wound area rupturing over the next couple of days.  If that happens, he'll need an emergency bowel resection.  The doc will call us tomorrow to see how he's doing.

In the meantime, he's still on a clear liquid diet for the next 24-48 hours (got conflicting written instructions on that) and antibiotics.  Any sign of blood or abdominal pain at all and we are to go directly to the ER.  I've known this gastro doc for over 10 years and I've never seen him quite this concerned.  Same thing with the nurses.  I knew something wasn't right when it took longer than 40 minutes, and the nurses' behavior was totally different than what you usually get.

With the numerous small polyps he's got going, I won't be at all surprised to see resection surgery somewhere in Hubby's future, and certainly plenty of scopes in the interim.  He's basically a colon cancer victim just waiting to happen if he doesn't keep up with this stuff.  And keeping up with medical issues isn't exactly his strong suit.

I despise cancer.  Almost everyone I love who has died has been its victim including my father.  Our longtime and good friend Mr. C- is dying of brain cancer.  Glioblastoma to be perfectly frank.  Same thing that Ted Kennedy is dealing with.  I have witnessed some horrific things happen to cancer patients, but Mr. C- is breaking my heart.

For many years Mr. C- was a lonely man in his personal life, but being a Harley rider and a genuinely friendly and open kind of guy, he surrounded himself with friends.  Divorcing after a short marriage many years ago, he swore he would never remarry.  Then he met the future Mrs. C-.  They were married in Hawaii on July 7 last year, and were granted two months of normal married life before the shoe dropped.

Last September Mr. C- started getting dizzy spells.  Late one night he started seizing and they couldn't stop it.  Within a few days, a surgeon was digging around in his brain trying to fish out as much of the mass as he could get.  It was impossible to remove it all.

Then came the inevitable radiation and chemo.  The cancer laughed at it and continued on its merry way.  More and more chemo and radiation resulted in more growth.  Now we're into "experimental" treatment which is DoctorSpeak for, "Get your affairs in order."

Mr. and Mrs. C- had planned on having a wedding reception here at home last year.  For obvious reasons, that never happened.  They held it yesterday evening.  Frankly, it was the saddest party I've ever attended.  Mr. C- can't walk without a walker, and even with that he can't go very far or unattended.  The cancer has robbed him of speech and he can barely get out "yes" or "no", and even that is said with effort.  The horror of it all is that he is still in there.  His knowledge and personality are locked in a body that he can no longer control.  Communication with the world is nearly impossible.  

For the first time, I saw awareness and acknowledgment of the coming death in Mr. C-'s eyes.  Mrs. C- appears to be in some kind of denial and still maintains that there is some as-yet-undiscovered treatment that will save him.  Bless her soul, she still believes in doctors and medicine.  It's one of the most heartbeaking situations I've ever known.  So there sat Mr. C- with everyone eating, drinking and partying all around him and he can't participate.  He's always loved a party and was always one of the last to leave.  Last night, it seemed like the guests were dancing on his grave.  Call it a wedding reception if you will, but that party was a Farewell event.

We are all helpless in the face of terminal illness of any kind, whether we're the patient or the observer.  King Cancer will soon claim another victim and there isn't a darn thing that can be done about it.  So we surround Mr. C- with our love and help out with the mundane tasks of life as best we can.  There's nothing else we can do.