How Time Flies

It's hard to believe that a year has passed since I posted the story about my pom. I'm happy to say she is still with me...albeit her 'new' vet did not think she would live. I nursed her back to health and although she is no longer as vivacious, losing a lot of her sight and hearing, she is still my constant companion and does give an occasional bark. She mostly likes to sleep, especially next to me on the couch (under the covers now that the weather has turned colder).
Well, actually, I have a different topic to talk about today. I have been retired for a little over two and a half years and finally feeling less anxious, more calm, restful. My mother recently invited herself out here to visit for Thanksgiving and what should have been a joyous occasion, seemed marred even before she arrived. My life with my mother has had it's ups and downs over the years. Over the past ten years I felt we had finally established a good relationship, but for whatever demons haunt her, it seemed to crumble a few months ago. I made the fatal error of posting a photo of my mother and father, (separated 1964, divorced 1967) taken in the 1950's, for father's day on my Facebook. She saw it on her friend's page, she doesn't have a computer, called me and really laid into me (her friend had friended me a week earlier).

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Perils of Animal Medicine

My little 3.4 pound Pom turned 12 in August and imagine that, she started shedding like a banshee. I took her to the vet and also showed him a small bump on her abdomen which turned out to be a hernia. He did a blood test and they operated a couple of days later. I reconciled this $600 monetary behemoth by telling myself that my Pom has been relatively healthy for most of her life and her hernia is fixed and she also has clean teeth. Then the vet told me that her thyroid numbers were low and recommended giving her a supplement, which must be given for the remainder of her life. I hesitated but she continued to shed like there would be no tomorrow. She shed to a point where she only had about a quarter of her coat left. In all of her years she had never done this before. So, with some reluctance, I agreed to thyroid supplement, since shedding seems to be one of the symptoms of a low thyroid. She stops shedding and I was happy we caught her low thyroid so early.

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