Crunch time

Hapi's death was pre-scheduled. I was invited on a 4-day kayaking trip and I knew I couldn't take her with me or leave her with anyone else and I badly wanted to go. She was enormously slowed down, sleeping a lot and moving very slowly for short walks. But she did like her soaks in the Reservoir pond on good days. Her long fur and the pond water and her age made for a very stinky dog but I didn't care about that since I knew her days were numbered. So one day I scheduled euthanasia at the vet's, giving myself about 10 days to recover before going kayaking.

Best laid plans, eh?

I took her in on Friday afternoon, and the city went into lockdown. Covid case numbers continued to rise and people were foolish, so by Sunday the new premier was furious and locked down the entire province. Kayak trip cancelled, everything cancelled. On Monday we had the highest case count ever, but numbers are starting to drop now (still well above first wave numbers though). With many elders—especially those in long term care facilities—vaccinated, the pandemic is largely amonst younger folk. I got my first vaccination two weeks ago which gives me partial protection, but far from perfect.

I go back and forth between: I just killed my dog for nothing, and, don't second guess yourself it was going to happen soon anyway. I've been resorting to puppy porn to take my mind off it.

Yesterday I was invited to 'bubble' with good friends, a couple living in my town. Their dog died last fall and this weekend just before the province-wide lockdown they went down to the South Shore and got themselves a very cute collie-cross puppy. Yesterday I went over and sat in their back yard to meet their new pup, as yet unnamed. Extremely cute. Then my friend drove with me to another nearby town to drop off my car for brake work.

This morning I woke up sick. I was very tired yesterday but didn't think anything of it, but now I know it was the preliminary phase of something upper respiratory. I'm guessing just a cold but scheduled a Covid test for this afternoon. Called the garage to say I wouldn't be picking up my car until I knew I was in the clear, and told my friend to keep an eye out for symptoms. Cancelled tomorrow's dental appointment.

So many people are getting tested here now—highest testing rate in the country—that negative results are somewhat delayed, but I assume they get back to you ASAP if you're positive. The military have been called in to assist with testing. Today another friend called asking if I wanted to 'bubble' with them, but I am already in a bubble and my status at the moment is unknown. My friend said, "Oh well, see you in another life."

The lockdown is considered a circuit breaker so it could be over in less than two weeks, it just depends on the numbers. Nova Scotians can be as foolish as anyone else, but in a crunch we pull together. This is a crunch.

Hapi 2006-2021

She's gone.

She was a good dog, she got the job done.

Mashup

A few odds and ends from the past couple of weeks.

I got my first dose of Pfizer. Older already-vaccinated people said it was the one with the fewest side effects so that was good; turns out that for me at any rate the rumour is true. I am also one of the few people I know who managed to get the shot at the local community clinic; everyone else is having to go much further afield to get it. I booked my appointment as soon as I woke up, around 6.30am, and apparently that is what you have to do to get a shot in the local area. Meanwhile vaccine is going begging in the city, if you care to make the hike you can get it easily there.

As it happened there was a sale of composted manure on at a building supply store near the clinic and I thought, Two birds with one stone. But I had heard that a sore arm was the most significant after effect of the vaccination so I asked the nurse who was administering it how bad would it be and could I lift heavy bags afterwards. She said that actually that was a good idea, that the more I used the muscles in that arm the less pain I would experience. So, 300 kg of manure later, only a little bit of tenderness in the area of the shot and that only lasted a day. Tip for the day, and you're welcome. Mind you, the nurse didn't say it had to be 300 kg, you could get the same effect with a little squeeze ball.

I spent less than half an hour at the clinic, 15 minutes of that spent waiting after the shot to see if there were immediate anaphylactic reactions. Several stages to getting the shot, each stage requiring another round of hand sanitizing. By the end of it, at the last hand washing stage, I said, Now I have the cleanest hands ever! Everyone who left the waiting area said Thank you! to the handwashing volunteer, who replied, Thank you too! 15 minutes of Thank Yous and Thank You Toos! I told a friend about it and she reminded me of a 22 Minutes episode called Canada Goes to War. A bunch of Canadian soldiers in a trench, popping their heads up one at a time to fire their guns and then yelling out, Sorry! When they jostled or passed each other in the trench, another round of Sorry! all 'round.

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My dishwasher finally bit the dust. It was old when I bought the house and lasted another ten years so I can't complain. I've been debating what to do when it finally quits, and given the pandemic rise in price of practically everything, it would cost almost double what it would have costed to replace it back in the day. I decided to handwash the dishes for awhile and see if that was realistic, and it definitely is. 15 minutes a day, no more. I use the dishwasher to store the dirty dishes (bottom rack) and the newly washed dishes (top rack). Doesn't take up precious counter space, gets the mess of dirty dishes out of sight, and it is not nearly as noisy as the dishwasher was when it worked. So I am happy with the arrangement. I suspect that the dishwasher is repairable but I am less and less inclined to get that done.

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I sat in on my youngest son's MA thesis defence via Zoom yesterday afternoon. It went really well. Although I have been in conversation with him every week, he doesn't like video calls so this was the first time I've seen his face since I don't know when. He looked very professional in his glasses, which he didn't have last time I saw him. It was quite a thing to see him in action, reading the synopsis of his thesis and then responding to critical questions. I remember how nervous I was doing my MSc defence, my son did not seem nervous at all. So that's it, major step forward for him. 

My older son in Toronto is having a bad time of it. Between pandemic surge, provincial government mismanagement, kids at home due to school closures, and his own job which has amped up in stress. His description of it sounded like herding cats and whack-a-mole combined. His boss resigned and now he doesn't know who he is supposed to report to. The boss resigned to take a new job elsewhere and I think my son is also a little jealous, the former boss is now working at a job my son wishes he was doing.

The middle son is at home for another week or so, then he takes on a summer job as a "bird dog", flying in northern Alberta assessing forest fires. He seems to be doing okay and is looking forward to flying again.

A friend and I, both with three grown offspring, have a little joke about our kids: One out of three ain't bad. It seems like our grown kids are always having ups and downs and sometimes it is hard to maintain perspective about their problems. So if even one of them is doing okay, one out of three ain't bad. I've been watching the latest Crown series, and in one episode the Queen has lunch with each of her grown children to determine which is her favourite, a challenge posed by Prince Philip. Turns out they all have problems or are behaving badly in one way or another. At the end her husband tells her not to take their problems to heart. But she couldn't even say one out of four ain't bad. That's not good.

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Hapi declines. Last week I gave her a bone which she buried several times and then dug up to chew on. That night she had a bad bout of diarrhea on the kitchen floor and I had to get up to clean it up in the wee hours. She scurried outdoors and spent the rest of the night, all of the following day and following night sleeping in her dog house. She didn't eat at all during that time. She recovered and had a day or two approaching normality, but she kept digging up that bone and chewing on it and had a second round of diarrhea a few days later, fortunately outdoors. Now she sleeps pretty much all the time, with a couple of hours up and about in the late afternoon/early evening. When she walks she thuds stiff leggedly.

It's time. A dog walker at the Reservoir said, We're sure going to miss her. That was kind.

Thoughts from my weekend of reading

I am reading The Splendid and the Vile by Eric Larsen. It is a very large book (over 500 pages fine print, no pictures) about one year in the life of Winston Churchill, spring of 1940 to spring of 1941. As Mr Larsen says, this is the year that Churchill became Churchill, the bulldog of a man we think we know. Very detailled, quite engrossing. Mr Larsen draws on several personal diaries of the time, notably John Colville's (The Fringes of Power, 1985), who was Churchill's personal secretary and privy to most of Churchill's political and personal life. Of course, a book set in that period of time cannot ignore The Battle of Britain or any other notable events of the time, up to and including the bombing of Pearl Harbor. It is a fascinating view into that period of World War II.

Something that interests me is how Adolf Hitler is portrayed, both in this book and elsewhere. When we think of Churchill and Hitler, we conjure up stereotypical images of heroes and villains, believing one to be All Good and the other to be All Evil. I've certainly heard evidence that Churchill was not entirely the stereotypical hero, plenty of people have good reason to be disturbed by his role in hiistory. In this book Larsen only focuses on Churchill's moment of heroic glory, but he does not deny Churchill's lesser qualities. But what of Hitler?

In videos I've seen of Hitler's famous speeches, he appears as a fervent madman. Yet in this book Larsen quotes reporters who attended such speeches as to how genuine and convincing Hitler seemed. He was a master of rhetoric, not in the fervent madman sense but in his command of the stage, his intuitive sense of timing and his ability to convey facts and emotions in a convincing manner. It is hard to square the two impressions. 

I think we make a mistake in portraying the man as solely an evil madman. He was the right man at the right time. Germans were very much hurt and suffering from the Treaty of Versailles agreed upon at the end of World War I, he addressed that suffering and offered a righteous solution to it that Germans could embrace. He of course blamed 'The Jews' as the ultimate source of German suffering, but he was not so different from many others who harboured that prejudice at that time. The fate of the St. Louis is a case in point. When other countries declared war on Germany, it was not out of outrage at the Nazi persecution and murder of Jews, but rather the very real fear that Germany under Hitler was capable of conquering all of Europe and then proceeding to conquer North America.

Like Churchill, Hitler was a great leader, he encouraged and mobilized Germans to address their social and economic distress, he made them proud to be Germans. My opinion is that we should look on Hitler as we do Churchill, a man of both good and bad qualities. If we think of him as a madman then the damage that he did is considered almost impossible to repeat, after all it was done by a madman and a psychopath and we have mechanisms in place to deal with such people. 

If on the other hand we realize that he was actually an ordinary man who managed to get his hands on the levers of power, then we also realize that it could happen again, it is not so far fetched. He did after all do some good for some people, he did care about the fate of his people and much of his motivation was not out of hate but out of desire for revenge for very real hurts. A lot of people could fill those boots, it is not an extraordinary circumstance.

Death days and birth days

Hapi enjoying springtime sun and water

Today the first news I heard upon waking up was that of Prince Philip's death. I have heard nothing but good things about him, so it is a little sad, but having lived almost a century one certainly cannot pity him. Prince Philip and Queen Elizabeth once visited my little town, I didn't see them at the time but a friend of mine had a brief but fun conversation with Prince Philip. He was the outgoing sort who enjoyed chatting with strangers. The friend was a single and handsome young man, considered "a catch" at the time, so some of us got a hold of an official colour photo of the Queen and scrawled "Love, Liz" across the bottom and posted it above his desk at work. But it was Philip he chatted with, not "Liz".

I've been having phone chats throughout the pandemic with an old friend on the other side of the country, we met in college back in the '60s in Toronto. She was a devout Baptist, I was a pragmatic agnostic, we both engaged in long after-midnight philosophical debates over wine, cigarettes and sometimes hard liquor. We only attended that college for one year, after that we went our separate ways and had very different lives, but we maintained the relationship through long absences and surprise get togethers over the decades. Now she is dying. So among other things we talk about what happens when you die.

She has already signed all the necessary papers for palliative care and medical assistance in dying, she just doesn't know when she will do it or even how she will decide. For all of her life she has believed in some kind of afterlife but now at death's door, she is reluctant to pass over. At the same time, she would like to be conscious at the moment of death, but the doctors keep upping her dose of morphine and she is afraid that she will pass into unconsciousness before the moment of death. She is not sure what she believes now. Her very strong Baptist upbringing still influences her, but she has dabbled in Buddhism, Hinduism and Judaism. Up until recently she was a member of the local Anglican Church but I don't know if she still is. Apparently there was some altercation that made her think twice about her membership, however she has not talked to me about it, so I don't know if that was resolved or not.

Not all of our conversations are so weighty, sometimes we talk about our dogs and the silly things people in our lives do, sometimes we go on at length about our various physical symptoms of illness and age. Our conversations are sometimes brief (less than 30 minutes) because she is tired, and sometimes they go on and on for hours; I have to beg off to go to the bathroom.

Yesterday I celebrated my birthday, which occurred a couple of days prior. Four of us got together for wine, cake and snacks in the afternoon. Rather than "blow" out the candles, I fanned them with my hand, which took a really long time. Two of us are already vaccinated once, one has an appointment and the fourth is waiting for her turn to make an appointment. My birthday gifts are eclectic: a small jar of gummy bears, a slightly larger jar of homemade salsa, and a print of a painting created by one of us. A good time was had by all. The artist amongst us will be showing some of her paintings in a group show next month so we all hope to attend.

Mission impossible

I have not done a lot of knitting in the past few years, for a variety of reasons. Here I am going to talk about one of them.

A couple of decades ago my mother, on her deathbed, suggested I complete a knitting project she had started. Naively I agreed to that. After she died I looked at the project and realized I might have taken on more than I could handle. It is supposed to be an afghan, measuring approximately 4.5 x 5 ft. But my mother, rather ambitiously, decided to increase the size to a queen-sized bedspread. It is knitted in strips, each strip about 7 ft long, and as many strips as it takes to cover a queen-sized bed. The strips are of two different widths, but all told two strips is about 2 ft. wide. Unfortunately, my mother purchased enough yarn for the afghan, but not enough for her queen-sized version.

My mother was a very tight knitter and I am quite loose. So my initial attempts at this project resulted in strips that did not match up at all to what she had already done (I think about 3 strips). So I kept downsizing the needles to get the right gauge. I finally got more or less the right size of needles. The pattern is very lacy, with an eight-row repeat. It takes me about 45 minutes to complete one pattern set about one foot wide and slightly over an inch high. The mind boggles at how long it might take to complete an entire bedspread at that rate, so I laughingly told people that it was most unfortunate that I did not have a daughter that I could pass this impossible project on to. Knowing that I was never going to finish this project I kind of used it as something to occupy time, without any thought of finishing it. Like playing with a Rubik's Cube if you have no talent at it or access to online solutions.

So all well and good, not a problem, after a couple of decades I now have 5 strips completed and one about half done. I easily memorized the eight-row pattern through years of repetition, so although it looks terribly complicated I can do it quite easily. Just not very fast. When I counted how many strips were done, I thought that I should start thinking about sewing them together. 

In the instructions there is a lot of detail on knitting the pattern, but only one sentence about joining the strips.

"With right side of work facing, join yarn and crochet evenly in s.s. along 2 side edges and in s.c. along top and bottom edge."

[s.s. = slip stitch and s.c. = single crochet stitch]

Holy moly, talk about over-simplification! I tried and tried to "crochet evenly" 2 side edges that did not match up, stitch for stitch. Not because of gauge or stitch size issues but purely because of the pattern. And the yarn is 3-ply, trying to keep the crochet hook from getting caught up between the plies of the yarn is almost beyond me. I tried to find a way of joining the strips without crocheting them but that was just not possible. I tried to find a way to do it relatively quickly and accurately but it was either quick or accurate, not both. In frustration I set it aside, for several years. 

I blithely continued knitting more strips, trying not to think about the fact that they needed to be joined. Someone suggested that I give up on the bedspread and just make scarves, but these scarves would be over 8 feet long, since the lacy structure makes the strips very stretchy. I also had to find more yarn identical to the yarn my mother started with. 

Fortunately, Michael's Craft Store carries it and still has the same colour lot, and there is a Michael's near where I live. I bought as much of the yarn as I figured I would need. Unfortunately, although the colour lot number is the same, there has been a bit of variation in the past couple of decades. I can see the difference in shade between the old yarn and the new. However, no matter, I am probably not going to live to see the finished product anyway, the unmatched shades will be someone else's problem.

Over the Easter long weekend I finally dragged out the two strips I had begun to crochet together and decided to try to finish it. Hey! Four-day long weekend and it's done! For the first time in years I feel like I can continue with this project, knowing that sewing together the strips is time-consuming and tedious, but not impossible.

Two joined strips

I think I need two more strips, one of which is half-done. Then crocheting 7 ft x 5 more joins = 35 ft in slip stitch and then single crochet all around the outside edges (26 ft?). I may need an additional strip, I won't know until the first seven are joined. 

Easter, happy or otherwise

Interesting weekend, although nothing happened and I didn't go anywhere except the grocery store on Saturday. I commented to the greeter at the store, a young man, about the length of the line up to get in and he responded that his mother always planned well ahead for Easter so that she didn't have to shop between Good Friday and Easter Sunday. I said, yeah, good plan, although sometimes there's a last minute item you absolutely have to have right away (for me it was a sweet potato; I know, not really a must-have but in my mind it was), he agreed and we laughed. So that was pretty much all the excitement for the long weekend.

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Hapi keeps changing her schedule, each change involves more sleep time, she just rearranges her day to accommodate the increased amount of sleep time. So these days she sleeps from supper time to noon or later, has a midday or early afternoon meal and then a walk and then her late afternoon supper. She does some 'sundowning' after her supper, I try to grin and bear it although sometimes I lose my temper when it goes on and on and on. Her bedding is stinky which means my bedroom is stinky.

I used to have scent-free laundry detergent but the last purchase was excessively scented. Since I hang my laundry to dry indoors, well, between overly-scented laundry detergent and stinky dog, it's quite overwhelming. Let's just say that I can't wait till the weather improves enough to hang laundry outdoors. I may have to cave and toss the heavily scented stuff for some expensive unscented detergent.

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I've been doing some online reading about the little bit of research done on long Covid. Emphasis on 'little bit'. This morning I completed a detailed questionnaire about my own experience for a research survey on long Covid, being run by some 'citizen scientists' (i.e., not degreed medical researchers but interested citizens with research skills) out of the UK. It took more than an hour to complete, fortunately they warned in advance that it was long. The weather is crappy and the dog is asleep so I didn't have anything more productive to do.

What I think is interesting is that 'patients' have lost patience with doctors and are taking things into their own hands. When AIDS first reared its ugly head no bona fide medical scientists gave it credence; it took activism on the part of the patients to push them into doing the research. Now there is a diagnosis and a treatment but no cure. When Chronic Fatigue Syndrome appeared, same thing. Even today there is resistance to that diagnosis and no agreed upon treatment. There's not even an agreed upon definition of CFS (several 'official' ones but no solid agreement). So now, long Covid is going through the same process, trying to get medical people to recognize it and research possible treatments.

But this time it's different. This time the patients are doing the research. Thanks to social media and more open access to scientific research papers, the people who have the disease are doing the work. Some scientists came up with the name 'post Covid viral syndrome' but that didn't stick, 'long Covid'—a name first used by a person with the disease on Twitter (#longCovid)—did. They call themselves 'long haulers' and the scientific research community has kind of been forced to use the same terminology. There's still a long way to go, but I think it is a step in the right direction. One of the scientific papers I read last night commented that scientists need to consult with the real experts on the disease, namely the people who have it. You'd never have seen a scientist saying a thing like that even a year ago.

I think there is a sea change in people's attitudes toward complex disease syndromes. It used to be you had to wait for some degreed medical researchers to recognize it, devise a means for diagnosis and then research possible treatments. Now, people who have these unrecognized complex disease syndromes don't want to wait for degreed scientists to pay attention, nor do they want to wait for funding from official government sources. Covid has made it abundantly clear how a bunch of sick people can gum up an economy, paying attention to young sick people is starting to be a thing. [agism still works against old sick people, it'll be a while before that changes, in my opinion]

The UK seems to be making headway with this and I expect the US is too. They are further along in Covid infection rates and vaccination rates than we are here in Canada so they have more to work with. More manifestation of the disease, more recognition of its existence, more research work on it.

Keep on checkin' in

Hapi on a good day, emerging from the canal

Hapi has good days and bad. I think her good days coincide with cold clear weather, her not-so-good days with warm or wet days. Today is a warm wet day and I felt like maybe I should move up the euthanasia date, I don't know if she is suffering but sometimes it appears that way. She had a long nap and then went outside to 'patrol the perimeter', the important stuff.

I bought some bones for her but she is not interested in chewing them, just burying and reburying them. The back yard is full of muddy holes—all the former burial spots—who knows where the bones are now. Then she comes indoors with mud piled on her nose, which she uses to shove the dirt back in the burial hole. I now keep a paper towel at the door to clean off her nose before I allow her indoors.

I joined a Covid-long-hauler group on Facebook. I don't know for sure if that is what I have (or hopefully, had), but I wanted to ask the question: can you get Covid, get better, and then get 'long haul' symptoms several months later? Well, I asked my question and turns out quite a few long-haulers say that is what happened to them, and the long haul was worse than the original bout. So maybe that's what I have/had. Somebody posted that the good news is, when you finally get your first vaccination, it will be like a booster shot, you'll be good to go. Mind you the vaccine reaction symptoms will be worse. But that is temporary.

These days, I get more and better information from others in the same boat than from the so-called experts. Everybody chips in their little bit of info and you begin to get a bigger picture. Doctors only see what other doctors see, they don't really pay attention to anyone else because, after all, they are not medically trained experts. So round and round they go, where they stop nobody knows.

So today it was announced that my age group could get the first vaccination. But, the only two local places where you can get vaccinated are not taking appointments, haven't been for almost a week now. I'm allowed to get vaccinated, I just can't book a vaccination. On the other hand, if I lived in the city, easy-peasy. They have so many open appointment times that they are begging people to book them. I tried phoning the vaccination number, had to wait almost an hour on hold, but when I finally got a live person she acknowledged that they had been getting a lot of calls from my health region asking 'what gives?' and they don't know. And apparently, she said, all the higher-ups who might know, are 'in a meeting'...

Just keep checking she said.

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Postscript, April 2nd: I took a neighbour's advice and logged in really early this morning, around 6.15am, and managed to snag a vaccination appointment for two weeks from now. I went back two hours later and there were no appointments left available. This is the only time there have been any appointments available in almost a week and they were gone by 8.15am.