I think it’s the shoveling and raking: but she is in acute misery. A day on muscle relaxant, and she’s still having spasms—something about planting: a dogwood, a magnolia, 2 rhododendrons, an azalea, pulling weeds from the entire garden path (about 300 feet loop) raking grass, sorting pine cones, pulling (a real tug of war with our pond pump) and washing the algae filter…
Yesterday we went out to the valley and got some nice water hyacinth to clean up the water in the pond. This soft plant will not live through the winter, so we are dependent on getting it new every year—-it’s huge, about a foot across when adult, so we can’t winter it over in the basement. It has very pretty purple flower-spikes during summer. We filled a floating ring (think of a hula hoop) with them and have tethered them in relative position over the pond. We have 4 lily leaves at the surface now, and the lilies will also help water quality.
If the hyacinth can just reduce the algae, and if the UV filter arrives soon, the pond will become relatively care-free for the summer. This was our first year bringing it out of winter with fish and a full biological load, so we made a few mistakes: Jane says we should have drained it down to half for starters, and I think that might, indeed, have helped. But the problem is, Spokane water is lousy with phosphate (getting better, since the ban on phosphate detergents) and phosphate drives algae. So if we fill it up by half again, we’ll be adding a load of fertilizer.
Ah, the wonders of water chemistry. There is a chemical phosphate remover. In marine chemistry, that tends to be granulated ferric oxide (iron), and I’m not sure I want to dump that into the system—in ponds and tanks with no outlet, what you add stays there, and it takes gazillion-many water changes to get rid of it. It’s also why an excess of some mineral in your water source can get worse and worse and worse in a no-outlet system, because evaporation takes out the h20 only, and everything else stays behind.
So for that reason, in Jane’s plan, we’d be removing very-very-very phosphate-laden water in exchange for water that has only a single load of phosphate.
I think she’s right on this one.
I’ve never thrown my back out, but there have been parts of my body that I would like to chuck into the trash. Oh, wait, we’re not talking about discarding things, we’re talking about painful injuries to one’s anatomy. I hope she got some ice on it, as well as whatever painkiller is appropriate (I have bunches of various kinds from Dilaudid – hydro methone, Vicodin, Percocet, Tylenol with Codeine, Demerol, Tylenol, Aspirin), but I don’t “share”. sorry.
Hey Joe, speaking of which, how is your new hip doing?
It’s my knee. My hips aren’t ready to be replaced yet – too much fat surrounding them, I believe. The right knee is doing much better, but then, I’ve stayed off the dojo floor for the last 3 weeks, and won’t be back until next Saturday at the earliest.
And probably the last Trinkett update for a while: the biopsy results are back, and she does have osteosarcoma. I kinda thought so, but still, you hope. I haven’t quite decided on whether I am going to do chemo or not, but I can’t start that until the leg heals up a bit, so I have some time to do research. The basic info that I have is that if I do nothing more, the average life expectancy is 4-6 months, if I do chemo the average is around a year, maybe two. In extreme cases, three years, so I am leaning towards the chemo, especially since the side effects are not as bad in dogs. But the harder thing I am having to deal with is that, even if she didn’t have cancer, 3 years is pushing it for a greyhound as old as she is. It’s difficult to be faced with the reality that someone you love is going to die eventually, and there is nothing you can do about it. On the other hand, she is feeling much better, and I don’t want to be all doom and gloom, because she could live for a couple more years, and why fret about what I can’t stop anyway? For all I know, I could be killed in an accident tomorrow, so there is no point in being all upset about this. But that is the logical part of me, and it’s having a hard time right now out-talking the emotional side. I figure I will get better at it as the shock and newness wears off. So, hug all your pets and friends and family for me, and I appreciate the support you’ve given me.
I am so sorry to hear. My own experience with critters has been that they’re perfectly cheerful unless they’re in pain or you are: they don’t know about someday and they don’t care much about yesterday. Her comfort and freedom and your happy presence are her great desires, and they’re in the hands of someone who loves her. Whatever you decide, you will decide knowing her best, and that will be the best choice.