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Marilyn Armstrong — Seeking Intelligent Life on Earth

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One size never fits all

After a long period of listening to endless complaints of headaches and stomach aches that I incorrectly attributed to my son’s problems with school — school phobia was the term they were using back then — one afternoon, he started seizing. Rushed to the emergency room, he continued to seize, despite intravenous anti-convulsive medications.

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Many tests later, all the doctors knew was his brain was swollen and he had a low-grade fever. There was no evidence of viral or bacterial meningitis or encephalitis to account for the swelling. There was nothing in any of the blood work to indicate an infection.

One day, I was visiting him in the hospital. By then he’d been there a few weeks and I was despairing of getting any answers. They were doing daily spinal taps on him to lower the pressure in his brain and he got hysterical every time they approached him with that needle. I could hardly blame the kid. Spinal taps are miserable and painful. One is bad. Daily is horrible.

While I was trying to think of something cheery to say, I noticed that the soles of his feet were kind of orange. So were the palms of his hands. It looked like he’d been eating cheetos or something like that with yellow dye in it. I mentioned it to the nurse. She looked at it and wrinkled her brow.

Orange peppers, photo: Marilyn Armstrong

“It looks like jaundice,” she said.

“Yeah,” I said, “But only on his palms and soles. That’s a bit weird don’t you think?”

She agreed it was odd and said she’d mention it to the doctor.

The following day, the doctor rushed into the room and said, with his voice full of urgency, “Does he take vitamins?”

“Vitamins?”

“Vitamins. Regular multi vitamins.”

“Yeah, when he was home visiting his father this summer, he brought back a bottle of one-a-day multi vitamins with him. He’s been taking one a day. Nothing unusual.”

“Bring them in,” the doctor ordered. “The whole bottle, label and all.”

And I did. It turned out that my son cannot metabolize vitamin A. Instead of being processed in a normal way and passing out of his body, it accumulates and would have killed him eventually. He had more than 1 million percent more vitamin A in his system than normal and there was no quick way to detoxify him.

Peppers and beans

Time was going to have to take care of it. Over a period of years, if he was careful to avoid vitamins and foods high in vitamin A, eventually his levels would recede to normal, but he would never be able to eat orange and red vegetables, margarine and other foods that are pumped full of Vitamin A, spinach, liver or other organ meats.

Vitamin A-osis is not unknown. Arctic explorers died of it after eating polar bear liver which contains staggeringly high levels of Vitamin A. It is also known to be a somewhat rare genetic anomaly. It happens. No reason.

When I brought my son home from the hospital as a tiny baby, I was give vitamin A & D drops to give him. He loved carrots and used to take them as snack with his lunch. He had never been given vitamin pills on any regular basis. We had an English pediatrician and unlike American doctors, most European doctors don’t recommend taking vitamins unless there’s a known vitamin deficiency of some kind.

It turns out that the official  FDA “standard dose” of 5,000 units per day of vitamin A is lethal for my son. All of that ADHD stuff was actually vitamin A poisoning from which he had been a chronic low-level sufferer for his entire life. It had left him with permanent damage. Who do you blame?

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Last March, I wound up in the hospital because my blood sodium level was so low, I was supposed to be unable to function. I felt fine, but the tests were adamant. I had a problem.

Big pumpkins in the bin, waiting to become this year's Jack O' Lantern.

They never found the cause and it was diagnosed as idiopathic, which means “Who knows?” in doctor speak. I had been suffering for most of my life from heat intolerance resulting in heat stroke, violent leg and foot cramps and other peculiar symptoms. After raising my sodium levels, all those symptoms went away.

I have apparently been suffering from not enough salt in my diet … and in my blood … my whole life, but it wasn’t bad enough to raise the alarm bells. What had changed? I started doing what I was told to do: drink more liquids. Drink more fruit juice. And my low sodium went from marginal and periodically problematic to dangerously low.

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What does my son’s near dying of Vitamin A poisoning  after he started taking multi-vitamins — and my medical crises caused by increasing my fluid intake — have in common? Both of us did what is “the common wisdom” recommended by millions of doctors, health columnists and diet gurus all across America.

And in both cases, it almost killed us.

The truth is that we are not all the same. What is “enough” or “just right” for you, might kill me. Or my son. We are not produced on production lines to a rigid specification. The reason I mention this at all was — as usual — a thing on Facebook. There’s an argument in progress about whether or not the currently trendy very low sodium diets are not necessarily such a good thing.

People are getting all hot and bothered about it because salt is regarded today the way caffeine was a few years ago. It’s the evil in our food. It turns out that caffeine is pretty harmless to most people, even those with high blood pressure and it’s an important component in waking up our digestive systems so they do what the are supposed to do, especially among older people. If you’ve been in a hospital lately, they eagerly ply you with more coffee than you could possibly want (maybe it would help if the coffee weren’t so awful?) because constipation is a big problem in hospitals.

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So today, it’s salt that’s the big no-no. I remember when eggs were good for you. Then, they were bad for you. Then good for you after which I stopped following the food scare of the day on the news, so now, I have no idea how they are regarded. I just eat eggs when I feel like it. I feel I should tell you that the idea of an egg-white omelet makes me want to heave. Yuk.

I believe that fads in diets are inherently dangerous. Food fads are dangerous because they are unnatural and unbalanced. They don’t take into consideration that we are all made different, that we are each unique.

Eat. Enjoy. Don’t eat stuff that’s obviously bad for you. Nobody needs or should eat red meat every day. The current obsession with bacon is unhealthy and disgusting. Commonsense and moderation should be able to inform us when a choice is stupid, but apparently not so much.

Everyone is worried about salt while they scarf down double bacon cheeseburgers? Doesn’t that strike you as bizarre? Do you really need a nutritionist to tell you that extremely rich, fatty foods are unhealthy? Or that eating or drinking anything to excess is not a healthy longterm diet choice? Are we really that clueless?

Eat sensibly. Enjoy life. Have fun. Stop taking handfuls of vitamins you don’t need. Try to get some exercise when you can. Don’t spend all of your time at the computer or in front of the TV … unless that’s what makes you happy. In which case, have a good time!

Because that’s what life is all about. If you aren’t enjoying the life you are living, do something different.

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I’m an apple, Mom was my tree.

It occurred to me one day I really needed to see the spine doctor. When you have chronic pain, you learn to ignore it most of the time. Unless you want to wind up a pill addict, it’s the only option. It’s not being brave. It’s an entirely practical decision. Do I want to keep living? Walking? Participating? Then I have to deal with what I have to deal with. That’s the way it goes. Oh well.

Sometime, when I was in my mid-twenties, I was doing my mother’s hair. I liked fixing her hair. It was easy to style, thick, silver and just a bit wavy. I asked her to turn her head to the right, and she did. When I asked her to turn the other way, she said “I can’t.”

“You can’t? Why not?”

“Because my head won’t turn that way.”

That seemed a curious answer. “What do you  mean by that?”

“My neck is stiff.”

“Um, mom? How long has it been like this?”

She thought for a while. “Fifteen years? Something like that.”

That stopped me. Fifteen years? “Have you seen anyone about it?”

“No,” she said. “I figured I was just getting old.”

At the time, I thought this was totally bizarre. It turned out, she had entirely treatable (but advanced) tendonitis and it got better. She hated doctors.

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Time has marched on and I’m older than my mother was then. I totally relate to her response. When I called the doctor for an appointment, I discovered the last time I saw him was six years ago. To be fair, I’ve had a few medical crises since then and I got distracted. Besides, I know what’s wrong with my back. It isn’t going to get better or go away. It isn’t going to kill me either. I’ve lived with it most of my life. I’m used to it and generally ignore it. Recently, though I’m having trouble walking, even on flat surfaces and going up and down stairs is hard. My legs don’t seem to want to support me. It crossed my mind that there might be something that could be done to improve it without major reconstruction.

My doctor is wonderful. The best. The only doctor who can look at my spine, not gasp with horror and immediately decide I need to be rebuilt with screws, pins, and bolts. He’s a minimalist, medically speaking and I like that.

So I made an appointment and I got lucky, because there was a cancellation in December. It usually takes five or six months to get in to see him. He’s the king of spines in Boston, maybe in the entire country. I would have willingly waited the six months if I had to. Of course, as soon as I made the appointment, I had to make another appointment because I need new films of my spine. I also haven’t had a CT scan or MRI in six years and he isn’t going to be able to do much without new films.

I wondered how come I hadn’t processed the fact I can’t walk properly? I suppose I wasn’t paying attention. Too busy ignoring the pain. I don’t always know I’m doing it, but I was being my mother.

She taught me to be stalwart, a Spartan. She told me she didn’t use Novocaine when she got her teeth worked on. I asked her why not and she said “Pain is good for your character.” She meant it. I grew up believing showing pain or giving in to it was a sign of weakness. To a degree it serves me well, but sometimes it’s dangerous. If you ignore the wrong stuff,  they can kill you. One needs a sense of balance, but it isn’t so easy to find.

Watching the documentary on Ethel Kennedy last night reminded me of my mother. Mom was an athlete and I’m sure she always wondered how she have wound up with such a klutzy daughter. She had been a good tennis player. She rode horses, she played ice hockey. She went bob sledding. She painted, sculpted, designed and made her own clothing. She also never got past seventh grade, so she made up for it by reading everything. She had a truly voracious appetite for life and knowledge.

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After a radical mastectomy, she couldn’t play tennis anymore, so she played a ferocious game of ping-pong.

She played savagely. She served so hard it was more like a bullet than a ping-pong ball. As a family, we vacationed in dinky little resorts in the Catskills where there was no entertainment. The one thing they always had was a ping-pong table. So I played against my mother.

She didn’t believe in any of that “let the kid win” stuff. She was a competitor. You won or you lost. Trying hard was irrelevant because she expected nothing less. She slaughtered me. As I got older, I played better and but she always beat me. She told me she was giving me an advantage by playing with her left hand. I knew she wrote with her right hand, so I assumed that she was a rightie. Until the  day my father told me she had always played tennis with her left hand. My mother was psyching me out. Her own daughter.

I still never beat her, but I beat everyone else.

From her, I got a gritty determination to never give up, to do everything as well as it could be done, or at least as well as I could do it. It turns out winning isn’t everything, but I didn’t learn that until I’d already missed a lot. Late in life, I realized I don’t have to be the best. Playing the game because you enjoy it is worth something too. Another lesson learned a bit too late.

The older I get, the more I remind me of my mother.

We all miss so many things. Some intentionally, others accidentally. Sometimes, I miss things accidentally because I’m avoiding other things intentionally. One thing leads to the other.

I wonder what else I’m missing? I know, on this Mother’s day, that I’m definitely missing Mom. I have so much to tell her.


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A coming out story

Reblogged from Sunday Night Blog:

Last year at this time a facebook status, some stories in the news and a number of You Tube videos on "coming out" compelled me to write on a topic I might have otherwise avoided.  As you will see below, I could not find a dramatic You Tube video at the time on the harrowing coming out story to which I referred. 

Read more… 854 more words

Being a different kind of kid in America is hard. And this is a good post about it.


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Prompts for the Promptless – Ep. 9 – Gallows Humor: Dying Is Easy (Comedy Is Hard)

After I was told I had cancer in not one, but both breasts — they were having a two-for-one special at the Dana-Farber — I had them removed and replaced by silicon Hollywood quality implants. I stopped short of adding the fake nipples. Previous surgeries had left me with no naval, so now lacking both naval and nipples, I think maybe I’m an alien walking the earth.

I have a tee-shirt that says “Yes, they are FAKE. My real ones tried to kill me.” It makes people laugh. It’s the high point of my cancer experience.

Unfortunately, cancer tends to enter your life and like a guest that long over-stays his or her welcome, you just can’t get rid of it. After I gave up my Medigap policy and signed on with Fallon Senior Medicare Advantage plan, it took me five months to get an appointment with an oncologist. It began last November and isn’t over yet.

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To get started on the wrong foot, the customer service person who signed me up in the beginning gave me incorrect information, having assured me Dana-Farber in Milford was covered by Fallon. This turned out to be untrue and left me without an oncologist. I was annoyed, but they said I could see my Dana-Farber oncologist once more and I figured I’d get a referral from him.

My oncologist didn’t know anyone at UMass in Worcester which is Fallon’s only cancer care facility in Worcester County. I remained calm. I’m past surgery and chemo, in the maintenance phase of care, the part where they do their best to ignore you. Failing that, they do the least they can. Unless you obviously grow a new cancer in a location they can see and feel, they tell you you’re fine. Not to worry. Smile. It’s just cancer.

At Dana-Farber, I had been going for quarterly check-ups, feeling for lumps, taking blood, checking for weird symptoms that could indicate something growing somewhere it shouldn’t. Annually they run a scan to take a look around the property, aka my body. I’d had to go to war for the scan. Their plan was to do nothing at all unless I had symptoms. Does death count? I felt their plan was insufficient while they felt running a scan was a frivolous waste of taxpayer’s money. My life didn’t come into the equation.

My former oncologist couldn’t help me find a new doctor. He suggested I call the HMO and ask them to refer me to a medical oncologist with a speciality in breast cancer. I knew my PCP wouldn’t be able to refer me because she had already said so. She had suggested I get the referral from my oncologist. Full circle.

I called Fallon Senior Heath Plan.

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The customer service rep sounded about 12-years-old, but knew even less than her years suggested. She didn’t understand the concept of different kinds of oncologists. After explaining for perhaps the dozenth time, I began to sink into the slough of despond. It was like talking to a smiling plastic doll who will recite one of 3 pre-recorded phrases. Pull the string, get an answer.

I got transferred to a supervisor and retold the story. She said she would “research the problem” and get back to me. Research the problem? Sounded like a kiss-off to me.

I called my doctor’s office, explained I hadn’t been able to get a referral from my oncologist or from Fallon where they kept saying my family doctor should send me to the right doctor even though I told them Dr. S. didn’t know the doctors in oncology at UMass, Worcester.

HELP, I said. Please!

I did my little song and dance, explaining I needed a Medical Oncologist with a specialty in Breast Cancer. Since breast cancer is frightfully common, it shouldn’t be that hard to find someone.

A few hours later, my doctor’s office called back, gave me a name, an appointment, a phone number. The appointment was for a few days hence, also my birthday. I didn’t want an oncology appointment on my birthday. Nor did I need an appointment immediately. I had just had my annual scan. So I called the doctor’s number to change the appointment to something more sensible.

I got transferred, transferred, and wound up talking to Lisa, the administrator for the Breast Care department. The doctor with whom I’d was booked is a surgeon and they need my medical records before they can continue. The records are all over the Commonwealth, scattered between 4 hospitals.

Lisa said not to worry, she would take care of it. She did. She changed the appointment, booked me with an appropriate doctor, called the various offices and ordered my records. Said if I had any kind of problem, give her a call and she’d fix it because women with cancer shouldn’t have additional problems because they already had quite enough. My feeling precisely!

Shortly thereafter, my doctor’s assistant called asking why I’d cancelled the appointment she had made for me. She was furious. After all the effort she’d made making that phone call on my behalf, I’d had the gall to CANCEL the appointment. I explained she’d booked me with a surgeon — pointless since I’ve already been thoroughly surged. I needed a different doctor.

She was pissed because it hadn’t been easy to get that wrong appointment and seemed unable to grasp the difference between a medical oncologist and a surgeon. I explained — again — that a surgeon would not be able to help me because I don’t need breast surgery. I have no breasts. But I do need my medical records sent to UMass. She said Lisa from UMass had called about it but she wasn’t sure where to send them.

“Did Lisa tell you where to send them?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said.

“Then … why don’t you send them there?” Duh.

“But you cancelled the appointment I made!” she whined, still pissed off.

“I changed the appointment. To be accurate, Lisa changed it because the doctor to which you were sending me was the wrong doctor. NOW I have an appointment with the right doctor.” We went back and forth for a while until she grudgingly accepted my apology for not needing a breast surgeon. I assured her that I truly appreciated her futile efforts.

“I’m so sorry to upset you,” I repeated.

Yesterday I got a note in the mail (not email, the regular mail) from UMass cancelling my appointment with the oncologist and suggesting I call to make a new one.

Maybe I don’t really need an oncologist. Dying is easy; comedy is hard.

Dying is easy

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Ouch!

I don’t want this to sound as if I think I’m special because I deal with pain. I realize I’ve got plenty of company. It’s just that sometimes, I feel like I’m in an over-crowded lifeboat. Sinking.

There a central irony to this story, so I’ll start with the irony and go from there.

Parents, school advisors, well-meaning friends and family are forever urging kids to get out and get physical. Join a team. Take up a sport. Get some fresh air. Exercise. It’s good for you, right?

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It is good for you. Mostly. But. Youthful athletic activity is often the start of a lifetime of pain. How many young men destroy their knees playing football? How many girls dislocate their spines in gymnastics? How many head injuries happen during little league baseball games? How many broken backs are the result of falling off horses? It’s not rare or unusual.

These days, everyone knows about the dangers, but it doesn’t stop kids from playing or parents from encouraging their involvement. Safety equipment is available, but injuries happen anyhow. Active sports are dangerous. It’s a fact. I’m not suggesting anyone stop playing sports. Life is meant to be lived, risks and all.

The irony is that sports are good for you if you don’t get hurt. If the helmet keeps the baseball from braining you. If getting tackled doesn’t tear the ligaments and tendons in your knees. If you don’t break your ankle coming down from a jump shot. If you ride well, don’t fall and land on your butt … or head.

For me, it was horses. I love horses. I love riding. I didn’t take lessons. I just got on and rode. I fell a few times. It looks funny when you land on your butt. Everyone laughs as you get up and limp back to your mount. You’re young. You suck it up.

Ignoring pain isn’t necessarily good. Pain can mean something is wrong. I dislocated my spine. Repeatedly. Each fall worsened the problem. One day after riding, I noticed my back didn’t hurt. I couldn’t feel much of anything. My back was numb and aside from tingling, so was my right leg. That scared me. I was used to pain. I figured it was part of athletics. No pain, no gain, isn’t that what everyone says? But numbness was new and I figured maybe I should see a doctor.

My spine was 50% displaced and was pressing on my spinal cord. Which accounted for the lack of sensation. If something wasn’t done about it, I was going to be in a wheel chair before I was old enough to vote — 21 back then.

At 19, it hadn’t occurred to me I might have a real problem. In those days, we didn’t run to the doctor for every bang, bruise or pain not because we were tougher, but because we were ignorant. We’re more sophisticated these days but in the early 1960s, no one thought much about sports injures. Kids played hockey, rode bikes and horses, played sandlot baseball. Nobody owned safety equipment. If we had, we’d have been embarrassed to use it. Only a total weenie would wear a helmet on a bicycle. Has that changed or do kids remove their helmets the moment they are out of mom’s sight?

I went to the doctor. He told me to do absolutely nothing until he got me into surgery. I got a second identical opinion. Don’t bend. Don’t lift. Don’t fall. Don’t do anything. I asked if that meant I couldn’t ride. The surgeon looked at me like I had two heads, both stupid. I figured he meant “No.”

My surgeon didn’t enumerate the risks. I doubt it would have made any difference if he had. I wasn’t going through life unable to do anything active. Whatever the risks, I wanted to be repaired. I wanted to ride. At 19, I had a spinal fusion and laminectomy.

The doctor mentioned I might develop some arthritis at the site of the surgery later in life.

“Uh huh,” I said. Later in life was a million years away. After I healed — a two-year process — I went back to riding. I never fell again. I took lessons, a wise move that might have prevented youthful injuries, but my parents were unwilling to pay for lessons. Too frivolous.

Fast forward 47 years, arthritis began to make inroads. I had to stop riding. My doctor explained if I fell, I might not get up. Ever. The fusion had disintegrated. I was glued together by arthritis, nature’s way of keeping my spine intact. When the pain got worse, I went back to my doctor.

“Surely,” I said to him, “you can do something for me.”

“No,” he said. “Pain management. Cortisone shots will help. For a while.”

I’ve been down cortisone road. The shots do help for a few weeks, after which the pain returns. The human spine isn’t engineered for bipeds. Many of us have spinal weaknesses we don’t know about until after we get hurt. When I was young, a bad back was not so common. With the passing of decades, almost everyone I know has some kind of back problem. Unless you are very lucky, the chances you’ve had a back injury are high. So I live with pain and quite possibly, so do you.

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There are a lot of members of the back pain club. After you join the club, you usually get a lifetime membership. I finally discovered I have a problem I can’t fix. No amount of persistence, research, medical attention or cleverness is going to make it go away. So I’ve designed the world to make my back happy. We have a back-friendly home. From our adjustable bed, to the reclining sofa, our place is kind to spines.

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There’s no moral to this story. It’s just life. If you don’t die young and live an active life, you hurt. The years roll on, pain gets worse.

I yearn for a scooter, but the one I want doesn’t exist. I want a scooter that’s an ATV, but weighs like a bicycle and folds up. There is no such thing. I probably couldn’t afford it if it did, but I can dream.

I have had to accept reality but I do not have to like it. Sooner or later we all face an intractable problem or several. It’s a nasty shock if you’ve always believed you are unstoppable. When you hit that wall, I recommend you get some very comfortable furniture.

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Bye-Bye Superwoman

Not long ago, I was Superwoman. I knew because so many people said I was, so it had to be true, right? Then life fell apart. I started to miss those leaps over tall buildings. I barked my shins and fell on my head. Finally what was supposed to be a single bound turned into a crash and burn.

Thus I learned I couldn’t do it all and shouldn’t try. Superwoman wasn’t so super any more.

The thing about having a superwoman image is that it’s so flattering. It’s sweet having folks tell you how much they admire you. It’s great hearing them say they wish they had your courage. Even if you don’t quite believe it, it’s nice to hear, isn’t it? The words provide validation. You feel appreciated. Loved, even.

Unfortunately, flattery has strings. Having told you how great you are, your friends feel free to tap into all that strength they admire and they know, by some instinct, that you will help. It’s a reflex. You see a need, you try to fill it. You can’t say no to such a needy soul. If you think about it, you almost never say no to anyone. It’s remarkable how popular that makes you.

Since retiring my cape, I’ve learned a few things.

Strong people, especially women, attract needy people. It’s as if we have a “get your free help here” sign on our foreheads. Everyone can see it — except us.

It took me the better part of a lifetime to recognize and accept having physical and emotional limits and understand with my heart, not just my head that I don’t have endless reserves. If I fail to set priorities, when those closest to me need help, I have nothing to give. It turns out emotional energy is like a bank account. You can’t keep making withdrawals unless you also make deposits.

I can’t fight every battle or support every cause.

The first time I said no to someone who asked for help, I felt so guilty I thought I’d drown. All these years later, I don’t say no easily or lightly, but I say it. It turns out that the world goes on anyhow. God is God. I am not.

Superwomen are easy to manipulate. Guilt and our over-developed sense of responsibility makes us vulnerable to emotional blackmail. We wind up doing the hard things that others can and should do for themselves. It’s a trap no less for them than for us.

Most people are not too weak to do what they need to do. Strength is not DNA, it’s a choice. Most “weak” people are lazy, fearful and don’t want to make difficult choices. They don’t look for solutions. They look for help. Big difference.

Of course there are plenty of people with serious problems … no end of them. Me too. I’ve had so many problems I’ve often wondered if God had a grudge against me or if I had somewhere along the line pissed off a minor but extremely malign deity or maybe am working off some terrible Karmic debt. I’ve been so sick I was nearly dead and not just once. I had no health insurance or money, but I had to survive. I worked the phones, called my congressman. I wrote letters. I don’t really know how I got through, but here I am. It wasn’t valor; it was desperation.

When life began to settle down and I was no longer fighting for my life every day, I decided I would be there for the people in my world who matter. My real friends, my real family. The rest of the world would have to find other resources. I was no longer an option.

People say that when things get tough, you discover who your friends are. From the dozens of people I helped over the years, to whom I offered a place to live when they were homeless, hours of listening when they needed a caring ear … and so much more … when life turned on me, fewer than a handful of those “friends” were available. All the rest were missing in action. That was when I put my cape in mothballs. Now I take care of close friends and family. And for the first time, I take care of myself.

Thirty-five years ago, my mother asked me an odd question. She asked: “If you were to list the people in your life that matter, who would be first, second, and third on the list?”

I listed my son, my husband and a close friend.

She said: “You’re wrong. The first name on that list has to be YOU, because if you don’t take care of yourself, no one will. You won’t be able to care for anyone else, either.”

I thought it a strange thing for her to say since her own life seemed to have consisted entirely of taking care of others. She was dying then. I suppose her world-view had changed.

But she was right. In the final analysis, we are responsible for ourselves. Only if and when we have made sure we have what we need can we take care of anyone or anything else.

God — or Superwoman — will have to take care of the rest.

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Prompts for the Promptless – True Cost: Tinker Belle

Can you set a price on love? Can you set a number to it? Can you calculate it by the cost of health care, toys, dog food? Grooming?

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Tinker Belle was a Petit Basset Griffon Vendeen, also called PBGVs or Petites. They are a medium-sized, shaggy rabbit hound from the Vendée region of France, but have become over the past 20 years, quite popular as pets, though they are definitely not a dog for just anyone. They are smart, funny (they will do almost anything to make you laugh), noisy, and into everything.

Tinker Belle was special. From the day I brought her home from the airport (she had just flown up from her breeder’s home in North Carolina), she wasn’t like any other puppy I’d ever met. She was incredibly smart. As a rule, hounds are intelligent, but she was something else. Housebreaking? We showed her the doggy door. She was henceforth housebroken. She could open any door, any gate and close them behind her. She would open jars of peanut butter without leaving a fang mark to note her passing. All you’d find was a perfectly clean empty jar that had previously been an unopened, brand new jar.

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She was deeply sensitive. Probably born to be a therapy dog, she knew who was in pain, she knew who was sick. She knew where you hurt. She was the only dog who would never step on a healing incision, but would cuddle close to you, look at you with her dark, soft eyes and tell you everything would be fine. She never hurt a living thing, not human or anything else … except for small varmints she hunted in the yard. She was, after all, a hound and a hunter at that, born to track, point and if necessary, kill prey.

She was the smartest of our five dogs, the smartest dog of my life. Not just a little bit smarter than normal. A huge amount smarter. When you looked into Tinker’s eyes, it wasn’t like looking into the eyes of a dog. She was a human in a dog suit. She knew. We called her Tinker the Thinker because she planned, she remembered. She held grudges. More on that. For all that, she was Omega (the bottom) in the pack, we thought it was mostly her own choice. She had no interest in leadership. Too much responsibility maybe? But the other dogs knew her value. When they needed her, other dogs would tap into her expertise in gate opening, package disassembly, cabinet burglary, trash can raiding and other criminal activities. Throughout her life, she housebroke each new puppy. A couple of hours with Tinker, and the job was done. It was remarkable. Almost spooky. She then mothered them until they betrayed her by growing up and playing with other dogs.

When Griffin, our big male Petit Basset Griffon Vendeen came to live with us a few months after Tinker, they became The Couple. inseparable, deeply in love. They ate together, played together, slept together, sang together. When about a year later, we briefly had a little Norwich Terrier pup and Griffin (what a dog!) abandoned Tinker to go slobbering after Sally … well … Tinker’s heart was broken. She became depressed, would not play anymore with humans or other dogs. For the next 10 years, Tinker refused to so much as look at Griffin. Worse, she apparently blamed us, her humans for having brought another girl into the house. In retribution for our crimes, Tinker began her Reign of Terror.

Tinker took to destroying everything she could get her fangs on when she was three years old. She’d done a modest amount of puppy chewing, but nothing extraordinary. She was more thief than a chewer. She would steal your stuff and hide it. Shoes, toys (Kaity was very young), towels, stuffed animals. After Griffin betrayed her with that stupid little bitch — Sally was indeed the polar opposite of Tinker being the dumbest dog I’ve ever known and ill-tempered to boot — Tinker was no longer a playful thief. She was out to get us.

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Nothing was safe. She had a particular passion for destroying expensive electronic devices. Cell phones, remote controls, portable DVD players, computers. If she could get a fang to them, she killed them. She would do more damage in under a minute than I thought possible. For Garry and I, it meant we couldn’t leave the room together unless we put everything away where Tink couldn’t get it. Tinker would strike quickly and she was lethal. If we were going to bed for the night, every single movable item that was less than 6 feet off the ground had to be put away. If she couldn’t get to any small expensive electronic items, she ate the sofa, the rocking chair, the coffee table, a lot of books, many DVDs …. and for dessert, shoes were always yummy. For many years, I didn’t own any shoes without tooth marks. We called such items “Tinkerized” and we had a grading system ranging from 10 – Utterly destroyed, to 1 – Only shows if you look closely. Most of my shoes fell into the 2 to 3 range and since she tended to start at the heel, I figured most folks wouldn’t notice.

Kaitlin’s toys were safe if Kaity was currently paying a lot of attention to Tinker. If not, she was punished with the beheading of any doll Tinker could find. She didn’t bother with limbs, but always went straight for the head. She gutted stuffed things with grim efficiency.

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During one memorable intermission, Garry and I went to the kitchen to grab something to drink and she dismembered our remote controls. We were gone, by the clock, about a minute. The kitchen is adjacent to the sofa were we watch TV, so she managed to do this with us not 10 feet away. It cost me a couple of hundred dollars to replace them. She pulled off the backs, tore out the batteries (but never ate them), then ripped out the wiring and boards. She didn’t waste any time, either. If she had the leisure, she’d also tear out the keys and generally mangle the cases, but if time was limited, she went straight to the guts of the thing. She was good.

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For 10 years, we lived under siege. If you didn’t want it Tinkerized, you couldn’t leave it exposed, not for a minute.

Yet we loved Tinker and for the last year of her life, after we brought Bonnie home, Tinker became a real dog again. Under the influence of Bonnie, the friendliest, happiest, most charming Scottie on earth, Tinker came out of her sullens and played with Bonnie. She ran around the yard and played tag, joined the chorus when the other dogs pointed their muzzles at the sky and sang. Hounds have such beautiful voices and Tinker’s was the most beautiful of all. When she sang, nature sang with her. I suppose this is a matter of taste, but for those of us who love hounds, you know what I mean. Singing is a social function for canines. When a pack sings, it isn’t an alert. It’s a chorus. They are really truly singing together. Each dog has a part, joining in, then pausing and rejoining at the right moment. Tinker was a baritone, the deepest and loudest of the canine voices and Bonnie is a coloratura soprano, very musical, but light.

Almost exactly a year ago, Tinker died of cancer. She had shown no symptoms except a slight slowing down and a very minimally reduced appetite. One day, she collapsed. She was riddled with cancer. There was no organ in her body that was unaffected. How in the world she had so effectively hidden her illness is mind-boggling, but she did. A couple of weeks later, Griffin had a massive stroke and died. They were almost exactly the same age and I don’t believe for a minute that the timing of their passing was mere coincidence. Despite Griffin’s infidelity, the two PBGVs were Karmically joined and could not live without each other.

The house was so quiet with the two hounds gone. We didn’t have to hide everything anymore, though it took us months to realize it was safe, that I could leave my laptop out at night and no dog would bother it. After the two hounds passed, the pack did not sing for half a year. One day, mourning ended and they started to sing again. Now, they sing twice a day, early in the morning (get up Mom) and in the evening (pause that show, time for the chorus).

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What was Tinker’s true cost? We paid $700 for her when she was a puppy. Who knows how much her medical care cost over the years? Who remembers? That’s such a basic part of the contract between dogs and their keepers. They love us, we care for them. Other damages? Thousands of dollars in electronic gear, furniture, shoes, books, DVDs, videotapes, dolls, stuffies and who knows what else.

But she paid us back, you see. Because when I was terribly ill, Tinker never left my side. When I was back from surgery, missing another piece of me and in pain, Tinker was there, never placing a paw where it would hurt me. How does it add up? How much was the love worth? What is the true cost of a lifetime love of my dearest friend?

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Daily Prompt: Five a Day — 5 Foods for Island Life

You’ve being exiled to a private island, and your captors will only supply you with five foods. What do you pick?

On my little island there’s a cottage.

I have a tiny kitchen, but well-organized for its size. I have some good black iron pots and pans, sturdy bright dishes in the cupboard. A small ice box keeps a few things cool if the weather is sultry and I get at least some electricity, perhaps from a small generator. I can only bring five foods. Well, I’m going to hope that the drinks are separately counted so I can can put the coffee and tea on different list, along with the sports drinks I need to keep from dying of a serious electrolyte imbalance. Hard to do the island thing when you have very specific, rigid dietary requirements. Diabetes is not island friendly. So I’m just counting on drug deliveries along with food stuffs! I wouldn’t last long otherwise, though if I had enough books to read, I’d go out smiling.

Since this is not a desert island, if the soil is at all fertile, there may be many ways to supplement a limited diet and the sea contains much that is good to eat, including kelp and other seaweed. Maybe there will be some coconuts or mangos to be found. A little fruit would be awfully welcome! I’d better also have a goodly stock of vitamins and minerals too! Wouldn’t want to get scurvy or something.

VeganWitches

  1. First, protein. I love seafood, so if I have to pick just one, salmon it is, but if I can get seafood as a category … I’ll be happily stranded.  Seafood has the highest amounts of all the good stuff to keep ones body and soul together.
  2. Next, a calcium source. Cheese it will be! Pass the Jarlsberg please! If I can get cheese as a category, just bring them on, love them all, but if it has to be just one, I’ll go with a full flavor Jarlsberg.
  3. Need veggies!! Okay, perhaps I’m cheating a wee bit. All veggies are a single food for my purposes: tomatoes, onions, peppers, mushrooms, spinach, collards … the things that turn just food into meals.
  4. For the high carbohydrate choice: Potatoes. You can bake them, boil them, mash them. Serve them fried, grated and made into a loaf. Serve them with fried onions and make them into pancakes. My ancestors more or less lived on potatoes, so I gotta have item.
  5. Bread. There’s a reason “breaking bread” is synonymous with eating a meal with others. Bread goes with everything — cheese,  gravy, tomatoes and lettuce. Bread is there with all the meals. Dry it out for crumbs and if I have some spare, maybe I can lure some egg-laying birds to my little camp.

No sweets, no junk food. But I can live on these foods and remain healthy.

I’m assuming that condiments and spices come “free.” Sugar, salt (especially salt!), garlic, basil, cumin, ginger, peppermint.  I shall have an herb garden. No one said I can’t grow a few things, right?

I wonder what I’ll do for cooking oil? Any coconuts on the island?

Every bit of space not otherwise occupied with a bed, a few comfy chairs, a table and a fireplace will have to be filled with books … although if I have access to the internet and can bring a Kindle, I will be in Heaven.  I do hope the water is warm enough for swimming and the soil rich enough for growing. I might really like that island. Guest room anyone?

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