Bill Arnold's Daily Straydog Log

FRIDAY APRIL 23 2004

Rocky's coming home this afternoon

     Dr. Reeves says Rocky's health has improved to where the doctor wanted Rocky to be before releasing him to come home to Straydog. We will drive to Tyler to pick up Rocky this afternoon, and Dr. Reeves will have complete instructions for us on how to continue caring for Rocky. We still don't know the underlying cause of Rocky's illness, but at least he's made yet another comeback, and we are all hoping and praying he'll remain well now.

Old Katie keeps hanging on--but how much longer?

     We've talked about this before, and we'll undoubtedly talk about it many more times in the future concerning many of the other older dogs, long after Katie's gone.

     Let me tell you about my 95-year-old father and how similar his and Katie's lives seem to be at this point in time:

  Dad and Katie are at similar points in their lives

     For quite some time now whenever I'm visiting my dad, I always get up several hours before Dad does so I can get as much of the Straydog Update finished as possible before he wakes up. When I hear the squeal of Dad's hearing aids as he turns them on before inserting them into his ears, I jump up from the computer and go out to say good morning as he slowly pushes his three-wheel walker toward the kitchen. I cheerfully say,

     "Good morning, Pop. How are you doing this morning?"

     "Not good!" he always grumbles. Then he sits down in his chair at the kitchen table and holds his head in his hands. "It's so hard to get up in the morning. It's so nice and comfortable in bed. I wish I could just stay there forever. It's so hard to move."

     "You'll feel better in a little while, Dad."

     I quickly serve Dad his orange juice and a cup of coffee and then start cooking his two eggs, one slice of whole wheat toast and four or five of those tiny tomatoes sliced in half.

     Dad's legs hurt, his back hurts, and he often says things like, "I just don't know how much longer I can stand this."

     But after he has some of his juice and coffee and food, he starts to perk up, and we chat about what's on the front page of the paper (he can read only the headlines without a magnifying glass, so I have to read the front page before Dad gets up so I'll be able to tell him what's going on).

     Dad lives with a lot of pain and discomfort throughout the rest of the day, but he likes to stay up watching TV till 10 or 11 o'clock at night, because, as he says, "That's the only time of the day I feel halfway descent."

  Katie

     Katie seems to be pretty much in the same condition as my father. She has difficulty getting up, and most of the time she walks slowly with an unsteady gait. She's still eating well, and performing all her other bodily functions, but we suspect that if she could talk, and we asked her, "How are you doing today, Katie?" she would probably growl, "Not good!"

     There's no question about how long we're going to continue taking care of my father--for the duration, of course. But with Katie we just don't know. At her scheduled appointment with Dr. Reeves next Tuesday, we will once again ask the doctor for his assessment of Katie's health and whether he thinks it's time.