Good riddance, 2005

I am so ready for this year to be over. 2005 will go down in history as the worst year ever. The story actually starts back in November of 2004 (no, not with the election, I'll stipulate to how bad that was). Here are the lowlights:

November, 2004: Our 2-year old Border Collie "Lucky" (the most unfortunate name ever) dies while recovering after surgery to remove a large tumor from her intestine.

December, 2004: My wife's dad falls and is hospitalized after a brain tumor starts expanding (it had previously been unsuccessfully treated). The prognosis is not good.

Winter 2005: A months-long course of full-brain radiation is performed on him. Side effects are brutal, and I'm not sure which was worse, the tumor or the treatments. Once we figure out that he's not going to recover, Hospice home care is called in -- they provide amazing services and care, but the bulk of the day-to-day home care is provided by family and friends.

Spring 2005: A potential bright spot, we rescue an adorable white border collie from "border collie rescue" and name him "Rogue" -- he's 4 months old.

But, when we bring him home, he's got kennel cough and a nasty parasite. We treat that. When he's neutered in early May, the vet does a "precautionary" check for genetic problems, and they find hip displaysia. We start planning treatment options, and visit a specialist in Portland. Major surgery is planned to fix him, for early July. Shortly after this, Rogue begins the first of several stomach incidents whereupon he pukes constantly, is hospitalized, and then recovers after a couple of days. Initial diagnosis is "pancreatitis" but that turns out wrong (you'll see why later).

My wife's dad continues to slide down hill. He is confined to bed, and the tumors have devasted his ability to communicate. He can barely move, can't read or write any longer, and has major problems speaking. That is the cruelest of tortures to an old farmer that loved nothing more than to BS about anything and everything at length. Nearly all of our free time is spent visting and helping around their house.

July 2005, all hell breaks loose: The month begins well, with a trip for my wife and I to Vegas for my Dad's wedding, over the 4th of July holiday -- that was quite fun. Upon our return, we immediately (as in, the day our flight arrived back in Oregon) have to take Rogue to the specialist in Portland for a "Triple Pelvic Osteotomy" to fix his hips. Several days (and thousands of dollars) later we take home a half-shaved dog and prepare for 16 weeks of confined recovery for him. The recovery period is pretty brutal, and involves constant care, total confinement, walking him only briefly to go outside while holding him up with a sling. He didn't enjoy any of this, and we end up needing to keep him sedated quite a bit so he doesn't hurt himself.

Later in July, my wife has major surgery (planned, but no fun). Mid-way through her week-long hospital stay, her father passes away. In a touch of pure irony, it happens on my birthday. She's devestated that she wasn't there for the end, but we think he's finally let go knowing that she made it through her surgery OK -- he had been quite worried about her.

Emotions, and the recovering wife and dog aside, the rest of the summer isn't too bad.

Fall 2005: Rogue eventually gets a clean bill of health for his hips in October, but continues to have the mysterious stomach troubles about every 6 weeks. My wife goes back to work (she's a 4th grade public school teacher) and life starts to get back to "normal."

December 2005: As I type this, my wife is packing to travel back east with her mom to visit her sister. I can't go as I planned, because one of us needs to stay home and take care of Rogue, who's just had major surgery to remove 12cm of his small intestine and is in the ICU of the OSU vet-school teaching hospital. Turns out that the "pancreatitis" we thought he had, and the cause of seven month's worth of "stomach" problems was the plastic "squeaker" out of a toy he chewed up back in May (a common puppy thing to do). He had evidently eaten it, and it had initially blocked his intestines. Since it was plastic (these squeakers are little plastic "bladders" about the size of a half-dollar coin) it didn't show up on any of the dozens of radiographs we've had done. Because it would only partially block his intestine, he would be fine, until it shifted and blocked it fully again, at which point the puking cycle began again. A specialist at OSU's new small animal clinic at the vet school figured this out, and they performed surgery this past Friday. His prognosis is good, but he's not out of the woods yet.

At least we finally got his problem figured out, and we "squeaked" it under the 2005 wire, hopefully confining the badness to the already horrible 2005.

Hopefully 2006 will be a bit better than this...