Life Adventures

We arrived home the afternoon of Friday December 23 rd .   I’ve always noticed that my appreciation for home increases ten-fold after I’ve been away on a long trip.   When I pull up to the drive and see the house it’s like looking at a painting of the sea after a storm, when things have calmed and are in order.    I get this wave of emotion every time.   The dogs, in their own way, show excitement too, rushing inside to rub their bodies all over the furniture.   I used to correct them for that, but realize that this is part of their expression of joy.   Logan was especially happy to be home and therefore was the strongest participator in the furniture body rubbing jollies. We took about a mile and ½ walk in the woods behind the house.   The trails are full of hardwoods and there’s not another house in sight when back there.   The only sounds are those of nature and I know when I am out there that this is what serenity sounds like. ...

Why were we considering adopting Frye?  Well, I told Jen never say never greyhounds  that I was interested in rescuing a Greyhound and she found her as a potential for us.  In April 2016 she had Frye transferred from FL to GA to make initial assessments.  Interestingly, Frye's trip to GA coincided exactly with our trip to GA for the Perry agility trial.  Frye was definitely one of the prettiest greyhounds we've ever seen However, those initial assessments didn't look favorable for Frye, and we opted out of seeing her while we were in GA.  Basically, Jen and I determined to pass on her.   Jen said that Frye likes to lay on her back But in May, we got a call from Jen saying she was reconsidering and felt Frye might work out for us.  We discussed a trial period of adoption from June-August.  So we made a plan to meet Jen in North Carolina to bring her home. Frye immediately made herself at home on the favorite snuggle ball ...

I wonder how we evolved our minds to focus on the lies we tell ourselves as opposed to the facts of our stark reality.   Logan has a cancer that has metastasized.   That is a fact.   Yet, when I look at him and see such life still in him, I tell myself a different story.   I tell myself that I can control this, and that through these actions to help I can give us more time.   I’m at war with myself, wanting to believe and scared to believe.   After the homeopathic treatment, I started the milk thistle, 250mg divided over breakfast and lunch.   I was concerned I’d get the same result again.   When one repeats the same experiment in science, it is what you hope for.   That’s called reliability and it’s a critical component of demonstrating scientific rigor.   Yet in this case, in Chinese Medicine, the results are not to be so predictable.   It’s such a different way of thinking than I am accustomed to.   Yet, amazingly, as I ...

The commencement of treatment felt like an experiment, and that’s a humbling feeling.   Any scientist knows all too well that an experiment is conducted because you don’t know the answer.   You don’t have a solution to the problem.   If you knew the solution, you wouldn’t have a need to conduct the experiment.   In the experiment, you surrender control and your next moves are guided by the outcomes of the test.   It’s turning over the wheel of the car.   It’s a realization that every day, we all turn over the wheel of the car in one way or another. I started Logan’s   treatment with the materials I had in hand, which were the 3 day of tick homeopathic remedy and the Boswellia carterii.   Amazingly, he perked up over those 3 days.   He had more energy, and with each burst of excitement he showed my hope grew that perhaps this path could fend off the inevitable, for just a while longer.   Then the milk thistle and melatonin arrived. ...

On December 1 st I traveled the 3 hours to Maryland for Logan to see Patti.   She did an acupuncture treatment specifically targeting 5 points to get energy moving.   She also gave me a protocol of supplements that would vary depending on Logan’s status and length of time on a particular supplement. Supplement 1 is Boswellia carterii to help with different aspect of controlling cellular behavior.   Logan gets 2 a day.   Supplement 2 is melatonin 5mg, and Logan gets 1 at night.   Melatonin is also an anti-cancer supplement.   Supplement 3 was 250mg of Milk Thistle 1 per day for liver support.   Finally, supplement 4 is SamE and Logan gets 1 per day for liver support.  (Note:  the brand names and additional information can be found in a later blog  treatment details ).  She also recommended a 3 day homeopathic for tick disease to take the place of the doxycycline.   When I left Maryland that day, I apprehensively committed ...

I call the diagnosis Logan’s death letter.   On November 22 nd I took him in for an ultrasound.   When we returned from the Specialty we started him on treatment for the tick disease, and he showed improvement.   He was playful again, eating well, but something was still nagging at me.   I knew something just wasn’t right. Yet, the morning of the ultrasound, we took the dogs to the park and watched Logan run ahead to take the lead.   I said to Russ, “You know, I feel pretty confident we aren’t going to get terrible news today.   He’s looking so good.”   And Russ responded, “Yeah, I’m not really expecting to hear anything negative either.”   I responded back, “It scares me though, to say that, because I’m not prepared to hear anything different.” The ultrasound took longer than I had hoped so I had to take the call at work.    How difficult it was to sit there and listen to the diagnosis that I was not prepared to hear. ...

Perfection is like the air coming off the waves of the ocean.   All your senses tell you that it’s there, right in front of your nose, but you fail to see it.   I suffer from this blindness from time to time.   Like many of us, I take for granted that things in my life are perfect.   I’m in reasonably good health, have a well-paying job, enjoy hobbies, I’m surrounded by a good friends, and most of all, I have my dogs.   But on October 4 th , 2016, I saw the initial signs that life would offer the fullness of opportunities, and as part of that, the struggles that awake us from the denial that all things must end. I got the call that something was wrong at home.   The oldest dog, Logan, had accidents all throughout the house.   He was also nauseated and didn’t want to eat.   We always joked that the day Logan didn’t eat was the day he went down.   He’s a Ridgeback after-all, and food is what they live for. I immediately ca...