Everything, All At Once.

A time-out would be nice, but the moon and the stars will have to do.

Right on cue, first thing Wednesday morning, Farmer barfed. Not just barfed – spewed bloody sputum all over the carpet.

This would have been funny, given the timing. (It’s not clear whether or not Farmer had been secretly watching the election returns on Pet TV.) But of course, it wasn’t. Wasn’t funny. None of it.   

At this point, we have our vet on speed dial. She has designated herself Farmer’s palliative-care-giver since we stopped chemo a while ago. We are very grateful. She keeps telling us that Farmer is not in pain, and that as long as he is eating, walking, etc., it isn’t “time.” Yet I spend all day with this guy, and I know that the time is coming, because he talks to me about it – with his eyes, mostly. I’m trying to help him carry the load, but it’s heavy. Heavy for me, I mean, as well as for him.

Currently, we are attempting to manage an intestinal infection that causes a lot of, um, regurgitation. And drool. So. Much. Drool. On Wednesday, our vet said to bring Farmer back in, and she’d keep him for the day. She’d reach into her bag of tricks (B12 shot, acupuncture, another antibiotic injection, stomach-coating medicine), take his labs again, and come up with next steps.

We drove away from the vet and straight to the woods. The Tiasquam Valley Reservation in fact. That place of magic where we go to see the dragonflies and imagine ourselves in another world.  

Only this time, shortly after we got on the trail, we took a wrong turn. Of course we did! Was anyone actually operating with a functioning brain on Wednesday morning? We certainly weren’t. We went down a steep ravine, along a stone wall, across someone’s pasture, through the 100-acre wood (I think – no sign of Pooh, though) and wound up back out on Middle Road a half mile away from the parking area where our car was.