Happy Anniversary Papa

Here's a little secret about me of which you dear reader(s) may not be fully aware; I LOVE my dogs. So much so that I remember most of the milestone's if their little lives, such as the day they joined our household.

That day for Papa was December 29th, 2001. I have told the story of how Papa came to be a member of our family before, but I enjoy telling it so much I will give a brief accounting of it again here. (Well, maybe not too "brief". I love telling this story.)

On December 29th, 2001, my wife and I drove out to a little beach town here in Southern California called Carpinteria. We went because I wanted to take one last look at the huge Santa Claus that was about to be removed from atop a shop in the tourist trap known as Santa Claus Lane. This very large, iconic piece of kitsch had been a part of the California coastline since the 1940's, and being that I had seen the thing all my life, I was a tad melancholy over the fact that it was about to be removed. (There had once been a matching snowman that had also been installed sometime after Santa first made the scene, but he melted away during the Reagan administration.) I brought my camera with me that day, and grabbed this shot of the jolly old elf.

You might be able to see by the background of the picture that it was somewhat of a dreary day, and it matched my wife's mood precisely. She was down, and no matter how I tried, I couldn't cheer her up.

When I returned to the car after I took the pictures of Santa, my wife finally confided in me that she was depressed, but she wasn't real clear as to why. She had been talking about getting a puppy for a while, and even mentioned it again on the way up to see Santa, so I thought it might help to cheer her up if we went to look at some. I mentioned this to her, and she lit up a bit over the idea, so we drove off in search of puppies.

My wife had done a bit of research concerning what sort of dog would be best suited for her, not to mention our crazy house of other animals. At first she thought a "teacup" poodle would be a good match, but after seeing a woman with a little Maltese puppy at the pet store one afternoon, she did a little reading on the breed and decided that was the dog for her. So, I found the nearest phone booth, (you remember phone booths, right?,) and called a couple few pet stores in the area. As it turns out, none had any Maltese. I asked my wife if she would still like to look at what they had anyway, but she said she really wanted to see a Maltese puppy. Somewhat defeated, I headed home.

Heading north on the 101 freeway I remembered there was a pet store at the Thousand Oaks Mall, about 40 miles north of where we were. I asked my wife if she felt up to driving out to T.O. just for the fun of it, and she agreed, so off we went.

Now, I really wasn't all that enthusiastic about getting a small, yappy, jealous little dog. In fact, I had done all I could to discourage my wife from going through with bringing one into our home. But on this day she was just plain unhappy, and I hated seeing her that way, so if looking at a few little fluffy balls of fur cheered her up then who was I to stand between her and a moment of happiness? Besides, at that time the Maltese wasn't a fantastically popular breed, so I figured the odds were probably nil that they even had one at the shop we were heading to. At least, I thought the Maltese wasn't a very popular breed.

Once we arrived at the mall, my wife practically bolted upstairs to the pet store, and pushed her way to the back where they kept the puppies. I sort of lingered at the front of the store because they had some tiny baby African Tortoises for sale. They were the cutest little buggers, and I contemplated getting one, but at the time we were living in a condo, and we really didn't have the sort of yard that a tortoise would enjoy.

I made my way back to the puppy area, and to my horror found my wife plastered up against a small glass booth the pet store used to seclude potential suckers pet owners with small furry animals for the purpose of allowing them to spend some time alone with the animal. Of course most people instantly fall in love with, and subsequently buy the critter they take into the booth. On this occasion the booth was occupied by a lady holding the cutest Maltese puppy you have ever seen.

My wife made a spectacle of herself all squished up against the glass of that booth trying to get the best view she could of the little white furball.

And then, it happened.

My wife turned to me and said, "There she is!" As the words left her mouth I saw cartoon bags with dollar signs and wings flying out of the window of my mind.

Like I said, my wife was drawing quite a bit of attention with her enthusiasm over finding a Maltese puppy, and this did not go unnoticed by the woman in the booth, or by the salesperson for that matter. The lady soon emerged from the booth, and asked my wife if she would like to hold "him". My wife was like a little girl on Christmas when the lady handed her the puppy, and she immediately held him close, and snuggled with him. She then lifted him up in the air as if he were the lion king, and said, "You were supposed to be a girl, but you're a boy!"

That cinched it, and not only did I realize this, but so had the lady who just moments ago was holding this sweet little guy, and worst of all, the salesperson did as well. But my wife, who was in her own little world at the time, momentarily forgot all about the woman who had been holding the puppy first. When it finally dawned on her that this woman had been seriously considering purchasing this pup, she returned to the real world and asked, "Oh, I'm sorry. Were you going to buy him?" The lady, who obviously could tell love at first sight when she saw it said, "Well, he is going to be bigger than I would like. I have two females at home, and wanted a male to breed with them, but they are small, and he will be a little too big. Besides, you deserve him." With that, the lady turned to the sales person who still had the contract in his hand and said, "I don't think I want to buy him after all."

You might think the salesperson would be a tiny bit peeved, but he wasn't. Most likely because he knew I was sunk, and he was going to be able to make a sale anyway.

In the end Santa wound up in a vacant lot further south on the 101. A guy who owns some property in the tiny ramshackle town of El Rio, California gave Santa his own little lot where he now looks over a different section of the same freeway, and with a trendy pair of sunglasses no less. I imagine the property owner is filled with the same sense of nostalgia that I am about that particular Santa, and just couldn't see him dumped in a landfill someplace.

And Papa, of course, went home with us that very night.

Here are a few pictures of the little scallywag that I took after we got him home...

Angel was so impossibly white when he was a puppy, and his little tail had the perfect curl to it. He was also very well behaved. Ahh what a difference six years can make!

More dogs can be found at the Friday Ark at The Modulator. Please go check them out!

Christmas, and Before

W ell, as I am sure all of you are aware, and other Christmas has come and gone. Despite some of the troubles I have been subjected to in the last few months of this year, (of which I vaguely hinted in my last post,) my Christmas turned out to be quite good this year, but then again, Christmas is good for me every year. I still live in the town where I grew up since 1966, and my folks are still with us, and are in great health. My sister, who also lives nearby, and I went over to the house my parents have lived in since 1967, and celebrated Christmas as we have for the last forty years. The only missing aspect of our traditional Christmas at home was my brother, but he lives in Washington state with his two daughters, so he decided to spend the holidays at home. Still, we had a great time, and it also served to remind me how incredibly lucky I am to have the family I do.

As I also mentioned in my last post, I did end up having the nerve root block procedure I wrote about back in October. Essentially I talked a little about my neck troubles, (or more specifically, my cervical spine troubles,) and how the UCLA doc suggested I have a nerve root block at the C3-C4 level of my spine.

Let's take a look inside of me, shall we? (I know we really don't need to, but I do so enjoy loking at pictures.)

Towards the center of the picture above you can see where my problem is. Remember this picture and try to visualize what I endured as I try my best to describe it.

The actual procedure was sort of a strange experience because when I left the office of the doctor who performed it, (it's an out patient procedure,) I was convinced he blocked the wrong nerve. Before he performed the nerve root block he spoke with me about my condition and my pain level. We talked about my surgery and at what level in my cervical spine that it dealt with, so as we walked into the operating room I was sure he knew what he was doing.

I was offered an IV with a sedative no less than three times by his staff, but I refused it each time. I equated the procedure with the cervical epidurals I had a few years ago. (Both are essentially the same thing; a needle is introduced into the area surrounding your spinal cord so that medication can be injected into the spinal cord fluid. Not so bad once you get used to the idea, really.) And while cervical epidurals are unpleasant, no sedation was offered by the hospital where I had them done, and therefore, I felt there would be no need for sedation during my nerve root block.

They had me strip from the waist up, and then the doctor had me lay on an x-ray table face down, and then described what he was doing as we went along. He first wiped down my back with a cold liquid, and told me he was cleaning the site. Then, he covered my back with a sanitary, disposable cover of some sort, and told me he was covering the site to help keep it sterile. Next he said that I would feel a sharp pain as he administered the anesthesia. He said he would give me extra anesthesia since I declined the sedative, and then plunged the needle into the middle of my upper back. My UPPER back.

It was at that point I started wondering if the doctor knew what he was doing. I couldn't understand why he was anesthetizing me between my shoulder blades when the third and forth level of my cervical spine is way up in my neck, but I resolved myself to the idea that he is a doctor, after all, and does this procedure all of the time, so he MUST know what he is doing.

From that point on he never said another word, he just went on about his business. After the initial sharp pain of the anesthesia, I felt some pressure between my shoulders as the doctor utilized his Tuohy needle to gain access to my insides. Shortly after that I felt an incredible amount of pain that shot right up my spine, and down my right arm. It was NASTY, kids, but it only last a moment. Still, it was long enough for me to wish I had taken them up on that sedative offer.

After a little more finagling on the part of the doctor, and some more intense pain on the part of myself, we were soon finished and I was escorted to the recovery room where I was treated to a little juice box filled with, er, juice. Of all things.

I sat there in a mild state of shock still confused over whether or not the doctor got it right. I thought about our earlier conversation, and I believed going in that he was quite clear about where we all believed the source of my pain to be. However, I couldn't reconcile the location of the injection. Why the middle of the upper back? That's a long road to C3-C4. And why did I hear him tell his nurse something about T2-T3? I just couldn't understand why he injected me in my thoracic spine when my trouble emanates from the nerve roots in a part of my cervical spine. It just didn't make sense. The whole idea afterall was to directly bathe the nerve root at the C3-C4 level with medication, so just how was that accomplished from my thoracic spine?

I didn't go to work that day or the next because it felt like someone kicked me in the middle of my back. I spent those two days mulling over the procedure, and looking at the original order written by the UCLA doctor to see if somehow it could have been misinterpreted. Nope. It was written very well, and very clear.

You would have had to have been a moron to get it wrong. So why the middle of my upper back?

Though I couldn't understand how the doctor could have injected me in the wrong spot, I was firmly convinced he had. So utterly convinced, in fact, that I called my family practitioner and the surgeon at UCLA and left messages for them explaining my fears. I was so concerned about this that it distracted me from the real goal of the procedure; did it relieve my pain? Your brain can really do a number on you when it wants to, and even when it doesn't want to, and so
because I was so unfortunately focused on what I perceived to be a pretty major blunder, I totally ignored what the rest of my body was trying to tell me.

I went to work on the third day, and the first thing I saw on my desk was a fax from the doctor who performed the procedure. I picked up the fax, and began to read. I knew at once it was the report describing the procedure, and I was very curious to see what was in that report. As I read it, it all became very clear, and for those of you with any amount of medical background, it may have been clear earlier when I mentioned the needle the doctor used.

It turns out the reason the doctor injected me in the middle of my upper back wasn't because he was a quack, but because that was the site from which they ran the catheter up my spine!

Isn't that a riot?

They ran a catheter up my spine from T1-T2, allll the way up to C3-C4. To give you some idea of the distance that involves, remeber he started from the middle of my upper back, towards the middle of my shoulder blades. awell, from there he ran a tube up to about a spot in my cervical spine perpendicular to my jawbone. That's pretty damn far, and is something you damn well want to be sedated for!

After I finally understood what had happened, it finally dawned on me that I hadn't been experiencing all that much pain anymore. In fact, the only real pain I had was the after effects of the procedure, so I guess it worked! But my relief only lasted about a week, and then I started to feel the pain again. That's OK, though, because what we were really after was diagnosing the actual spot that is causing me pain. So,we might do the procedure again, which
believe it or not is what I am hoping for because the other alternative is operateing again, and cleaning out the area giving my nerve some room to move around. Since the last time somebody opened up my neck and shuffled my deck I woke up feeling like a million little rusty knives were digging into my neck and arm, you might be able to understand why I don't mind having another nerve root block first.

So, that's the nerve root block went. Not to bad all in all, but not all that much fun either. I need to contact the doctor at UCLA and tell him how I have been doing. He will most likely want me to make an appointment to see him again so we can discuss my options in greater detail.

So, until next time, how about we close with a picture of Jackie, Angel, and Thalia all snuggled up with their daddy in his easy chair?

Yup. All in all, life is pretty good.

Merry Christmas

I wanted to take a moment this Christmas morning to wish all of you who stop by a Merry Christmas, or a Happy whatever it is you celebrate.

I also wanted to apologize for not having posted anything for a while. There has been a life changing event in my household that, while I don’t really wish to talk about here, has been taking up most of my time and energy.

But don’t worry about me, or Jackie and Angel and Thalia and Ebby, and the rest of our motley little crew, health-wise and otherwise we are just dandy. I had the nerve root block I wrote about a while ago, and it went fairly well. I will be writing more about that when I return either later this week, or just after the New Year.

I will also write a little about Jackie and Angel because, letsface it, they are the true stars around here.

See ya soon,

Jeff