March 19

One of the symptoms of Pogo's diabetes is occasional incontinence. Most of the time he's fine, but we've had to adjust his insulin dose again, with the result that he sometimes has accidents at night. It also bears mentioning that he sleeps in the bed with us.

I have to give Boyfriend credit for taking the situation with good grace and a sense of humor. As he put it the other day, with a resigned sigh, "I never thought I'd be so blasé about somebody peeing in my bed."

Neither Boyfriend nor I have the heart to banish him from the bed, since it's where he's slept since he came to live with us years ago. He wouldn't understand why he couldn't get on the bed, and it would feel like he was being punished. So instead, we're doing a lot of laundry. Since our dryer at home is broken, we've been making more than a few trips to the laundromat. That's where today's pic of our pretty green bedsheets in the dryer was taken.

It's tough watching Pogo grow old, but we do our best to keep him healthy and comfortable. We owe the little guy that much.

78/365 -

February 10

The weather is improving in Boston, my cold is improving, and I'm beginning to see beauty in even the ugliest things. I noticed these pretty icicles dripping in the warming weather, hanging off a mound of ugly black and gray snow-ice shoveled out of my parking space at some time over the past four or five storms. We have a few warmer days in the forecast, so the piles of ice should shrink more over the next few days.

Maybe it's that I'm feeling better physically as my cold wanes, and I'm less stressed now that my partner is back from his trip overseas, but seeing the ice melt like this is a wonderful thing. By my count, spring is 38 days away (March 20th), which puts us slightly more than halfway through winter. I can make it through 38 more days. That's not so long at all.

41/365 -

February 07

I got my hair done today.

I'm still sick, but going to the salon and getting my hair cut and styled left me feeling very good. And, not for nothing, but I'm very happy with the results. I haven't had a haircut since July, so I had collected a lot of split ends, and my hair was tangling easily (especially in the back). I went in with no particular hairstyle in mind, only asking the stylist to lose the split ends, to take off as little length as possible, and to shape it a bit so it would look nicer.

Offhand, I'd say that Denise more than met the brief. At the risk of living a cliché, I have to admit it: I feel pretty. :-)

38/365 -

February 04

I've got a cold.

As a person who has the sniffles year-round and feels chilly from September to May, I'm used to being a little snuffly. This, however, is a full-blown, hacking, coughing, sneezing cold. As I've had the flu already this year, I'm grateful that it's only a cold, though I sincerely wish it would just go away.

Theraflu Warming Relief is wonderful stuff when you've got a stubborn cold. I'm sure it's essentially the same stuff as Dayquil/Nyquil, with minor variations in color and taste, but it's been the most effective cold medicine for me for a couple of years now. To me, Nyquil resembles nothing so much as the fluid you see in airplane toilets, so taking a capful has never been a particularly appealing experience. The Theraflu syrup, on the other hand, looks and tastes more akin to the poison that Snow White's stepmother used on the apple -- not great, but infinitely more palatable.

The important thing is that the Theraflu is effective, and manages to beat down the symptoms of the cold well enough for me to function. It doesn't taste great, but it works beautifully.

35/365 -

January 27

Two slightly-scuffed cordovan shoes. Unremarkable, until you find out that they're on my feet, and that I'm wearing two shoes instead of one shoe and an orthopedic boot for my foot injury. My healing process has been slower than I had hoped it would be. I can sum up all the technical information in one sentence: My right foot still hurts!

That having been said, it doesn't hurt nearly as much as it hurt a month ago.

I'm getting back into the swing of everyday activities that had been closed to me while my mobility was limited -- exciting stuff, like long trips to the grocery store and filling up a cart with stuff, or shoveling snow, or just taking Pogo for walks that go past the backyard gate and actually involve getting all the way around the block.

It just occurred to be that one of the reasons I've been feeling so stressed out of late is, that with one bum foot, I really have been as busy as a one-legged ass kicker.

27/365 -

January 25

True confession time: I cook for my dog.

Since we found out that Pogo is diabetic, we've had to make a lot of adjustments to our life. Giving him a two insulin injections a day, for instance. Cooking is another change. Pogo got a stomach bug, so we put him on a bland diet of brown rice and oatmeal. Well, he loved his new food, so we decided to keep him on the diet, figuring that it was worth it to keep him healthy and happy. The vet instructed us to add protein to this new diet, and gave us some other recommendations to make this a better-balanced diet.

Pictured above is an assortment some of Pogo's favorite foods. I base each meal on oatmeal (in the canister) or brown rice (in the small glass). To that I add protein, usually cooked hamburger or chicken, usually with some carrots or apples cut into very small pieces. To all this, I add a couple tablespoons of wheat germ (which I forgot to squeeze into the group above). Rounding it all out is a children's chewable vitamin, to give Pogo the vitamins and minerals he needs to remain healthy.

Since changing his diet, the amount of insulin Pogo needs to regulate his blood sugar has gone down substantially. While doing all this cooking is a lot of work -- especially on the weekends, when I do a lot of prep work for the rest of the week -- it's worth it to keep my puppy dog healthy.

25/365 -

January 15

Makeshift sharps containers on the windowsill. What do you do with a used hypodermic needle? It's not the kind of think I'd had to consider before Pogo was diagnosed as diabetic, and on the list of things to worry about when you have a diabetic dog, it's not terribly high on the list. Nonetheless, you have to do something with the things.

Of course, disposing of used needles has to be done properly. You don't want to just put them in the garbage, where trash collectors can get needlesticks, or drug users could come upon them and start rifling through your garbage looking for more. You need to have the sharps in a reasonably robust container, and you need to make sure you can dispose of them properly.

Our solution was to use soda bottles (which we have on hand in ample numbers). We periodically take them to the veterinarian's office when Pogo has appointments, and the vet disposes of the needles properly. It's really an excellent system.

In an ideal world, I wouldn't have to worry about this problem. But then I wouldn't have a wonderful canine companion like my Pogo. And that would definitely be less than ideal.

15/365

January 11

Peering down on the enemy. I've been trying to drop weight for almost a year now, since the first time I looked down at the scale -- this scale -- and saw my weight nearing 200 pounds.

I wasn't willing to try a severe diet, since I know myself well enough to know that I would not follow the diet properly. My love of Dr Pepper, bacon, and junk food would conspire to undermine any diet. Instead, with my partner's help, I began paying more attention to what I eat. I didn't cut out soda, but I did make more of an effort not to drink so much of it. I try (and sometimes succeed) to eat a healthy bowl of cereal for breakfast instead of waiting until lunchtime to eat. And I got a gym membership, although with my injured foot, I've been cooling my heels instead of working out.

Last night, I climbed onto the scale and saw that I'm nearly down to 180 pounds. When I'm able to begin working out again, my goal is to drop another 10 pounds over the next few months.

11/365 -

January 03

Pogo's Insulin. Writing 100 words on this is simple; the hard part is going to be keeping it to less than 1,000 words.

My dog, Pogo, is diabetic. We found out last October, and since then, he's required two shots of insulin twice a day in order to maintain his blood sugar level at a healthier level. This presented several conflicts. I love my dog and will do almost anything reasonable to keep him healthy. However, I have a moderate form of trypanophobia (fear of needles), one that manifests by my fainting when I see one.

Normally, my partner could take care of giving Pogo his injections -- and usually, he does -- but the diagnosis came a few weeks before he was to go away for 12 days to Europe for work, and a couple of months before he began a monthlong visit to India. So I had to desensitize myself to needles, and rapidly.

And I did it. I overcame my trypanophobia.

I will never be comfortable giving Pogo an injection, handling a needle, or even seeing one. Thinking about it still makes me vaguely nauseous. But I have become competent at handling and giving injections, and I've been able to keep Pogo healthy by myself during my partner's absences. And I'm kind of proud of that.

03/365 -