We got our ribbon, we got our victory run, we got our jump bar AND we got our cake !!! Details to follow – it was a long weekend, I barely slept last night and am pretty fried!

Meanwhile, Bryce has just one thing to say …

As of January 14th, a little more than a year after starting treatment, Bryce is clinically in remission!

With this disease, it doesn’t mean it’s gone and it doesn’t mean forever. It just means we swept it under the rug for a while.

But for however long or short that may be, it feels good to be able to finally say that we kicked some cancer ass!

Not me – nooo, the gastroenteritis diet (not recommended) cleared that up nicely for me, thank you very much.

Had Bryce to the vet for bloodwork yesterday only to find he’s gained almost a POUND!

Not that it’s a BAD weight for him – normally, I would be very happy with that weight. BUT here he is coming off a sore back with his first agility trial since last October (assuming his PT thinks it’s OK) coming up in less than 2 weeks and he weighs more than he has in the last TWO YEARS!

ARGH!!

That would be: 1 bottle of sports water with vitamins, 2 bottles of electrolyte-enhanced plain water, a bunch of bananas, 2 boxes of water crackers, and a container of low-sodium, low-fat chicken broth (which I don’t normally eat!). Not shown: Applesauce, picked up on a previous trip.

…WTH???

Stomach flu … or food poisoning. Woke up with it last Sunday morning, spent most of last week with it. I NEVER get sick to my stomach so I’m a real baby when I do!!! I also probably prolonged the agony by not avoiding caffeine or dairy products – who knew?

Fingers crossed, it seems to have finally cleared up after a trip to the doctor on Thursday. Because they gave me some great miracle drug? Nah! I’ll spare you the gory details, but if it didn’t clear up “in a day or two” they wanted me to do something VERY Unpleasant. My body has an amazing ability to heal itself when threatened with things that are Very Unpleasant!

For example: About 9-10 years ago I almost had knee surgery. One weekend, my left knee puffed up and started really hurting. Went to the doctor and to an orthopedist who diagnosed cartilage damage. Was in pain for weeks and weeks and finally broke down and scheduled surgery – made arrangements for Bryce to go on vacation to Auntie Bernadette, bought sod to put on my back porch so Tiffy and Sally could potty there instead of me having to take them down the back …

Then a few days before the surgery, I felt something move and it stopped hurting! Funny clicks? Grinding noises? Excruciating pain? Gone, gone and gone. The day of the surgery, it still wasn’t hurting. Long story short, being seriously doctor-phobic AND not being one to let someone slice apart body parts that aren’t bothering me, I got to the hospital … and didn’t go through with it! Walked right out of there and kept on walking. Npw my OTHER knee’s a little “iffy”, but that knee hasn’t bothered me since!!

I did a little more in my film-to-video project. Here’s some cute footage of Bryce as a baby, playing with a chewie – he was a little over 5 mos old here.

A few months ago I spent some of my Amazon mad-money on a video input adapter, with the intention of copying all my old videos off tape and onto DVD’s,. Unfortunately, I was too busy to do anything with it when it arrived, so I decided why not save it for Christmas. I finally got around to messing with it today!

Still not familiar with the software and having problems getting my REALLY old VHS tapes to copy, but I got it working with my 8mm tapes.

The first tape I’ve copied is from 1996-1997 – before Bryce was so much as a glimmer in his father’s eye! It features my “second generation” – Tiffy, Sally, Jasmine and Kacey. Of the 4 girls, only Kacey is still alive. Watching it, at first I didn’t know whether to smile or cry – smiling won out . There are some classic clips on it, a few of which will be going on youtube, but meanwhile here are a few still frame captures from way back when:

Tiffy at 8-9 years old. When she was 5, Tiffy was badly injured in a household accident so she was a little lopsided the remainder of her 15.5 years. Hard to tell from this angle and the grainy image, but she was a very pretty girl. She was only about 13.5″ tall – Raven’s height. Doesn’t look that small, does she? She was built like a tank!

Sally at 6 – just a sweet young thing! In this clip, she wanted me to get out of bed and FEED her! Instead, I laughed at her and grabbed the camera. (She was a little annoyed – can you tell?)

Jasmine, the 3rd of my 3 little “redheads”, shown here at about 3 1/2 years old. (Jasmine never did like having her picture taken.)

Kacey … as a kitten! (7 months or so)

Proof that I once had a dog with a start line stay …

… but really crappy contacts!

(Not that my handling was anything to write home about either …)

More on the way !

Happy 2010!

Here’s the obligatory New Years dog photo (the cats never cooperate)…

(Yes, it looks like Raven may have either had some personal hygeine issues or was passing gas since the others refused to sit that close to her… but at least they’re all looking nicely at the camera and it only took me 4 tries ! )

2009 had it’s good points and it’s bad points. On the good side, Bryce is still with us and doing pretty well. On the minus side, Jasmine is gone. Wasn’t a bad agility year.

It was however a very EXPENSIVE year right up to the end ! The week before Christmas, Kacey suddenly got sick – frequent vomiting, not eating, acting miserable. Now since Kacey’s tongue is always in places where a cat’s tongue shouldn’t be, she gets a nasty GI upset or two every year (though it’s usually the other end that’s affected) so I went with my usual strategy – took her to my vet for fluids and some shots to help her stop vomiting.

Eight hours later, she was still vomiting every 1.5-2 hours, so on the recommendation of my vet, off she went to the $$$ 24 hr hospital. $$$ Got there just in time to catch the $$$ ultrasound technician $$$ on her way out the door. The good news was that there were no blockages, however she had a mildly inflamed pancreas and a VERY badly inflamed stomach. $$$ Spent the night there $$$ on IV’s.

Of course, she didn’t vomit once after she was checked in! The next morning found her biting the techs – not something you usually want to hear and I’ll probably burn in hell for giggling about it when they told me, but it was the best sign possible that Kacey was feeling well enough to act like herself. She wouldn’t eat for them, so I went over and managed to coax her to eat a few licks of baby food. After a few hours to make sure that stayed down she came home – indignant, freaked-out, and sporting what can only be described as a semi poodle-clip (apparently they needed to shave THREE legs to find a vein?) but as happy to be home as I was to have her back!

So far so good – what a relief but what a scare! Kacey’s my oldest (2 yrs older than Bryce) – she’s kind of a badass, but I really love her and am not ready to see her leave us any time soon!

Coming right on the heels of Bryce’s “episodes” this was really rough on the already-hurting checkbook as you can well imagine! If you’re ever in a similar situation, I highly recommend checking out CareCredit, which lets you make payments interest-free as long as you make monthly payments and pay off your balance in full within a certain time period (in this case, 90 days).

So here’s to a slightly less-crazy 2010!