Ice Storm

When I'm single, as I am now, and have often been in the past, I try really hard not to approach Valentine's Day with any kind of negativity, or typical anti-holiday attitude. It's really a fine day, as far as I'm concerned. I have no beef whatsoever with celebrating love. If you've got it, flaunt it, I say, and most of us have some of it in our lives, even if it's not the romantic kind.

But this Valentine's morning, at 4:40 a.m., I watch my very sick little dog stagger around blindly, following several seizures last night and a terrible one just an hour ago. I've brought him down to the basement, because he cannot settle down, and here he is walking around, knocking into golf clubs and computer monitors, panting like his heart is going to give out any second. My vet doesn't open for three hours, and I've used all the medicine the emergency vet gave me. I took him there last night in the middle of this ice storm that I still hear outside my window. The truly wonderful vet there seemed to think that the worst had passed, and that with the extra meds he was given and the cycle he'd already been through, that he'd be okay until morning. So, so wrong. This has, in truth, been a horrifying night. And now I am raw-eyed exhausted, and I'm so fried that I cannot cry although I have been alternately terrified (of his condition and of driving in blinding ice with him beside me), half-asleep, and now exhausted with some terrified thrown in, because I've never seen him act like this before and I don't want this to be happening at all. I want to have walked in from the gym like I did at 8:15 last night, and not have heard "Your little guy's had two seizures in the past hour", and then had him have another one before 8:30. But life doesn't have that kind of rewind.

And for a minute, just a few minutes ago, I remembered that it was now February 14th, and I got really pissed off...because if this is curtains...which it may be, because he seems really sick, although he's pretty resilient, this is a fine day for it. Which is to say, in sarcastic-person terms, that it's not. In fact, it's the least fine day I can imagine for it, because I don't care about any metaphors I could construct for love, as love him I very much do. This is just a day that I want to pass without incident - not to be memorable for anything, other than a lot of red and some candy. And certainly not one I want to remember at all because terrible things are happening on it. So I'll allow myself to think, and to write, something that I generally don't say, if only because I don't know what else to say, that it just isn't fair.

Comments

[Sharkbait]

Wishing you and the litte guy the best...pets have a place in our/your heart, just like people do.

I hope things work out as they should and as painless as possible.

[Michelle]

My thoughts and prayers are with you both. Give him lots of hugs and kisses for me...