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Dispatches from Hell

Dispatches from Hell…

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Day after day after day after day has been yet another Day from Hell, lo! these several weeks. Why don’t things get better? Why does everything break, bust, explode, crash, or die? Finally figured out the explanation. These are not days from Hell. We are actually in Hell. Hence: these are not blog posts. These are Dispatches from Hell.

Case in point: The least of today’s hassles, only because it’s a hassle left over from a week ago…I’ve tried twice to re-up my subscription to The New York Review of Books, one of my favorite broadsides. First time was my fault: I used the credit union’s bill-pay function, but paid for it from my personal account (which, oddly, did have the the NYRofB’s listed as a previous payee). Of late I’ve been making the S-corp pay for it.

That payment bounced. Why, I do not understand: what do they care which account pays for it? Ohhkay… Eventually they sent a desperate “Don’t Leave Us” ad in the snailmail. I replied to that by filling out the form and entering the S-corp’s AMEX account number. This no doubt would have worked if I hadn’t indulged in a moment of stupidity.

As you know, the ‘Hood is not the best of all possible neighborhoods. We’re inundated with drug-addicted transients, who support their habits with petty theft. Including mail theft.

The payment envelope in hand, I raced out the door to run a bunch of errands and get someplace on time. In a hurry, I really did NOT want to drive to the Post Office to deposit the thing in one of their mailboxes. That would entail waiting half my lifetime for the blightrail signal at the interesection of Conduit of Blight and Feeder Street E-W to turn green, then waiting the rest of my lifetime to get back across the damn blightrail tracks to get to my various destinations. So instead of traipsing to the PO for this one small item, I stuck it in the outgoing slot of the Fort Knox Mailbox and flipped up the red flag.

Bad move. Very stupid indeed.

Two or three days later, I went out to get the mail (it’s almost all advertising now, so there’s no hurry to pick it up) and noticed the red flag was still up. Whaaa? Did the mailman not come by? (He often doesn’t….)

Check to see if he’s failed to pick up the outgoing: no envelope in there. Days go by. A couple weeks go by. No payment at NYRofB’s.

Shit. That means someone has stolen the thing and now has my name, the name of my business, its address, and its AMEX credit card number. I wait a few more days to see if the payment goes through. Today I call NYRofB’s phone reps and they say they never heard of it. I need to pay the thing on my corporate AMEX card over the phone. Then I need to cancel the card and order a new one, ASAP.

But ASAP ain’t very AS…because I’m waiting on the PostalPerson to deliver a new personal AMEX card. Yes. Somehow I managed to LOSE a whole cardholder full of cards!!!! The personal AMEX card, the Safeway card, the new Medicare card with a new Medicare number on it (the one that doesn’t work at the pharmacy), the old Medicare card bearing my Social Security number….GONE, every one of them.

I believe they’re somewhere in the house, because I paid the AC guy to fix the thermostat and the leaking roof with my personal card, and I did not leave the house between the time he drove off down the road and the time I realized I couldn’t find that cardholder. Since I’ve habituated that locksmith for a good 12 or 15 years and Steven (locksmith dude) has worked for them for 7 years and he’s a fine upstanding workingman, I don’t believe he walked off with it. Without a doubt, I set it down in the house somewhere and managed to lose it…same as the pair of prescription glasses that got tangled up in a knitted bed throw and disappeared for three months.

Fortunately I have photocopies of the Medicare cards. And fortunately, I had the sense to black out the SS number on the old Medicare card. The AMEX card has been canceled and a new one is on the way, but the weekend coming up, I don’t expect “tomorrow” (no kidding: that is what she said!) to arrive much before Monday. And fortunately, my debit card, corporate AMEX card, and Costco cash cards are in a different card holder. Which is not, after all, lost. Yet.

So what other dispatches from Hell since I had to pay $40 out of pocket for a flu shot?

  • The dog got better off the fluconazole, then worse.
  • Dog continuing incontinent, I ask the new vet if they’ll test her urine for a UTI.
  • Wednesday after volunteer receptionist duty, I race the refrigerated pee up to 40th Street and Thunderbird and drop it off there. I drive up there through the rush-hour traffic, drive back in even worse traffic. Changing lanes to maneuver into place to turn right into the ‘Hood, I misjudge the length of a flatbed trailer being towed behind a pickup in the lane next to me and clip the goddamn thing. The driver doesn’t even blink. He doesn’t slow down, he most certainly doesn’t stop…I think he may not even have noticed that I bumped his trailer. My car sure did, though. Pulled over to find the front bumper was half pulled off, scratched and gouged, flying in the breeze. Shee-ut!
  • Back here, I walk in the door and find…NO Charley! He’s freaking GONE! A worker has been here in the afternoon; I’ve left strict orders not to let that dog slip out the back gate. But he can go in and out the dog door…dollars to donuts that’s exactly what he’s done. He’s old, he’s sick, and now he’s LOST. Try to reach said worker: no answer. Totally, utterly panicked. My son is supposedly in Colorado, which is why his dog is here. I think maybe he got back while I was out and picked up his dog, but he won’t answer his phone, either. Neighbor texts him (I have no cell phone). No answer. I am in utter despair. After a bit I calm down enough to notice that even though the dog’s food is still sitting on the kitchen counter, the dog’s leash and collar are gone. SOMEONE took the dog on purpose…at least he’s not roaming around the neighborhood and ambling across Conduit of Blight Boulevard.
  • Eventually the kid calls and says yeah, he picked up the dog but was too tired from driving in from southern Colorado to bother to leave me a “thanks for keeping my dog” note.
  • Now late for choir, I feed the dogs and fly out the door without any dinner of my own.
  • Get home about 9:15 p.m. and go to enter the (locked) office.
  • It’s been raining for a day and a half. The solid-core door is swollen tight. The key goes in but I can’t turn it. I get a wrench, try to open the thing, and…SHEAR THE KEY OFF level. with the fucking deadbolt! All my computers, all my financial stuff, all my credit cards, all my cash, even my cheesy little clamshell phone are locked behind that door.
  • Call the locksmith’s emergency line. He says he’s sure he can fix it. For a hundred bucks he’ll do it right now (pushing 10 p.m.). I say if he’s sure it can be opened, I’ll be able to sleep at night and so can wait till tomorrow. Otherwise I’ll be wanting to break the front window and climb in to get my computer, which I’d druther not do.
  • Next day have real difficulty getting them to come over — but because I’m an old customer who’s spent a lot of dollars at their shop, they squeeze me in.
  • Steven comes over, takes a screwdriver to the thing, flips out the stump of the key: takes him all of 30 seconds. I’m in love. This love affair costs me 70 bucks. And now I have to go take the fancy key over to the shop to get a new one made. That’ll be another 20 bucks. Later. But not much later.
  • Somewhere in here I lose my credit-card holder. I search from pillar to post, empty out the trash cans, go through drawers, look under the furniture: no luck. I’m sure it’s in the house, probably, but when I can’t find it the next day figure to be safe I’d better cancel the AMEX card. Two or three days without a personal charge card. Yeah.
  • Insurance guy says I’m in luck. Because he bought me a “prime” policy, I have a one-accident-no-fault deal: get out of jail free. AND because I haven’t tried to kill any of my fellow homicidal drivers lately, I also have a zero deductible. He asks me to get estimates from a body shop but suggests that if it doesn’t cost much it may be better to foot the bill and not let the company know about this little fender bender. My son, also an insurance guy, recommends taking the money and running: he thinks I should go to the best body shop in town (which is 20 miles from my house) and have them do a decent job fixing it.
  • The vet’s office calls to say something’s out of whack with Cassie’s pee and they want me to bring her in Saturday morning. I say “wrong”? Like what? Well, like it might be a UTI. Ooookayyyy…
  • I take the car to my mechanic to check for damage under the hood. They find no structural or engine damage, AND they manage to wrest the bumper back into place and secure it with the car’s clips and a few extra bolts. It now looks dead normal except for a scrape on one side, as though maybe I got too close to a guard wall. The men of Chuck’s Auto also opine that it would be best to hide this incident from the insuror. However, they do find a nick in the tire’s sidewall and recommend replacing the tire soon.
  • I call my insurance guy with this report and with the advice from my son. He reiterates that his thinking coincides with the mechanics’ but he will support me whatever I decide to do. (He’s not a sales agent: he’s a broker.)
  • Cassie seems to be getting better. By yesterday I observe that she’s about back to normal and surmise I must have been right that she didn’t have Valley fever.
  • At 3:30 this morning she wakes up and pees in the bed before I can set her on the floor. In doing so, she manages to miss the double layer of pee pads I’ve laid down on the bed: three more loads of laundry!
  • In a flash I haul off the sheets, the bed pad, the blanket, and the dog blanket. Fortunately this five-layer barrier keeps the dog pee off the mattress. Dazed with exhaustion, I toss the sheets and blanket into the washer and start the thing running.
  • Cannot sleep, so go back to reading 8000 words of Korean-accented scholarly writing.
  • Somewhere in here it dawns on me: this lesion that developed on my hand, the one on the same arm that got the ferocious Shingrix shot, is not a zoster pox. Noooo….Y’know what that is? THAT little fucker is ringworm. Look it up and find ringworm image after ringworm image that looks just like it. And ringworm being not a parasite but a fungal infection, y’know what the treatment is? Ohhhh yes! Fluconozale, the same damn stuff that made my dog so sick I thought she was going to die! TWICE!
  • Shit. Well, you can get a topical treatment over the counter. The standard course of treatment, if you believe the Internet (yeah!), is first to try to get rid of it with an OTC ointment. If that doesn’t work, then you move on to poisoning yourself.
  • Eventually I go out to move the bedding from the washer to the dryer and…can you guess? Somehow I’ve missed two of the pee pads! The inside of the washer is now chuckablock full of shredded, wet puffed-up paper stuffing crap! HOLY shit!!!!!!!!!
  • I go inside to finish reading the client’s paper.
  • Eventually go back out to the garage. Realize I can’t put this stuff in the dryer. Haul each piece out into the driveway and shake, shake, shake, shake, snap, shake, snap, SHAKE, shake, shake. This covers the driveway with snow-like stuff but doesn’t get all the crud off the bedding. Hang the sheets, blanket, and mattress pad on the clotheslines, hoping most of the rest of the stuff will shake off when it’s dry.
  • Clean out the washer. Yeah, right.
  • Take the shop-vac to the washer. This clogs the shop-vac but apparently gets most of the crud out of the washer, except for the stuff I have to dig out with a coat-hanger wire. Use the rest of the vacuum’s capacity to pick up the white snow off the driveway and the garage floor.
  • Haul the vacuum tub and two baskets of garbage out to the alley trash bin. On the way, pick up a bum’s fast-food cup out of my yard. On the way, observe that the mess the city water guys made of my front landscaping is pretty well fixed, after I shoveled and broomed gravel back in place. Hope they didn’t fuck up the plumbing under there. But don’t have much hope.
  • Brush out and wash the shop-vac’s clogged filter; set it aside to dry.
  • Finish the Korean professor’s paper. Interesting guy, interesting subject. Learn a lot about international law on freedom of expression and journalistic privilege. That’s good, anyway. Run it past a prospective intern, am impressed with the kid’s response. Ship the edits & clean copy back to the client.
  • Decide I cannot bring myself to do the Costco run that was planned for today.
  • Realize that isn’t gonna do me any good, because I still have to go out to a Walgreen’s and try to find the anti-fungus stuff (miconozale) to treat the frantically itchy lesion on my hand.

And so, away. Let’s see what I can do to my fellow homicidal drivers on the way…

Dog: Can’t win department

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Or is it the Department of Little Women?

I do have the worst feeling I’m being little-womaned here. But on the other hand, one also has to admit that the vet is emitting every sign of trying to be helpful…many of which signs are above and beyond the call of duty. But…but, indeed… Read on:

So at 8:30 this morning — Sunday — I present myself and my dog at the office of the charming and genuinely concerned (I do believe) MarvelVet. I explain that the dog has been much better after I unilaterally took her off the fluconase, a drug for Valley fever. She has begun to eat again, and she’s acting more like her old self: shaking off the deathly lethargy and resuming her favorite barking habits. The cough is gone.

He remains convinced that the dog does have Valley fever. That may be true. But in the absence of empirical evidence, my stand is that we have no proof of it, and that we’re making her unnecessarily sick by giving her a drug whose side effects include complete inappetence, extreme thirst, uncontrollable incontinence, lethargy, loss of interest in surroundings, inability or unwillingness to move around, diarrhea, vomiting, and gastric distress.

He now says, “Those are symptoms of Valley fever.”

I say, “That is a list of fluconase side effects that appears at the University of Arizona Medical School’s web page.” He replies with the usual snort that you can’t believe anything you read on the Internet. I reply that the University of Arizona Medical School is a credible source.

See? That is little-womaning: the assumption that if a woman says something, it must be stupid, uninformed, or both.

So used to that kind of male behavior am I that it doesn’t especially bother me — beyond the obvious annoyance factor. What does bother me is that those are NOT the symptoms of Valley fever, nor are they the symptoms she presented with. I took her to the vet because she had a persistent cough, not because she was peeing on the floor (she was not), consuming undue amounts of water (she was not), off her feed (she was not), lethargic (she was, to a degree), or suffering diarrhea or vomiting. This circumstance presents one of two possibilities:

  1. Either he doesn’t know the difference between the symptoms of Valley fever and the side-effects of a powerful medication; or
  2. His mind is made up and he simply refuses to listen to what the little woman has to say.

He proposes to have another vet, who’s a specialist, do a full-body ultrasound of the dog, in hopes of getting to the bottom of the problem. He says he will arrange this at no cost to me. Tentatively now, this is slated for Tuesday.

Okay. If he’s being honest, this could be useful.

Or not.

I am very wary about it. Why?

For one, the Mayo Clinic states — in reference to human cases, as you might expect — that the best course of action for Valley fever is usually no action: rest and hydration is the recommended treatment.

Most people with acute valley fever don’t require treatment. Even when symptoms are severe, the best therapy for otherwise healthy adults is often bed rest and fluids — the same approach used for colds and the flu. Still, doctors carefully monitor people with valley fever.

And then over here at Medscape, we have this statement about work-up (i.e., testing and physical examination) for Valley fever:

Because most patients recover spontaneously, pursuing documentation of coccidioidal infection is not imperative unless the patient is immunocompromised or has signs of severe progressive disease or dissemination. Diagnosis requires isolation of the organism in culture, identification on histologic specimens, or serologic testing.

[Medscape is a website for physicians and clinicians. You have to subscribe to get the full dope on most topics.]

At this time, the dog does not have signs of severe progressive disease or dissemination. To the contrary, she’s showing every sign of improvement.

In any event, does this strategy apply to dogs? I truly do not know. However, I see that the University of Arizona’s website invites questions…and so… Yes. I just sent off a query asking if dogs respond differently to Valley fever infections than humans do….and specifically asking whether those two blurbs of advice apply to dogs. Watch this space for a report.

My friend whom I quoted as having lost three dogs to Valley fever says she actually has had four die of the disease. Each time she spent phenomenal amounts of money trying to keep the dog alive. One dog was on medication for years…and the stuff was costing her $300 a month.

Three hundred dollars is my entire household budget, exclusive of utilities.

Valley fever represents a huge profit center for the veterinary industry. Says the UofA Med School: “Owners spend hundreds to thousands of dollars each year, especially in Arizona, diagnosing, treating, and following up care for their dogs with Valley Fever. It is estimated that valley fever costs all Arizona dog owners at least $60 million per year.”

Holy sh!t. No wonder the guy wants to get the dog on fluconase, proof that it’s needed be damned.

He told me to put her back on the stuff. I said if we were going to do that, it would be better to put her to sleep, because it makes her so sick that she effectively has no life. This was when he tried to tell me the side effects were Valley fever symptoms — even though it’s dead obvious the dog has none of the “symptoms” now that the drug is wearing off. He backed down when I said I would put her down before I’d give her any more of the stuff.

I did have to point out to him that with a Ph.D. and a job as a technical editor, I do know the difference between a university medical school’s data and a woo-woo web page. It’s hard to convince some people. 😉

He tried to tell me she was not behaving in a normally peppy way. I refrained, having already said quite enough, that at 12 years of age a dog is not supposed to be peppy.

He handed me, also free, a half-dozen cans of PD and urged me to feed it to her. For those who aren’t into long-term pet ownership, PD is short for “Prescription Diet”: it’s a spectacularly expensive dog food distributed exclusively through veterinaries. He thought it would help her feel more like eating. And it’s true, she does need to gain back some weight.

But…BUT… She’s regained her appetite and is now eating just fine. The baby food scheme worked to jump-start her eating. After I got her eating that stuff, I poured half a bottle of it over a regular plate of her food, and she inhaled it. And this evening? During the battle to feed Charley, Ruby, and Cassie without being tripped or pounced by any of them, I forgot about the baby food whilst struggling to get her and a plate of food behind a door where Charley and Ruby couldn’t grab it. She inhaled her dinner anyway.

And PD…hmmm. It’s distributed in New Zealand. Know what that means? It means it’s likely made in China. They are very secretive about where the product is manufactured — can’t even find a clue at the venerable Dog Food Adviser watchdog site. If they’re not telling you, they don’t want you to know. Eh?

Her cough is essentially gone. She chokes on water — as she always has (the pup does, too: it seems to be characteristic of corgis) — and that causes her to wheeze, but once that passes, she no longer is coughing. That suggests to me that it’s every bit as likely that she had bronchitis as that she has Valley fever. Maybe more likely: she wouldn’t get over the cough that quickly on just a few days of the poisonous “cure,” and it would have come back by now if she really hand VF.

He noticed she was breathing rapidly, which indeed is something that she does. I couldn’t tell you if she’s always done it, because I haven’t been sensitized to the pattern of her breathing before this. However, here we have a genuine woo-woo Web page that suggests it’s no BFD:

Tachypnea is the term for rapid breathing in dogs and unless consistent or combined with other symptoms is usually nothing to worry about.

Laboured, difficult breathing or Dyspnea is more serious and you should consult your vet immediately as it could be the sign of a serious problem. Read on to find out…

Ohhkayyy…reading on: Potential causes:

• Heat.

• Nope: not while snoozing on a bed in an air-conditioned bedroom.

• Mitral valve disease

• Could be, I suppose. Cardiac problems have already been suggested as a possible cause of the coughing.

• Congestive heart failure

• Another strong possibility. Remember: she’s 12 years old.

• Cancer

• “However, lung tumours (Adenocarcinoma) are the exception and can cause coughing and panting along with rapid breathing. This form of cancer is more common in dogs over 10 years of age and could be the cause of older dogs breathing fast or more heavily than usual.”  Hmmmm…. Yeah, that’s a possibility. But MarvelVet said, when asked, that the X-ray he made showed no sign of cancer in her lungs.

• Anemia

• Usually caused by a hookworm infestation. Not likely in our parts: hookworm is not endemic here, and these dogs spend most of their time loafing in the house.

• Cushing’s Syndrome, which results from overproduction of cortisol caused by a benign tumor of the adrenal gland.

• Unlikely: she doesn’t have any of the other symptoms.

• Collapsed trachea, in which the tracheal rings begin to collapse, and as air is squeezed through, a characteristic honking cough results. This also can cause fast breathing while the dog is resting.

• Highly likely. The habit of choking when drinking water is also suggestive. And how is collapsed trachea treated? By golly: “Cough suppressants, bronchodilators, corticosteroids (to control inflammation), and/or antibiotics. In obese patients, weight loss helps decrease respiratory effort. Although treatment is not curative, a study released in 1994 showed that 71 percent of dogs treated medically showed a good long-term response.”  And what has caused Cassie’s cough and other symptoms to go away: Temaril-P…an antihistamine with a small amount of prednisone. Uh huh!

Why did I need to be told, eh?

Am I being irrationally paranoid about this? MarvelVet is a nice man, a visibly intelligent man, who seems to be genuinely, heartfelt concerned about the welfare of dogs and cats. He is an excellent vet.

Seriously: am I utterly off the wall to suspect overtreatment, a rush to possibly unnecessary treatment, and a strong money motive here? Maybe I’m too suspicious, too skeptical, too jaded after so many other experiences along those lines.

Doggy Update: Death Refuses to Have Her

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So Cassie the Beleaguered Corgi seemed better after mid-morning. She kinda sprang back. Along about 2:00 p.m., we had an appointment with a vet at the clinic where my son takes his dog. My, that was a refreshing drive: only took about 10 minutes to get there, as opposed to the 40-minute drive required to arrive in MarvelVet’s precincts.

I explained my questions and misgivings to this vet. She allowed as to how these were reasonable questions and thought that indeed there was some ambiguity in the various indications. All in all, though, she agreed with MarvelVet that what ails the dog is probably Valley fever.

However, on this check-up Cassie seemed significantly better. Whereas MarvelVet was alarmed because he could hear the congestion in her little chest, today no such sounds were audible. Her temperature was down to normal. Her cough has been better most of the day. She only wheezed once at the vet’s office.

She (vet) also said the fluconazole should have few bothersome side effects in dogs. She thinks Cassie has been dragging because of the ailment, not because of the cure. And she suggested testing her again in three or four weeks, by which time she suspects the titre will change from negative to positive.

Hm.

The incubation period for Valley fever is 7 to 28 days after exposure. If you believe this is a new infection, that would make sense: this summer we had several dust storms that blew into the hood. Because we’re in the rain shadow of the North Mountains, we do tend to be protected from so-called “haboobs,” a stupid sell-newspapers name for dust storms, but this year they were pretty fierce. So…yeah…maybe she picked this up over the summer.

But the truth is, if you live in Arizona’s low desert, you’re exposed just by virtue of living here. You can harbor the fungus for a long time without ever noticing. The if something happens to dent your immune system, voilà! You notice…  And 12 years of doggy age — some 70 years± of human years — most surely is enough to dent your immune system. WhatEVER,,,the likelihood of her having picked it up over the past decade or so is extremely high.

So this vet: she’s from Trinidad. I liked her a lot. She spent a lot of time examining the pooch and chatting with the human, and it was clear she really knew what she was talking about. Yeah: I was impressed.

She and her husband, an IT dude, are so revolted by the political situation in our country that they’re seriously thinking of moving back.

And therein lies the brain drain issue: they’re only two of the many young professionals I know who speak of leaving the country. Permanently. If we haven’t stupided down America enough, the present administration is busily delivering the coup de grâce: when all the bright young men and women leave, we’ll have only a few smart old people left to keep the nation on track. And once they’re gone? Bye-bye American Republic, hello Banana Republic.

But as for the dog? She seems much better right this minute. She drags in the morning, but by mid-day perks up. There’s hope that she may still have a year or three of the good life. Or maybe even…greatness…

 

Doggy & Human Ups and Downs

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Luckily for the Human, it had agreed to host a dear friend and cat for an hour or so, while hordes of Realtors swarmed through their house, which they’re putting up for sale. They didn’t want to be there, and they surely did not want their cat there, while a bunch of strangers cavorted around the place. So the wife went to the beauty parlor and the hubby and kitty came over to the Funny Farm.

This provided a therapeutic break for the Human. I really needed some company this morning. The damn computer was working hard to thwart me at every turn — had a helluva time trying to catch up with the gerjillion tasks running late, and whenever I did manage to get something more or less posted, it invariably went up wrong, so I had to delete stuff and try to dork with it to get it to do what it was supposed to do and UGHHHH! I hate that kind of thing under the best of conditions, but when with even a small degree of extra stress, it drives me CRAZY!

And there was plenty of extra stress. Cassie the Corgi seemed even sicker than usual. She had a hard time eating the food I put in front of her. And when I smushed some dog food around her morning pill to get it down her, Ruby pounced and grabbed it.

Honestly, I do not know which dog swallowed the pill, but I’m pretty sure it was Ruby.

So this means that every time I have to medicate Cassie, I’ll have to lock Ruby behind a door in another room. One more fun hassle to make life grand.

Things went downhill from there. Mostly in the computer department.

Enfin, with the cat and the guest here, the dogs were locked up in the back bedroom. Good place for ’em!

When I returned from delivering my friend home and released the hounds, strangely enough Cassie seemed much more perky.

This morning I’d have said she was pounding on Death’s Door. Five hours later, she trots into the backyard, chases Ruby a short way across their racetrack, and appears to have lost the limp.

Yes. A limp is a symptom of disseminated Valley Fever, so as you can imagine the fact that for the past few days she has barely been able to hobble up the hall has been making me crazy. Yet another of the many things to make one crazy.

But she limps all the time. She’s always limped off and on, ever since I got her 10 years ago. Just not this badly.

Maybe it’s not from whatever is ailing her, but maybe she was injured. I have to lift her both on and off the bed. It’s possible I accidentally twisted her or kinked something, unknowing, and maybe that’s why she was limping. Or maybe Ruby gave her a whack when I wasn’t looking. WhatEVER. For a brief shining moment, she’s been limp-free.

In about 40 minutes, I’ve got to start yet another long trek toward Scottsdale, this time to visit the vet my son uses. I want a second opinion about the Valley fever theory. Several second opinions to address several concerns:

To wit: Can we please get empirical proof that this dog really has Valley fever before putting her on a drug that’s clearly making her sick and then proposing to keep her on it for six months to a year? Or more?

The dog came down with a cough at the time some sort of respiratory infection was epidemic. The cough improved when treated with antibiotics and a cough suppressant, but it persisted longer than expected. Is it not possible that it took her longer to get over a viral bug because, for godsake, she’s 12 years old! She is an elderly dog. Like an elderly human, she may not recover from infections at the speed of light. Is it not reasonable to suspect that the elevated neutrocil and monocyte values might reflect an ordinary viral respiratory infection, not Valley fever? Might the congestion Dr. B saw on the X-ray be pneumonia or bronchitis, rather than Valley fever?

Does it really make sense to dose a 12-year-old dog with a drug that makes her sick, and to keep her on it past her normal life span? Seriously?

Damn it! I hate to be one of those patients. But my innate skepticism just will not go away.

And my innate skepticism has served me exceptionally well in the past. One might even call it, say, a kind of survival mechanism.

Report from Damage Control Central

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A week from Digital Hell has left the Fat Lady barely treading water. God, but I do hate computerized time sucks. The background noise from Washington doesn’t help…

Two half-days — i.e., a total of a full eight-hour day — have been consumed on the phone with Apple techs. Can’t complain too much about that: it’s mighty nice that Apple has techs and allows them to spend uncounted numbers of hours helping customers to fix this, that, and the other snafu. I’ve lost track of the details — makes my head hurt to think too hard about this stuff. But the upshot was that after one of the techs decided that nothing would do but what we must re-install the Sierra OS on the MacBook (even though I told him that would cause a huge fuck-up), we got…yes, a huge fuck-up.

The current surviving upshot of that is that though the MacBook can read and store to DropBox, the iMac no longer connects to DropBox. When I inquired of DB techs how that might be fixed, I got a pages-long email filled with arcane instructions, not the first word of which do I understand. Truly: whatever it is they have in mind that I’m gonna do…I have NO idea.

So now I’m paying a hefty fee for DropBox’s storage and can access it only with one computer. The thing is, the iMac has an external hard drive permanently installed, to which Apple’s nifty Time Machine constantly backs up data. So that means the iMac should keep an up-to-date back-up of DropBox.

Except…now it’s not. Because it can’t “see” DropBox anymore.

So to keep that backed up, I have to schlep the Macbook into the back office and hook it up to an external drive and manually run Time Machine. This doesn’t take long, but it’s an effin’ PITA and I don’t think I should have to do that when it was working fine before.

Meanwhile, however, WordPress is about to pull the Number of All Numbers on its users. The WP that we know and love — and that operates all our blogs — is about to be dumped in the trash, to be replaced with a radically new system called Gutenberg.

This, obviously is going to represent a gigantic new learning curve.

Those of us who are sick of the brain clutter occasioned by the glories of computer technology do not welcome said development. And those of us who have had experience with earlier seismic upheavals know what to expect: If entire sites don’t crash (which they probably will), at best data will be lost. Probably lots of data.

Funny about Money has been online since 20 and ought-7. And y’know, I don’t really want to lose all that history.

Sure, I know: the nature of the Web is ephemeral. But damn it all! Writing this stuff and tracking down images and doing the research for some of the more solid pieces is work. Why should some tribe of computer jocks take it upon themselves to steal my work so that they can amuse themselves with fun new code?

By way of preserving the stuff for posterity, such as it is, I decided I would back up FaM not through BackupBuddy (whose product I suspect will be unintelligible once the program that generated the content goes away) but by copying it to Word and then, at my leisure, formatting it for print. And eventually printing it out and stashing it in a closet, where one day after I croak over my kid will find it and can, if he so pleases, feed it into his backyard firepit.

At least I will’ve tried…

This sounds like a much bigger job than it is. In fact, it only takes about a half-hour to copy out a year’s worth of blog content. But since we’re talking 11 years, that’s still ample time suck, thankyouverymuch. But at this point I only have one year’s worth of posts left to dump into Wyrd files. This at least will keep what content is left in a form that can’t be magically “disappeared” by the upcoming change.

And when I say “what content is left,” I kid you not. At one point along the line, either WordPress or Big Scoots, my current web host, unilaterally decided to delete all the images in SIX YEARS’ worth of posts! Yes. Without asking my permission, without so much as telling me. So everything predating the first quarter of 2013 is absent most of the images I inserted. Isn’t that super?

At any rate, at least the copy is still there.

Apple’s substitution of iPhoto with the irritating and practically useless Photos program effectively ditched images that were made before the current operating system superseded the far more user-friendly OS of yore. They may not have been erased, but they’re hidden in the system so deep I’ll be damned if I can find them. So even if I wanted to take the time to track down the deleted WordPress images and use them to decorate the rescued posts, it would be a daunting and probably impossible task.

One of the things I did learn to do, thanks to that fiasco, was to save images that go into current blog posts separately from Photos, but copying them to a folder on…yeah…DropBox.

How can I do without these hassles? Let me count the ways…

All of this has interfered with my usual routine little hobby activities. Thank God there’s no paying work in-house!!! Didn’t get this week’s installment of Ella’s story written until the last minute. Whatever went online this week was not proofread and frankly I have no idea whether it makes any sense. I have not uploaded today’s installment of “Asked,” either, not because it isn’t there but because I’m effin’ All Computered Out.

{sigh}

Meanwhile, the Circus in the White House has gotten pretty entertaining, hasn’t it? The sleaze has been outed. Now…will our honored elected representatives get off their collective duff and do their job?

Really: even if Trump is indicted and/or impeached, that might be worse than what we’ve got. We then would end up with Pence as President. And Mr. Pence is, unlike our present Great Leader, decidedly not a clownish dunce. Mr. Pence is an accomplished politician who knows how to get things done. Unfortunately, he also is a doctrinaire fanatic, and so the things he’d like to get done are not necessarily things that are good for the rest of us.

This, I suppose, is the way the world ends…

There could be hope, though…check it out:

Why I Bank at a Credit Union…

by

A fine Day from Hell in every way: at five in the morning, temp on the back porch in the 90s and air so thick you need a spoon to breathe it. It rained during the night, so that did cool things off. But. Ugh.

First order of the day’s business, once business establishments opened, was to run up to the credit union and try to find out why all my accounts are scrambled.

Ugh, indeed!

You’ll recall that to reset my grip on the finances, I decided to use Costco cash cards and my existing credit union cookie-jar accounts to create an “envelope method” approach to budgeting. Purchases at Costco would stop when the current cash-card was used up ($300, though I may drop that to $200). And (as usual) set-asides for 2019 taxes & insurance, for incoming Medicare and Medigap reimbursements, and for an emergency fund would be doled out, monthly, among three credit-union savings accounts.

These accounts have always existed. You can make as many savings accounts as you choose at my credit union, plus your checking account. So I’ve always had an account called “Emergency Savings,” one called “Mayo” (for the medical reimbursements), and one called “T&I” (for tax & insurance).

At the time I make this decision, I figure I’ll live on my 401(k)’s Required Minimum Drawdown (or try to), and transfer all the Social Security payments into “Emergency Savings,” an account whose balance had dwindled to a little over five dollars. To accomplish this, I get on the phone and talk with a credit union’s CSR. I ask this person how I can arrange to auto-transfer the gummint’s monthly electronic deposits from checking to the account branded “emergency savings.”  SS payments come in unpredictably, roughly depending on what cycle the bureaucrats use to send them to you. Mine arrive sometime between the first and about the 12th of the month. I explain that I’d like this money set aside to build an emergency fund and I’d like not to have to do that manually whenever the SSA gets around to sending the money. She says she will make it so.

Good. Days go by.

Now I do some more budgeteering — and I realize that there’s no way I can possibly live on the RMD alone. While I probably can avoid suctioning up all the SS income, I’m going to need at least $500 a month of it. Probably more. When I go online to arrange an automatic transfer of $530/month, I’m astonished to discover the “Mayo” savings account has disappeared, and the chunk of dough set aside in there to pay the Mayo’s next bill has disappeared with it.

The money to cover medical bills has been moved over into my regular savings account (which I’d dubbed “Emergency Savings,” but which has been renamed “Share Savings”).

When I go to double-check the scheduled transfer of the SS funds, I can find exactly no trace of it.

So. You know better. I know better. We all know better: Never do your banking over the phone.

This meant I had to drive to the credit union, collar a manager or assistant manager, and find out WTF is going on.

  1. What happened to the scheduled transfer of the monthly Social Security deposit into Emergency Savings?
  2. If it didn’t get arranged, why not?
  3. If it did get arranged, why doesn’t it show as a scheduled transfer? Where did the transfer that was supposedly arranged go? Is that monthly deposit going to disappear into limbo?
  4. If it did not get arranged, can we arrange it? Can we be certain that we’re not duplicating a scheduled transfer that doesn’t show even though it  supposedly was made?
  5. Can we arrange an auto transfer on the 20th of each month from Emergency Savings (holding the SS deposits) to checking, enough to make ends meet?

Oh, those lucky people! We need to start a U-Tube Video series: Here She Comes Again!

So I get up there and discover…

  1. If a scheduled transfer was made from the CU’s environs instead of by you, you can’t see it in the online “scheduled transfer” function. (Naturally! Why did I ask?)
  2. He doesn’t have a clue what happened to the “Mayo” savings account.
  3. He suggests it would be simpler to transfer the difference between the total SS monthly deposit and the amount I need  into the “Emergency Savings” account. Keep whatever is needed in checking and transfer the rest to the savings account.
  4. He will rename “Emergency Savings” as “Mayo,” leaving the amount for the medical bills in that account rather than transferring them around.
  5. And he will create a new “Emergency Savings” account to hold a little over half of incoming Social Security deposits, leaving the rest in checking to cover cash flow. We hope.

Sounds OK, right? He says what I see at home is different from what he says on his monitor. He suggests I send him a screenshot, after I get back to the Funny Farm, so we can check that all this is working.

And so, off I go to retrace the 8.2 miles of my steps back to the house: it required driving 16.4 miles and about 90 minutes of my time to accomplish this.

A check-up revealed that we had it almost right. We ended up with…

  • a checking account  (Balance: one year’s worth of RMD plus a few bucks)
  • a savings account (“Emergency Savings, 00.” Unfunded)
  • a savings account, (“Taxes & Insurance, 60.” $8408)
  • a savings account (“Taxes and Insurance, 61.”  $538.95)

So what has happened is that the set-aside account to cover medical bills was redundantly named “taxes and insurance” rather than “Mayo.” But at least we have an account into which to stash Medigap and Medicare payments.

Gaaaahhhhhh! So I had to get on the email, send him the desired secreenshot, and ask him to rename account 61 in such a way that I can distinguish it from the real tax-&-insurance “envelope” at a glance.

Jeez.

Long as I’m wrestling with money online, I decide to check to see how much AMEX thinks I owe it as of this minute, to be sure it jibes with the $130 I believe I’ve charged up.

Well. No. AMEX’s website says I owe that fine outfit $682!!!!!!

WTF??????? Have they not received the seven-something I sent them when the last statement came in?

Go back to the credit union’s site and find that they have indeed paid last month’s bill, as directed. AMEX should have received the money on or about the 5th…four days ago.

Get a chat rep online at the AMEX site. After endless waiting and screwing around with typing out the question and explaining that it was paid electronically and should have been received, I learned that yea verily it had been received. It would take another 24 to 48 hours  before that fact registered on their website.

Ducky.

Q. So, I ask: how much have I charged up on the card in the current billing cycle — that is, how much do you see owing right now?

A. About $126.

That’s four bucks less than my records say I’ve charged — probably because this card applies an automatic cash kickback to eligible transactions. But at least their conception of reality is now close to my conception of reality.

What a bitch of a morning! And early afternoon.

Coulda been worse, though. Just imagine if all those cookie-jar shenanigans had been happening at, say, Wells Fargo.

Needing to pick up some one-pound bags of chlorine shock treatment this morning, I serendipitously discovered a Leslie’s about six blocks from the campus (where the CU office resides). And even more serendipitously, right next door to the thing was a Fry’s grocery store….where I could buy another breakfast melon, some grapes, and a few tomatoes to restock the larder.

And at the Leslie’s, I discovered that eight pounds worth of shock treatment in bags costs about $14 less than the same amount of the same stuff dispensed in bulk. Jeez. Such a deal.