Not the most auspicious start
So here it is: 2009. I was quite looking forward to a new year, since 2008 wasn’t an especial highlight for me. Not that we had any big catastrophies in the family or anything. But there wasn’t all that much good happening either. All in all, when looking back over my life later, 2008 will probably go down as one of the lost years. Which is, of course, wholly my own fault.
I am suffering from depressions from time to time, and working my way up out of these deep, black holes isn’t any fun at all. The whole second half of last year I was battling these demons again. NaNoWriMo in November was the first thing that actually excited me and lifted my mood considerably. It was not even so much the winning, but only the fact that I was writing regularly again, regardless of the result I produced (the novel is still not finished, but I haven’t given up on it yet).
But funnily, around Christmas, which usually is the most depressing time of year for me, I felt my spirits lift and the conviction that 2009 would be a much better year took hold of me. There’s absolutely no reason for me to feel that way, but then again, there usually is no explicable reason for me to be depressed either, so I got used to not question such things too closely.
So when New Year’s Eve came around, for the first time in years I actually felt in the mood for celebration for once. Since I don’t know anybody I could go to a party with, I stayed at home as usual and spent the night with my parents. My mom insists on staying up until midnight each year, so we can ring in the new year with Champagne and watch the neighbours’ fireworks (we don’t waste money on the stuff ourselves).
Because I was in such a good mood, I made the mistake to drink a whole bottle of red wine by myself. To say that I am usually not much of a drinker is a serious understatement. I like cocktails or the occasional glass of wine as much as the next person, but I often go months without a drop of alcohol. But this wine was just delicious, and the evening was long and I had nothing better to do - so before I knew it the bottle was empty.
I felt good until midnight, watched the fireworks, drank a glass of Champagne, wished the neighbours a happy new year, tried to calm down our dog, who hates the noise of firewoks and all around just felt fine. Until I wanted to go to bed a bit later. Lying down when you’re drunk is a very bad idea - so I not only spent some quality-time hanging over the toilet, but had then to stay up until 3 a.m. until I was sober enough to actually go to bed without the whole room starting to rotate around me again.
Interestingly, my good feeling about 2009 stayed with me despite my hangover from hell the next day. Granted, after such a start, one would think it could only get better.
Naturally, it didn’t. On Friday we had to rush our dog Jenny to the vet, where she had to have her uterus taken out, because it had gotten septic. She had been feeling unwell for a while already, but it hadn’t seemed to be anything serious. All we suspected was an upset stomach from something she ate (like all of us she had gotten way too much sweets and stuff in the time leading up to Christmas).
Well, turned out we were wrong and the thing would have killed her, if we had waited one more day. As it was, the vet operated on her for 3 hours straight to take it all out.
The ironic thing about this is that the same thing happened to our last dog. Apparently it is quite a common thing to happen to female dogs when they reach a certain age. But back then with Tessy the signs of her being in considerable pain had been much more obvious, so when Jenny just stopped eating for a few days and seemed only a bit subdued, we didn’t get the idea it could be anything life-threatening. Sadly, Tessy, even though she survived the operation itself, had to be put to sleep a few days later anyway, because her kidneys gave out.
So it was with considerable trepidation that we waited for Jenny to come out of the OR. And when the vet told us that the operation went well, it didn’t elicit a whole lot of optimism, because she had said the same about Tessy 8 years ago.
Naturally, I didn’t leave Jenny out of my sight for more than 5 minutes in the last few days. I expect I felt much like a mother would when her only child is sick. I slept on the couch with her right beside me - well, she slept, I mostly stayed awake to check on her breathing. I always kept expecting her to take a turn for the worse any moment. Luckily, so far she didn’t.
On the contrary, now it is day 3 after the operation and she is steadily getting better. She still sleeps a lot, for which I am grateful, because otherwise she can be a handful and hard to convince to stay still for any prolonged period of time. But she is eating regularly again, can walk normally and shows every sign of recovery. She even takes her medication (monstrously big antibiotic pills) without too much grumbling. Tomorrow we have to take her to the vet again to check on the wound. And if everything goes as planned, the stitches come out in about a week.
So I’m cautiously optimistic that she will make it. It would really put a damper on my feelings for the new year if she didn’t.
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