What would D. say?

My mom's partner, D., is the best alpha person a dog could know on the planet. She's done something with my mom and now I don't have to pretend to be THE BOSS anymore. I was a terrible boss. It's not my calling, but enough about Greeks (alpha, beta, interferon...)

Anyway ... D. had more of a scare than I think my mom did during 2007. My mom was mostly drugged out on Darvoset, Vicodin, Percocet, Oxycodone, etc ... or comatose, and didn't realize what was going on until she woke up with all sorts of paraphernalia attached to her orifices. She said that there was a breathing tube, a feeding tube, chest tubes, drains, and assorting other conduits for bodily fluids. Her partner actually had to look at all this stuff. My mom on the other hand just felt some of it. Then again, what can you feel when you're as high as a kite. She told me that she had intense hallucinations. So whenever I have a pressing question, I head on over to my mom's partner, and ask her. She's the woman in the know. She can look death in the face and, I'm not sure what she did with that view, but she's still here, and I'm glad. She even plays with me. Can't ask more than that. Playing is where it's at. To the right is a picture of me at my mom's 49th birthday glad-to-be-alive party. It was originally of D. and my mom playing, but they're not up for photo ops right now. They were at some kind of women's social, dancing, frolicking (I like the licking part) I wanted to go along, but I hate wearing clothes and they said ... "No clothes, no dance!" so I took their picture out and put mine in instead. I'm cuter anyway.

In The Beginning

Hi. I'm Sam. My full name is Samuel Clarence (after the ghost in "It's a Wonderful Life"). I'm 11 years old, spry, smart, loyal, and courageous. Here's a picture of me just so you have it (ignore the cat and no, I am not a fawn in disguise)
My mom got real sick last year, and in not-the-male-way, showed signs, serious signs, of a heart condition which no doctor, dentist, ENT (the long name is just too long to spell out here), or orthopedic guy, picked up. Even when presented with symptoms such as shortness of breath, exhaustion, jaw pain, back pain ... they all missed it. My mom was very very sick. Her FRIENDS brought her to the emergency room. Her FRIENDS read the MRI and assessed a very bad situation. She is lucky to have such FRIENDS. I know that she's glad that I was a good boy too. I kept quiet, didn't ask too much, waited ... a lot. So anyway, the bottom line, after pretty much every specialty had a look, and every test under the sun was ordered and reviewed, they determined that she had endocarditis with septic emboli. Read that as VERY BAD NEWS. She's lucky that she was young (48 is considered young for this) so they operated on her and, P.E.T.A. step aside, a cow did not die in vain. Bottom line? She now has a new aortic valve (bovine) and a pacemaker. The pacemaker keeps her going, and going, and going because the infection that she had ate away the electrical parts of her heart. BAD INFECTION! You go sit in the corner! BAD, BAD, BAD INFECTION! So for 40 days, and 40 nights, she slept in a drug induced state at Robert Wood Johnson, in their oh-so-very-lovely ICU area, tended to by oh-so-very-efficient nurses (more about them later). Funny thing about humans ... if they lay down too long, eventually they can't get up and take you out for a walk. Personally, I like laying down. I lay down. I get up. I eat. I play. I lay down. Life is wonderful!!! :) Anyway ... back to my mom. So after all the hospital stuff, she was transported by ambulance (or so she whispered to me) to a nursing home where she learned to walk again. She said that she also learned to put clothes on too. I don't see why they just don't grow fur like I have. HARUMPH! She said that she *did* grow fur, but it didn't really do the trick and people stared. I don't know about you, but I've never noticed people staring at my fur.
Sniffin' your ears,
Sam