Cota

Here is one of my favorite pictures of Cota, tailgating right outside Spartan Stadium this fall. You have to get the last little drop of soup out of the cup, don’t you? She has Spartan spirit! I took the other picture today. I think she is just as cute as Uno, the beagle who won the Westminster dog show. What do you think?

Thank you to those who have expressed concern about Cota. She is doing fine. Cota has chronic lymphocytic leukemia. She was diagnosed about a year ago. Even though her white blood cell and lymphocyte counts were high, she didn’t seem to be affected by it, so I decided to wait on treatment for her. I took her back to the vet for her regular check-up a couple weeks ago, and every measure in her blood was worse than a year ago. I reluctantly started her on a chemotherapy drug this weekend, and she seems to be taking it well.

All of the many vets I have taken to her say she should be feeling lethargic. But she’s not. Cota is such a trooper; you wouldn’t know anything is wrong. She acts like she always has, and still has her personality, energy and appetite.

I went to Meijer Friday to pick up her prescription, and had quite an interesting conversation with a very chatty pharmacist. Right away, she could see that the prescription was for a dog, so I asked her if she had any experience with this drug and dogs. She said no, but launched into a crazy conversation. Apparently this nice pharmacist was also trained in France in acupuncture. Her sister once had an accident where she backed over a small dog who was too fat, and pretty much destroyed the dog’s hip. The dog underwent acupuncture treatment and subsequently recovered. Then this lady went on about how animals are good for us, always happy to see us, and truly appreciate us. We get attached to pets. She said she does not have a dog, but for a time she and her daughter had a pet rat. Her daughter dropped the rat (accidentally I’m sure) and it hit its abdomen on the edge of the trash can. The rat was hurt very badly and they cried for 3 hours. But they nursed the rat and it lived for awhile after that, but when it eventually died, they had cried so much before that they didn’t cry when it passed away. Thankfully, another customer came up behind me at that point and she had to turn her attention to them.

So I left the pharmacy area and escaped to the deli to get liver sausage to hide the pills in. I guess the good thing about this is a dog doesn’t know it’s getting chemotherapy. To Cota, it’s a big hunk of braunschweiger that she wolfs down, and then since it’s sooo good she licks her bowl completely clean at least 3 times to make sure she gets every last little bit. That can’t be so bad.

Progress Report

I have been sick with a cold and the flu for about the last three weeks, I think. I can’t even remember how long it’s been since I last felt good. So the two drink minimum has fallen completely by the wayside. Since I’m not doing so well with that goal, I’m trying really hard to keep my other one. My second New Year’s goal was that I am not going to gossip about my family. It hasn’t been too hard to keep that one, until now, that is, because I had not heard any new gossip. But now that I have, I still intend to honor my pledge. I’ll go with this one for as long as I possibly can, even though it may get tough.

Since I don’t have any energy lately, I have been falling asleep during the second half of MSU basketball games. So I guess it’s good that I missed most of the loss to Purdue and the second half of the loss to Indiana. We will play Indiana again at Breslin, so I think it will have a different outcome next time. Tomorrow we have Penn State at Breslin, so that should be better too. I'll try to stay awake for it.