Sunday, December 18, 2016

One Dog's War on Drugs

Friday night, one week after surgery, I threw in the towel on stoicism and took my first prescription narcotic.  The pain that day had preoccupied me to the point that I was acting the Mr. Bean part too well.
Exhibit A:
After work, I fed myself and the dogs and that's all I remember until midnight, when I woke up in my barn clothes, sprawled on my bed, with Cole nestled on top of me and Garrett laying at me feet staring at me.  Yeah, all the lights were still on. 
I struggled to get back to sleep because now my knee was screaming from being at an awkward angle for 6 hours.  It was a restless, restless night.  Cole shared in my distress:
 He missed my face by 5 inches.  Dog puke is an effective alarm clock.  DO NOT press snooze.
He seemed pleased to have emoted all over the place.
Cole seldom throws up.  Never once during chemo.  But once this past Saturday, 12 hours after I'd been home from the hospital, all stinky of anesthetics and drugs.  So much for my experimenting with drugs. 
I've gone back to being defiant, it soothes him.
By Saturday noon, he was back his normal self.
And we worked together and finished the horse cemetery the guys and I had started on Friday. 

 How can you reproach a creature for being so worried about you?