Whose Dog Life Is It Anyway?

death and dying, New York Stories, Politics and Culture

Following my mother’s stroke, she sometimes knew she was in a hospital in Albany.  Other times she thought she was in a library in Queens.  However, when asked by the Bollywood-handsome resident whether or not she wanted the feeding tube, she replied quite coherently, “Not if it’s not going to make me better.”

She had a DNR, and her wishes were clear. Medication that might prevent more clotting in her brain would probably cause her heart to go, and the meds for her heart would have brought more clots to her brain (as would doing nothing).  But even putting in the tube and waiting for nature to take its course, would have been prolonging her agony.  As my sister said, “If she can’t eat ice-cream, what’s the point?”

With dogs it’s different.

Meet Maizie, a Jack Russell-mix-rescue.  My better half took her in in 1999 when she was probably somewhere between two and four years old.  Do the math.  He was going to give her to a friend as a companion for her other dog, but when the two dogs met, Maizie attacked, and the friend got a nasty-Maizie bite while trying to break it up.  After that, my future husband knew he had something “special” on his hands.  When we began dating, and I brought up his possibly moving in, I had the feeling he was waiting for Maizie to die first, but oddly enough, she liked me, and there wasn’t a problem until that unfortunate incident in the elevator about which we never speak.

Maizie never had a 100% accident-in-the house-free record, but I was able to “un-paper train” her.  She got the idea that the apartment was not for peeing and was pretty good about it.  Then in July,  that changed. Suddenly, there were puddles of clear looking pee all over the apartment. She was waking up unconcerned in her own urine, and drinking water by the bucketful.

So off to the vet, who had long suspected Cushings, quite common in older dogs and treatable. We were warned about the expense involved. Medication requires expensive monitoring and over-medication could cause the dog to slip into Addison’s disease and die.  If the cortisol levels don’t go down enough, however, the symptoms will persist.  So there’s a protocol that you have to commit to.

Some people choose not to treat older dogs, not only because of the monitoring, but because lowering the cortisol may bring out other conditions like arthritis which high cortisol actually alleviates.

We discussed our options, including putting her down.  How long did she really have?  The end was inevitable.  Why wait till she was suffering?  Why put her through all the vet visits?  But were we being selfish?  Reacting only to the cost of treatment and not really thinking about her best interest?  We couldn’t live with the pee.  Or could we?  My husband probably could.  He was at work all day, while I mostly work from home.  Why do I hate her?  It’s not like I’m a neat freak.  Why draw the line at dog pee?  Was he thinking I was being mean, wanting to kill his dog?  She was his dog, before she was ours. Had I ever even liked Maizie?  Hadn’t I just married him for the health insurance to begin with?  Did we really even know each other? Could this marriage be saved?

Besides us, what about her? What the hell is the best interest of an animal?  Does a dog contemplate her mortality?   Would she be terrified of being put down because she knows what it is? Or would she be terrified because she’d read our anxiety and guilt, and because she knows that no good ever came from a vet visit?

We chose to treat.   We didn’t really want to take that anniversary trip to Italy anyway.  About three weeks in, her symptoms had mostly abated, but then she crashed. She could hardly move, wasn’t eating, had no sparkle in her eyes. We were ready to put her down, but the vet convinced us this was nothing more than a bump in the road, a medication management issue.  With a little “pred” and  a lower dose of the Cushings drug, she could go on for years.

Why was I suddenly remembering the last year of my 1973 Dodge Dart, and why was the vet suddenly reminding me of my old mechanic?

The clincher was Maizie herself.  She  rallied as soon as we got to the vets, a situation that probably caused her diminished cortisol to rise, and she really did seem to be saying, “Please don’t kill me.”

The second time she crashed, she was on the lower dose.  She stopped eating.  We couldn’t even give her the prednisone. By the time we brought her in, she needed  IV fluids and critical care.  Her electrolytes were messed up.  After her first night, the vet asked us to visit to see if we could coax her to eat.  We both left work, but we couldn’t get the normally voracious Maizie to try more than a few bites.  She still had to stay over till the next evening, but finally her appetite returned and her electrolytes were good.

A few thousand dollars since her diagnosis and she’s home, tapering off the pred.  They don’t want to withdraw it too quickly, lest she go into shock.   She’s back to peeing clear streams and drinking constantly.  Today, there was a minor victory when she finally figured out what the wee-wee pads were for. but it was probably just coincidence as she ignored them later.

Where do we go from here?  Possibly she’ll be ok once we taper her, at least for while.  The meds may have had the effect of screwing enough with the endocrine system to lower her cortisol for a while. However, given how rapidly her thirst and appetite have returned, we suspect that even without the pred she’ll continue to urinate in the house. I’m not talking about the occasional age-related accident by the way.  I’m talking about walking her every two hours and still seeing about eight indoor accidents a day.  I’m talking about the feeling of dread I now experience whenever I hear her lap up water. I’m talking about comically slipping on wet floors when we get up in the middle of the night.  I’m talking about … an unsustainable situation.

Excuse me, but there she goes again.

The vet says if the symptoms remain once she’s off the pred, we could try an even smaller dose of the meds.  The real experts, other dog owners who I’ve met on the forums, report that with this particular pill there’s no rhyme or reason. Sometimes big dogs do well on very little and tiny ones need a lot, and a more experienced vet might have started her on a really low dose, and worked up, which could have saved us thousands and not brought her to the brink of oblivion.  I’m terrified of seeing her crash again, but beyond that, we’re going broke.  The test they “need” before they can restart her will run upwards of $400 dollars. Then it’ll be around $100  for the new meds at the lower dose.  After that, in  another two weeks they’ll need  to recheck her levels.  The meds we have in the house are useless because they are capsules and not easy or safe to split.  We can’t even try going rogue and splitting them because without a very expensive scale that measures milligrams we can’t measure the dose, and even if we could we’d need another refill if it worked.

My husband suggested, “You work in Washington Heights, surely you know someone with a pharmacy scale and a soft-spot for dogs.”  He is considering bluntness telling the vet,  “We don’t need more tests. Just give us the script or the dog dies.”

In the end, she dies anyway.

Hindsight is perfect.  Surely, if we knew all this, we would have put her down weeks ago, maybe.

Update:  Just adding a quick link to this video about our relationship with our animal companions via  the late, great George Carlin.  “Same shit, different species.”

Nothing Sacred — The DSK Case Falls Apart

Politics and Culture, Things that Piss Me off from The NY Times,

“It’s like a live action metaphor. The head of the IMF trying to **** an African. It’s like he’s posing for his own editorial cartoon”

— May 16, 2011, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

With questions about the alleged victim’s credibility, the case against Dominique Strauss-Kahn is falling apart, but in the beginning, Stewart nailed it. What a metaphor!

The story resonated with New Yorkers. It wasn’t just the IMF connection. It was about the privileged wealthy versus the poor and humble. New York has long been a city of economic contrasts, great — almost inconceivable wealth, tons of strivers, a struggling middle class, and of course the poor who we always have with us and even when some of them manage to lift themselves out of poverty within a generation or two, there are always new arrivals from third world slums.

Those of us born in this City who are well-educated and hold down good jobs — the teachers, the cops, the plumbers, doctors, nurses, lawyers, store owners, talk show hosts, financiers and so on, are often only a generation or two or three removed from poverty and oppression.

While the City does not have the kinds of gated community found in wealthy suburbs, there is often an invisible gate, hotels with suites costing several thousand dollars a day which an ordinary person may only enter through the service door, cooperatives with two laundry rooms — one for the tenants who rarely use them and another more crowded one for the servants.

There are millions of people at the lower rung who remain invisible to the wealthy or even the comfortably middle-class. These are the people that drive the taxis, work in the remaining (and sometimes secretly operating) factories, bus tables, wash dishes, and of course clean hotel rooms.

America prides itself on being, not a classless society, but a society where anyone with pluck and guts can arrive and thrive, a land of opportunity, freedom and upward mobility where the cab driver from Ghana, can dream of owning his own medallion and someday a fleet of cabs, where the bus boy may imagine opening up his own restaurant, where even a hotel housekeeper can plan a better life for herself and her daughter.

When the newspapers first reported that the head of the IMF had been taken off a plane, prevented from leaving the country and was arrested for sexually assaulting a hotel maid, New Yorkers weren’t just shocked, they were proud. The French may have been outraged watching Strauss-Kahn’s infamous perp-walk, but to New Yorkers it was a signal that there was equal justice, that even the most lowly could not be used like a toilet, and even the most powerful could not flout the law.

We were pleased that our prosecutors would pursue a case that could become politically messy. We admired our cops for believing the victim. Her story was and remains believable and supported by physical evidence. And most of all we admired the plucky maid herself, for coming forward, for standing up, for not allowing this to happen to someone else.

The newspapers didn’t create a hagiography of the victim. We did. All the elements were there — she was New York, a hard working immigrant, who came here for a better life. We didn’t know her name, but we knew her struggles. She’d come from far away. She’d seen some terrible things. We knew she was granted political asylum. She was a Muslim and wore hijab to work. Could she even do that in France? Her courage inspired us all.

And then we found out there was a lot we didn’t know. It shouldn’t surprise us. The poor can’t always afford to keep their hands clean. We know she lied to get political asylum, including a lie about having been gang raped. We’re told she claimed someone else’s child as a dependent on her taxes — though we are not told if there were any extenuating circumstances like whether or not she actually cared for her friend’s child, and spent her own money — a not unlikely scenario. We know that there were multiple phones and bank accounts in her name and this may (or may not) have something to do with her connection to a man now in jail facing drug charges.

While none of this means she wasn’t assaulted, all of it will be used by the defense if the case goes forward, a possibility less likely by the hour.

No one should be surprised that a poor woman would have a conversation with her boyfriend in jail wondering if there was any way she could cash in on pursuing charges. The bar for being a credible victim should not be perfection, but somehow we all feel a little duped, a bit conned because the maid isn’t the humble saint we created.

The whole episode I’m sure will be a movie someday. Probably one that like Reversal of Fortune or Bonfire of the Vanities explores issues of great wealth, masters of the universe who play by different rules, and lawyers who sell their services and maybe their souls. But the movie it reminds me of is the 1937 screwball comedy, Nothing Sacred. That’s the story of Hazel Flagg, a young woman from Vermont, who worked in a watch factory and was diagnosed with radium poisoning. A New York newspaper offers her a spree in New York and puts her up in a swell hotel. New Yorkers take her tragic story and courage to heart, celebrating her with girls’ clubs and many honors. But Hazel is not really dying. She found out she’d been misdiagnosed before she accepted the newspaper’s offer but she kept that secret and took what she could get. She hadn’t set out to lie, but she’s not who everyone thinks she is. She’s played by Carole Lombard, and we, the audience, are on her side the whole time. She was simply an opportunist, and what is more American than that?

Something happened between Strauss-Kahn and the housekeeper in that hotel room. No one is disputing that. It was either consensual or it wasn’t. There’s physical evidence that supports assault. We can ask ourselves which seems more likely, that Strauss-Kahn somehow “seduced” the housekeeper or that she was, as she has said attacked, My own belief is that it was more likely it happened the way the maid described it, but in Strauss-Kahn’s mind this may be a seduction. He may believe that he is irresistible, or that no means yes, or that certain kinds of woman are insatiable, or that all women are whores. That the alleged victim had a conversation about whether she could benefit financially from pursuing charges, does not make her less credible. Like Hazel Flagg, it makes her more American.

Self-Published At the Book Club

book reviews, writing/blogging/publishing related, , , , , ,

The New York Times Magazine has a story, which is only slightly condescending, about Amanda Hocking, the twenty-something self-publishing phenom whose paranormal romance/fantasies have earned her over $2 million.  Ms. Hocking recently signed a seven-figure deal with St. Martin’s Press. While stories like hers should do something to lift the stigma of self-publishing in the digital age, they are countered by other reports, such as the recent Reuter’s piece about counterfeit books being sold cheap on Kindle.

The truth is there probably never was a stigma for the mostly young readers of Ms. Hocking’s work.  They saw stories they were interested in and tried her books.  They didn’t avoid her work because it lacked a familiar imprint or because it wasn’t pre-certified by Publisher’s Weekly.

Within some genres, self-published books are selling well.  In thrillers, two of the top ten books at the Kindle Store US are self-published.  Both have the advantage of selling cheap — 99 cents compared to up to $12.99 for some of their competitors, which may be even more expensive than paperback versions. Romance, mystery and other genres have all been invaded by these upstarts.   While the Kindle Store is only one store, its scope is huge with e-books now outselling paperbacks on Amazon, which through its Kindle app, controls 75% of the e-book market.

Things are different when it comes to literary fiction.  Or perhaps I shouldn’t use the term “literary fiction.” Writers can classify their own works as “literary,” and a couple of self-published 99 cent novels identified as such have slipped into the top 20 on Kindle.  Both, however, also fall into other categories with wider appeal.  Maybe the term I’m looking for is “serious fiction.” The kind of books read by people who take reading seriously. You know who I mean — people who LOVE books,  pride themselves on actually having made their way through at least some of Joyce and Woolf, fans of all the Jonathans (Letham, Franzen, and Safron Foer), Paul Auster, David Foster Wallace, and anyone published in The New Yorker with the exception of Stephen King.  Those readers may read books from respectable independent houses or even obscure zines put out by writers and editors they’ve heard of, but 99.9% won’t even look at self-published work from the Kindleverse.

Months ago I suggested to a friend, a serious intellectual type and avid reader, that she look at a book I thought was not only good, but might even be important.  It was a historical novel, set mostly in London in 1963, with some back-story in the war and post-war years, references to mods and teddy-boys, jazz and The Beatles, as well as to the Cuban missile crisis and the Profumo scandal.  Her reply when she realized that the work did not have the approbation of a publishing house major or even minor was, “I don’t have enough time to read published books.”

I didn’t buy this explanation.  My theory is that while readers of genre fiction are simply looking for stories that keep them turning pages, “serious readers,” have another agenda. Heaven forbid they should like something that hasn’t been vetted by publishers and critics, only to be told later that it’s derivative or not as good as they thought.  It would be like buying a blank canvas, and then finding out it was just a blank canvas and not an accepted example of minimalism.  It’s not that they lack the time to read self-published books, they don’t even want to be seen with them.

The book, I was recommending was Larry Harrison’s Glimpses of a Floating World. Although I never convinced my friend, I’m pleased to say I got my book club to look at it.

This was only our third club meeting.  The previous selections were Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom, and The Yacoubian Building by Alaa Al Aswany.  I was thrilled that the club had taken my suggestion of Glimpses.. (Full disclosure: The author is fellow member of the Year 0 Writers group, and a facebook friend.  We first “met” on a writer’s site, where we admired each other’s work. We have never met in the non-virtual world.)

I didn’t take a poll, but I don’t believe anyone in the club had ever purchased or read a self-published book before.

So, how did it go?

As with previous selections, opinions varied. One reader complained that she didn’t find any of the characters sympathetic and didn’t see much change or growth in the protagonist, Ronnie.  It was also clear that she was not predisposed to read a book about a seventeen-year-old heroin addict.   Others pointed out that as long as he remained a junkie, showing growth would have been unrealistic,   but there were “glimpses” of his capacity to care for others and  by the end his thinking had evolved at least to the point where he understood his addiction to be a dead-end.   There was general agreement that the character was well drawn.  He acted like the adolescent he was — intelligent, but immature, in some ways even gullible.  Everyone thought that Ronnie’s father, Freddy was just an awful human being. A couple questioned the idea of his professional rise with the police. This led to discussion about “successful” people whose lives were a mess, and the nature of corruption and who rises to power within a corrupt system.    A few weren’t satisfied with the ending — finding it “contrived” or “overkill,” but I was not the only voice in the room who had a different take.

The point is, the book was taken as seriously as any other book.  Everyone thought the writing was high quality and professional. . No one complained about proofreading, formatting, editing inconsistencies or any of the other issues often associated with self-published books. All found it a gripping read.

As with any discussion on any good book, there were disagreements and tangents. We veered off into talking about British films set in that period that also dealt with social taboos, A Taste of Honey, Victim, The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner.

So back to the question I asked before: How did it go? The short answer is: It was “normal.” We were able to discuss the book and not the fact that it wasn’t traditionally published. It was not unlike going to a same-sex wedding and realizing it isn’t that different from any other wedding.

There was no pre or post-club survey, but maybe the members of the club will now be more inclined to read untraditionally published works. I hope so.

And just to encourage any “serious readers” who have not yet taken the plunge, here’s a trailer for Glimpses:

Better Than Sex — What Weiner Really Got Out of It

New York Stories, Politics and Culture, Things that Piss Me off from The NY Times, , , , ,

Many people are mystified that a smart man like Anthony Weiner, who did his job well, and seemed to have everything, could blow it so spectacularly.  But what he did had nothing to do with intelligence, or even with lust in its usual form. (One-handed surfing could have satisfied that need easily.)

The New York Times reports that Weiner knew he was being followed on Twitter by right-wingers suspicious of his activities and eager to catch him in the act.  There’s evidence that the Congressman was playing a game of cat and mouse with them, and in an interview he had three weeks ago, Weiner spoke about the risks of social media.   Even after numerous political “sex” scandals, including the recent resignation of Congressman Christopher Lee, who was also caught sending a shirtless photo, Weiner did not curtail his activities.

People who think that this was “about” sex, another example of monogamy’s being outmoded, have it wrong.

Bill Clinton’s getting a blowjob in the White House was about sex.  The most powerful man in the world was at heart an awkward adolescent who still could not believe that some pretty (albeit zaftig) young woman really, really, wanted him, and he was going to get some!  Right there in the Oval Office!  Like something JFK would have done!  He hadn’t asked for it.  He knew it was wrong, but when confronted with this gift, despite the risks, he couldn’t say no.

In Weiner’s case, there was no oral sex.  He’s a newlywed who was likely still getting laid at home, by a beautiful woman.  According to one of his virtual companions, there was some “sex chat” on the telephone.  Hardly close to the real thing.

Sex like drugs is a rush.  But where was the sex in this scandal?  And if not sex, what was he doing it for?  He’s not excusing his behavior by claiming to have been drunk or high.  He seems as bewildered as anyone.

The answer to the question “why” is simple. Danger was the drug of choice.  Weiner wasn’t pursuing women online in order to get off despite the risk. He was getting off because of the risk.  Risking it was the rush.  Gambling is a recognized addiction.   It might have started off with just joking around and flirting, but at some point knowing “they” were watching, waiting for him to slip up, made the stakes higher, and the game a whole lot more interesting.  You could lose everything with one click, but he kept on winning.

As he became even more known for his passionate political style and biting sound bites, there was more to lose and it was irresistible.   Marriage and the very real possibility of achieving his goal of becoming the Mayor of New York City, added to the thrill of possibly destroying it all every single time his thumbs got itchy and he’d grab his phone.

But he was playing too well.  His opponents couldn’t catch him.  He was too smart for an army of them.  And that must have felt like cheating death itself.

This was even better than sex with a goddess who happened to be the love of his life.   Here he was risking even that, risking his very existence, yet surviving and triumphing, again, and again and again.

Finally, like any gambler losing his streak, like any junkie who winds up on a slab, he screwed up.   It didn’t take one of his “conquests” setting him up.  His own thumb betrayed him as he publicly tweated the infamous underwear shot. Was it on purpose?  Maybe, in the same sense that someone hovering by a cliff long enough, will eventually slip.  Why they were hovering in the first place is the question.

And then he tried one last bluff — telling the press, he was hacked.  But it was over.  His heart wasn’t in it.   He knew he was done.  No finger wagging with a definitive, “I did not have sexts with that woman.”  Just a bewildered man, who knew enough not to ask his wife to accompany him when he stepped out to meet the press.

Some people worry about his mental state.  They’re right to do so.  Donald Manes was once upon the time Queens Borough President. He was accused of corruption and killed himself while under indictment.  Manes may have been bi-polar.  Bi-polar people are most at risk of suicide after a manic episode when they come back down to earth and see the consequences of their actions.  Weiner isn’t bi-polar.  He’s never been accused of the type of graft that Manes was indicted for. But like Manes, he is now, as a result of his actions facing a different future than the one he was looking at yesterday.  Weiner is a successful man, and successful people often aren’t very skilled at failure.  It hits them hard.

This isn’t about whether or not he should step down.  I leave that to the chattering classes and people at the water-cooler or the dinner table.  I would suggest that those who are his friends, however betrayed and angry they might feel, show him a little compassion, and those of us watching on the sidelines still snickering, we might find better uses for our time.