Monday, May 1, 2023

 Monday, May 1, 2023

     I took Elsa to the vet at eight-thirty this morning for a follow-up appointment. I assumed they would check her ears. I had done everything they told me, and she wasn’t scratching. I thought I didn’t need to see the vet, but I went because I wanted information about their recommended food. I hadn’t found it on the Pet Meds site. I found Royal Canin products on Amazon. I ordered a bag, then remembered they told me it was supposed to be by prescription only. I thought I had canceled it. Fourteen pounds of dog food I couldn’t use costing sixty dollars arrived. I tried to return it, but Amazon doesn’t allow returns on items listed as “groceries.” I wanted to be clear about the product before I tried again.

    I got an earful from the vet. She told me that Elsa was in severe discomfort. Her ear infection had not cleared up. They found bacteria in her ears; the vet said she could smell the infection. Elsa looked fine. Dogs learn to tolerate chronic conditions. They look okay, but they’re not. I would be running to the doctor if I had that ear infection. The vet threw a lot of medical jargon at me that I couldn’t quite follow. I don’t know if I could have done better when I was younger. I attribute it to mental decline when I don’t get what someone is talking about. Am I losing it? I still prefer someone who says more than I can digest than less. This vet, as I said, gave me an earful. 

    I told her I was treating Elsa’s lesions with tea tree oil. What do you know? It’s toxic for dogs. When I looked it up on the Internet, I found the word ‘deadly’ in relation to dogs. Damn! Here, I thought I was doing the best thing for her. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. The doctor made it clear no treatment didn’t have some negative consequences.  

   She asked me what soap I was using to bathe her. I did better than I had done; I washed her every three days. She didn’t say if the soap was toxic, too. If not, that is the best path. For God’s sake, I’m home all day. I can get it together to bathe her during one of my favorite radio shows. 

After giving me the skinny on my need to treat her ears, she told me they didn’t have the medication in stock. Supply chain problems. They wanted to hang on to what they had for medical emergencies to save a pet’s life. I got that. 

    I went out to sit in the car. I thought the vet had said to do that while the pharmacy would see what they could put together for Elsa’s ear treatment. I sat patiently for about twenty minutes. I didn’t call the receptionist for two reasons. I assumed the pharmacy had other prescriptions to fill and they would get to me when they could. The other reason was I had called reception after waiting in an exam room for twenty minutes. I got an annoyed response. “The doctors are busy with other patients. They will get to you when they can.” The words were perfectly reasonable; the annoyed tone was not. I just wanted to make sure someone knew I was there.

    I finally set my alarm for an hour, after which I would call, and settled down with Elsa in my lap to meditate. She makes a great meditation partner. It was a sweet time. 

    I was startled when someone came to the car window. It was one of the employees. “Are you okay?”  She saw someone sleeping in the car and was concerned. She may have thought I was a homeless person using their parking lot. I told her my story. She apologized. No one had told her. The pharmacy didn’t have the medication. I knew that. I thought they were going to Gerry rig something I could use instead. I don’t know if I got the vet’s instructions wrong or if the snafu was on their end between the doctor and the pharmacy. 

     When I got home, I took on the challenge of ordering the food. When I told the vet I couldn’t find what they recommended; she said, “Did you Google it?” No, I hadn’t thought of that. She wasn’t too nasty about it. We both probably thought, old lady. It’s true. I am old and happy to accept that as my excuse; I expect tolerance.

     I had to make several calls to the vet for help. When I Googled the right food, I found it on several sites. I wound up ordering it on Chewy. I was directed there. The tech world is a challenging one for me. Then, I lost the site. Instead of Googling it again, I tried to find it myself. Good luck. I called the receptionist a few times, asking for help. She recommended Amazon, which ships for free with my Amazon Prime. (I couldn’t find it there when I just put in Royal Canin and looked through their products.) However, Amazon only offered me a nineteen-pound bag of dog food. Elsa weighs in at eleven pounds. She eats a cup of food a day. I didn’t think the food would stay good before I reached the end. A bag that size is suitable for a small herd of dogs, not just one. Chewy offered an eight-pound bag. They didn’t even bother listing Hawaii as one of the shipping options. I sent it to my sister in New Jersey, who will forward it to USPS. 

     I tried to nap but wasn’t that sleepy. I have so much more energy since I stopped wearing my glasses. I needed them because of my double vision. My eyes aren’t off on the horizontal plane; they’re off on the vertical one. They have always been off. I compensated by not using my left eye. While I didn’t have three-dimensional vision, I didn’t bump into things; I didn’t have car accidents. I was fine and dandy. 

      The problem surfaced when I had cataract surgery. With the somewhat improved vision in my left eye, it woke up and said what the f_ __k? It started a war with my right eye, resulting in full-blown double vision. If my brain learned to silence one eye in the past, it could learn to do it again. This time, the challenge is a little more complicated. Since I have a near-point vision lens in the left eye and a far-point vision lens in the right, my brain will have to learn to take turns. Now use the left eye; now use the right eye. My vision isn’t any worse without the glasses than with them. I have a slight astigmatism in the left eye, but I can see.

I worked on the updates for most of the morning. I also bathed Elsa; I had to wash her daily now. 

     I  had Adolescent D at two pm. When I asked him what he wanted to work on, he said his defeatist attitude rather than on the reading. No, he hadn’t done the exercise I told him to do; he hadn’t broken down the tasks he did perform into subsets. 

    “Okay, tell me something you did today.” I was thinking of getting dressed in the morning. He told me he had asked for help in his math class. That’s all he had to say. I helped him break the activity down into substeps.

1.                         He tried to do the math problem on his own.

2.                         He recognized he had a problem and didn’t just collapse. (Huge)

3.                         He got out of his seat, walked up to the teacher in front of other students, and sat in a chair beside her. (huge)

4.                         He told her he needed help. (Huge)

5.                         He stayed engaged while she explained it to him. (Huge- .slips into unconsciousness when frustrated.)

6.                         The woman was more of a teacher’s aide and unfamiliar with math. When the math teacher walked into the room, she asked him for help. D remained attentive while the math teacher explained the math to the teacher’s aide. (huge)

7.                         He remained attentive while she explained the process to him again.

8.                         He still didn’t understand it and told her so. (Huge) to her credit, she tried to explain it differently. They complete the math problem together.

9.                         He returned to his seat and tried the next problem. 

10.                       Again, he ran into trouble.

11.                       Again, he got up out of his seat, walked to the front of the room, and asked the math teacher for help with this problem. (Huge)

      I pointed out to him each step was a choice point. He could have chosen not to try to do the problem; not examine what he had done critically and see that he didn’t have it right; not get up and go to the front of the room; not sit down with the teacher, instead turn around and go back to his seat;  not just sit there mutely instead of telling her he needed help;  not focus while she explained the problem to him; not listen while the math teacher explained it to her; not listen while she tried to explain it to him again; not tell her that he hadn’t gotten it; not try the next problem when he went back to his seat; not identify that he had a problem with this example too;  not gotten up and gone to the front of the room again; not sat down with the math teacher; not asked him for help; not attended while the math teacher explained the process. Each step is a choice point. Each step counts.

  I was almost in tears. I never expected the exercise I did with him on Friday to be this effective. According to him, he made no effort to do the exercise of breaking down a single activity into its parts, but something clicked. 

     I told him I needed to call his mom and tell her what he had accomplished. He didn’t protest. She didn’t answer the phone. I was concerned she was napping. He went out to check without signing out of Zoom. He wanted to be there when I told her what he had done. He discovered she had gone out. 

     I called his mom later in the day. I went through all the things he had done. His mom’s response was muted. She’s probably as put off by my enthusiasm as I am by her lack of emotion. She giggled at one point. I said, “That’s the response I’m looking for.”  She told me that in his last evaluation, he was told that one of his problems was he never asked for help. Look what he did today. I only hope she says something to him about his success. I told her he didn’t sign out of Zoom but looked for her. He wanted to be present as she heard the litany of things he had accomplished. He recognized that he had accomplished something. Now, I have to figure out some way to help repair whatever is wrong with this boy’s memory. OMG! 

   I had second grade M at 4 p.m. We read the passage below.

“Beavers can knock down whole trees. They chew the wood at the bottom of the tree with their strong teeth. This weakens the tree at the base and makes the tree easier to knock over,” said Mr. Pratt. Mad/die and Jon/a/than followed their science teacher fur/her into the woods. Soon, Mr. Pratt and his students found a beaver’s home.

“Wow, little beavers built that big thing?” Mad/die asked.

“Hey, look!” Jonathan shouted. He touched a tree that was chewed up near the bottom. 

“Watch out!” yelled Mr. Pratt.

  When I asked her what it was about, she said it was about beavers building a dam. It was such a small part of the passage that I didn’t even register it. My solution was to underline all the references to the beavers, their home, and the trees. The beaver’s home is only mentioned twice in the passage, and the trees are mentioned six times. When summarizing a story, you must include the most frequently mentioned ideas. It’s purely mathematical.

     Lutz texted me information that CBD is good for preventing and healing Covid. Its benefit is reduced if THC is in the mix. If this is true, it would be lovely. Is it another ivermectin scam? He says there’s scientific proof. But they said that about the other drug, too.

    I started watching The Glass Castle. I read the book many years ago. It’s autobiographical. However crazy these parents were, they managed to produce four productive children. By their fruits, may you know them.