Truman hasn’t improved, so the vet moved up his follow-up appointment.  He has been eating double the amount he eats on any given day, but he has lost weight.  His legs are still paralyzed.  His eyes are crusty because he can’t clean his face; doing so would mean balancing on his hind legs to use his front paws, and he can’t do that at the moment.

When she saw him, she gently told me that we should consider euthanasia.  This was my greatest fear; not just losing him but having to make the decision to lose him.  It was one thing when it was Cozy and his eyes were outside his skull — he was clearly in pain.  But Truman is still himself, albeit dragging his legs and very thin.

The other option was to go and see another vet for a second opinion.  I didn’t know if I wanted to go down that road simply because I know myself.  If that vet didn’t tell me what I wanted to hear, I would start going to another and another and another.  But our vet gently told me that the person she was recommending was a guinea pig specialist, and if she said that it was cancer, it was cancer.

So I took Truman to the second vet.  The vet was busy but was willing to squeeze him in between appointments as a favour for our vet.  But it meant leaving him there for a few hours so she could slip him in whenever she had time.  It meant going home and sitting in our quiet house, totally alone, worrying that I’d never see him again.

The other vet called in the late afternoon to go over options with me.  Without doing many more tests, she didn’t know what was wrong with Truman.  It could be his enlarged heart, it could be a clot, it could be a disc injury, an infection, cancer.  What did we want to do?  Did we want to be super aggressive, possibly losing him in trying to figure out how to help him?  Did we want to euthanize him since it was very unlikely he would ever move again.  She agreed that he was still his spunky self, and she admitted that she had never seen a guinea pig with a better personality.  (At our normal vet, all the techs came out to give him a head scratch before we left, and Truman lapped up all the massages and purred with his eyes closed in bliss.  He is such a love-pig.)  We didn’t have to decide to euthanize today, but we needed to know what we were willing to do.

She asked me to consider any possible regrets.  She wanted me to make a decision that helped me stave off any what ifs.

But here’s the thing; there is no amount anyone could ever do that would feel like “enough.”  I would always second-guess if there was a step we could have done at some point; something that would make the difference.  There was nothing she was going to do right now that would stop that from happening.

Euthanasia is meant to be a good death.  If it has to happen, then I want him to be home for his remaining time.  I want him to be eating as many cookies as he wants, and getting back rubs and tons of hay and long leaves of lettuce.  I want him to spend whatever remaining days he has left knowing without a doubt that we love him so much.  That he is an integral part of our family, and we will do whatever we need to do to make him comfortable and safe and cared for.  I don’t want him to be scared or alone or in pain or in an unfamiliar place.

So we brought him home.  The second vet prescribed a pain medication and told us what to look out for so we would know when it was time to bring him back.  This could go on for days or weeks or maybe months.

When we got home, I gave him dinner and his medications.  And then we gave him a bath.  He swam around the bathtub, doing laps, his legs trailing behind him.  It was the first time in days that he has moved around.  Afterward I swaddled him and then blew his fur dry with a hairdryer.

He is currently next to me, chowing down on his pellets in between hopefully nosing his purple food dish to check if I’ve magically slipped in something delicious.  In other words, he is himself.

I don’t know how much more I’ll write about Truman, though I’ll post an update from time to time.  It is really hard to talk about him now.

My sweet piggy boy

I’m not going to play Pokémon Go.  It sounds like something I would play, but I’m just… not feeling it. Maybe I’m in a video game cocooning moment right now, maybe I don’t love the idea of anything that makes me turn on location services on my phone, maybe I just don’t like the art.  I don’t know what it is, only that I am not going to play it.

But it sort of feels like I’m hanging out at the dog park without a dog every time I surf the Internet right now.  Every other headline is for Pokémon.

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Stop procrastinating.  Go make your backups.  Don’t have regrets.

Seriously.  Stop what you’re doing for a moment.  It will take you fifteen minutes, tops.  But you will have peace of mind for days and days.  It’s the gift to yourself that keeps on giving.

As always, add any new thoughts to the Friday Backup post and peruse new comments in order to find out about methods, plug-ins, and devices that help you quickly back up your data and accounts.

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And now the blogs…

But first, second helpings of the posts that appeared in the open comment thread last week.  In order to read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:

• “#MicroblogMondays: Calm Space” (Searching for Our Silver Lining)
• “That Was the Plan” (The OCD Infertile)

Okay, now my choices this week.

River Run Dry has a post about the computer version of your life that sort of blew my little mind.  Because we all peek at people’s walls on Facebook… but I guess I never thought about how people peek at mine.  I don’t know how I missed that idea, but I sort of only thought about that peeking flowing one way.  She asks a great question: “If she was looking at MY page right now, what story would she read?”  Go over and read the whole post and discuss.

Torthúil has a post about returning to the fertility clinic.  I love this attitude: “A meeting is the place to start, and putting it off wasn’t accomplishing anything.”  I think I like this post because it is just a slice of life: the logistics of assisted family building and the ducks you need to line up in a row.  Plus, the crocheted eggs are pretty much the cutest things I’ve seen all week, and I totally want to play with them.

Lastly, A+ Effort did an informal examination of race and social media, noting which status updates got the biggest response.  A picture from her daughter’s party: 150 likes!  A really great piece on white privilege… 10.  She ends her post with a simple request: “My words aren’t that important right now. If you don’t already, do me a favor, go read something from a person of color.”

The roundup to the Roundup: No Pokémon for me.  Your weekly backup nudge.  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between July 8th and July 15th) and not the blog’s main url. Not understanding why I’m asking you what you found this week?  Read the original open thread post here.

Last week, I got a PR pitch for Parents’ Day.  Well, for some product that somehow ties into parenthood that they’ve decided to tack onto Parents’ Day, but you know what I mean.  Parents’ Day.  Have you ever freakin’ heard of Parents’ Day?

I Googled it, and apparently it is a real thing.  I hesitate to call it a holiday because… come on.  But it has been around since the first Clinton administration.  (Like how I did that; assuming that there will be a second Clinton presidency.)

So on the heels of Mother’s Day in May and Father’s Day in June, you have Parents’ Day in July, which parents are supposed to celebrate together.  Clearly this needs to be followed by Parenting Day in August to celebrate the act of parenting (vs. the state of being parents), Being with Kids Day in September to celebrate those moments parents spend with their children, and Time Apart from Kids Day in October to mark those hours when parents and kids are not physically together.

This will take us into the busy winter, kid-focused holiday season which is immediately followed by purchasing cardboard Valentines for your child’s class. (And stuffed animals!  Do not forget to purchase dust-accumulating stuffed animals!)  March can include a celebration of Family Day.  And… oh… just for shits and giggles, let’s throw a Mommyhood Day into April.  How will this differ from Mother’s Day in May?  It won’t, but you will still need to get another card.

And flowers.

I actually have no problem with Mother’s Day and find it a lovely gesture as long as people keep it chill.  And Father’s Day, totally fine with it.  But tacking on ANOTHER parenting holiday that is supposed to just combine the sentiments of the preceding two holidays?  No.  I put my foot down.

Just no.

Politicians, stop signing empty bills that celebrate parenthood and create laws that actually protect and nurture families.  Paid family leave, equal pay, protecting reproductive rights, expanding education access, stopping violence against women — THIS is what we want.

So get on that.

This kid at the school science fair had a really cool project looking at how closely people’s personalities align with the traits commonly assigned to various star signs.  I know that doesn’t sound very scientific, but it was more in the personality psychology vein.  Anyway, he had you circle 5 positive traits about yourself and 5 negative traits to join the research.

While I didn’t align at all with Gemini traits, it was interesting to boil down my personality to a few adjectives.  I wish I could find the sheet.  The only things I remember putting down were anxious and inflexible.

My parents are not anxious or inflexible, so I didn’t learn this from them.  My kids are not inflexible, but they are definitely anxious.  Actually, they’re anxious-lite; more cautious than anxious.

Anyway, on the heels of that science fair project, the Atlantic had a very interesting article on personality psychology that outlined this question: “To what extent is our personality given to us, and to what extent do we make it ourselves?”

I definitely didn’t choose to be anxious, and I don’t enjoy being anxious, but while I can temper my anxiety from day to day, it would feel really unnatural to try to be carefree.  I’m just not a carefree, wind-in-my-hair type person, and it would feel as if I were acting if I pretended otherwise.  So… inherited… right?  Except it’s probably learned?  But from where?

It’s an interesting discussion, and the Atlantic article made me want to read more about it.  Not about Trump as it states at the end of the article, since he makes me tired, but personality psychology in general as applied to myself.  Because it’s all about meeeeeeeeeeee.

Do you have the same personality traits as your parents?

Not sure what #MicroblogMondays is? Read the inaugural post which explains the idea and how you can participate too.

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The ChickieNob and I hauled ourselves over to the hairdresser for our annual haircut.

Every time I go, she tries to sell me on the expensive shampoo they carry at the salon.  I am thinking about getting a t-shirt printed that says, “I use shampoo from the drugstore, and you’ve already expressed your disgust at it during the last visit.”  Though this time she said, “I remember that you think your grey hair is a pretty colour, so I am not going to tell you change that.”

Small victories.

She really does do a great job with the cut, hence why I keep going back to her.  She also gets me in and out of the salon in under 15 minutes (including hair washing).

I dread haircuts because I don’t like strangers touching me. I find things like manicures or haircuts very stressful.  I let her go a little shorter than I wanted just so I wouldn’t have to see her again for a long time.

Do you enjoy getting haircuts (or manicures or other pampering services) or do you also find them a dreaded item on your to-do list?

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Are you also doing #MicroblogMondays? Add your link below. The list will be open until Tuesday morning. Link to the post itself, not your blog URL. (Don’t know what that means? Please read the three rules on this post to understand the difference between a permalink to a post and a blog’s main URL.) Only personal blogs can be added to the list. I will remove any posts that are connected to businesses or are sponsored posts.