Blue Monday

It's back to work for me today and I've only myself to blame as I forgot to buy lottery tickets last week.

Not for lack of trying, I simply could not finish the shawl on my vacation as I'd planned. There are only 29 rows remaining, not including the cast off row, and as far as I can tell, I have about 15,000 stitches left to knit, but don't hold me to it as I didn't double check my math. It's likely to be more. I'm trying hard not to look at my dwindling (final) cone of yarn and hoping what's left will take me through to the end (there is more where that came from so I'm not too worried). The border is a crochet cast off so I find myself spending as much time searching on ravelry, google and youtube for how to do this as I spend knitting. No lie.

The GI doctor called me yesterday regarding Mr. Larger Than Life. They have a plan to scope him top to bottom sometime this afternoon, but if they find anything, they won't be able to biopsy or remove anything because he's on coumadin and they can't risk a big bleed. I guess they didn't think much of my idea to stop the coumadin on Saturday and use lovenox to prevent clotting until they figured out the source of the bleeding. I often find that when ideas I offer are ignored, even when they're good ones, it's because the doctor didn't think of it first. He's still bleeding and his hemoglobin is still dropping despite the unit of packed cells they gave him Saturday. So if they find a polyp or ulcer, we'll know a little more than we knew Saturday, but he may still be bleeding until they can stop the coumadin and go back in 3 days from now.

I'm working on not beating my head against the wall.

Mr. Leo gets to see the vet this afternoon for his one big sore and the 4 little ones I found along his collar line. After one long day spent googling, I'm trying to avoid more until we see the vet. I have an idea what I think it may be, and I'm hoping what I've read does not match his diagnosis from the vet. It isn't good. Dobes are prone to this particular disease and it can be a lifelong problem for them. If it's what I think it may be, antibiotic therapy would have to continue for at least three weeks, but maybe as many as eight. Weeks. If he has this disease, he likely has something else going on making him prone to these infections. So much for chin acne, which is what we all thought he initially had happening on his chin, and the occasional sores between his toes are also expressions of this disease.

Poor Leotus.

The cyclists are enjoying a hard earned day off from the tour. It's been a horrific one for accidents, none more terrifying than the one involving Chris Horner on Team Radio Shack. How team officials and his coach allowed him to get back up on his bike and ride an additional 25 km with an obvious head injury is beyond me. In the video, he keeps saying, "I don't understand, I don't understand, what happened, where am I?" He had no recollection of the crash, and no recall of riding and finishing the last 25k of stage 7. In the end, he'd suffered a concussion and fractured nose and had to withdraw from the race. He's lucky to have withdrawn with a pulse. Although crashes and pileups are common on the tour, this year seems to be worse. Yesterday, a media car crashed into a group of cyclists who were leading the race, knocking one cyclist into a barbed wire fence. Yes, I think they all deserve a day of rest and the media car driver who caused that last crash ought to be sent back to Paris ASAP.