Olga's Indian Summer

You know how the vet told us Olga had a tumor beneath her infected incisor, and we've been waiting for the results of a biopsy to find out what kind of tumor it is?

Well, the results came back yesterday, and SURPRISE -- there's no tumor at all! Olga doesn't have cancer, at least not in the tissue that was biopsied. It's just a big infection.

We are, of course, incredibly relieved, and also a little bowled over that the vet could be so certain in her preliminary diagnosis and yet so wrong. She was convinced it was a malignancy. Weirdly, this is the same vet who, four years ago, removed lumps from Olga's hind legs and took huge margins of tissue because she thought they might be cancerous -- and they weren't. What is it with this vet?

Her most recent diagnosis never quite made sense to me, because Olga had this lumpy nose off and on for almost a year, and it didn't seem to grow substantially or drag her down at all. This explains, too, why Olga was bouncing around so soon after her surgery like she was perfectly fine. She is perfectly fine.

Anyway, Olga has now been referred to a dog dentist (apparently there is such a thing) who will review her records to see if she needs further treatment or more antibiotics. Hopefully the removal of that single incisor is enough to quell this infection. Remember we were also going to remove the other incisor -- which is gray and perhaps not healthy but so far not causing her problems -- and we decided not to because of the "tumor." Well, I'm not putting her under the knife again unless there's really a crisis.

Jesus! What a roller-coaster ride.

So that's a big explosion of happy news, desperately needed in these crazy times. Otherwise I've been worrying about Hurricane Ian affecting my family and friends in Tampa (it looks like they avoided the worst of the storm, but of course it's hammering other parts of the state). And what about the insanity of our newly-elected British government, which has cooked up tax cuts for wealthy people that are so ridiculously irresponsible that our currency has tanked and even the leaders of the International Monetary Fund felt compelled to protest?

I mean, honestly. Here we are in the middle of an energy and cost-of-living crisis, with local governments in such a struggle that garbage lingers on the streets and libraries can't stay open, and the answer is to provide £45 billion in tax cuts to the country's wealthiest people?

WHAT PLANET AM I LIVING ON?!

And then, of course, there's the Ukraine situation, which may pose the greatest existential risk of all. I occasionally read a right-wing news site which shall remain nameless, just to give myself agita, and they continually make excuses for Putin, saying that he is on an anti-globalist crusade against all the evils of the West, and look how vigorously he supports the Russian Orthodox Church and blah blah blah -- and I think, when did the American right wing climb into bed with Russia?

Despite our surging household costs and the weird apparent sabotage of the gas pipelines beneath the Baltic Sea that supply Europe with Russian energy, I briefly turned on our heat this morning. It's 42º F outside (5.5º C) and that is freaking cold.

Oh, Olga, you scared us to death. And incidentally, that is MY PILLOW!