Another Snapdragon and a Theory

Remember the yellow snapdragon that re-seeded itself in a crack on our front porch? The one the Russians pulled out just before they moved? Well, I just discovered that we have a second, larger one growing in a crack in the brick wall beneath our front steps. Hurray! It's a sort of "nature's revenge" against the hyper-neatness of the Russians. If it sets seed, I'll collect some of them and try to keep them going next year.

Yesterday was slightly better, emotionally. I'm still prone to fits of spontaneous weeping but they are fewer and farther between. It helped that Dave and I got out of the house and went down to Borough Market for lunch. We didn't even eat at the market itself -- we stopped at a nearby pub -- but just being somewhere else felt better. I spent a lot of time in this flat last week, staying with the dog, and I'm a bit stir-crazy as a result. I just want to get out. Fortunately we have a somewhat busy week coming and we've planned a quick trip for the following week, which will help.

Our orange dahlia

I've developed a theory about what happened to Olga. (If you'd rather not investigate the medical aspects of her decline, you can skip the next five paragraphs! I won't be offended!)

You may remember that when we got back from Pevensey Bay, we took her to the vet because of her dizzy spells and her unsteadiness. The vet said she was in good overall health for her age and prescribed a vasodilating drug, Vitofyllin, to increase blood flow to her brain, hopefully improving her energy levels and reducing dizziness. I specifically asked whether this drug had side effects and was told no.

But almost immediately, her health really began to slide. We noticed she would sometimes sort of collapse rather than lie down, and she lost all desire to walk. (The day of that vet visit, we went for a walk along the high street, pretty much the last walk she ever wanted.) Her breathing became more erratic and labored. She mostly just slept. Her appetite, already reduced, basically vanished and when she did manage to eat she sometimes vomited.

I am obviously not a veterinarian, but I think the Vitofyllin, by relaxing her blood vessels, gave her abnormally low blood pressure. Hypotension and vomiting are listed as symptoms of Vitofyllin overdose, and although she was dosed correctly, she was at the low end of the weight range for the size of tablets she was given. That would explain the sudden onset of many of those problems, which Dave and I took to be a sign of further overall decline.

I sort of panicked when I was by myself with her and she could no longer walk and had trouble keeping food down, but if I had it to do over again, I'd have stopped the Vitofyllin and watched for any improvement. (Which, in my opinion, the vet should have suggested when we visited the second time.) She would still have had all the problems that pre-dated the drug -- the masses in or near her lungs, the coughing, the vestibular dizziness, the reduced appetite. But I suspect her sudden decline of the past two weeks may have leveled out, and she may have lived at least a short while longer.

Weirdly, this theory doesn't upset me too much. If anything, it helps me understand what happened. I wish I'd made the call differently, but it all happened so fast and I was by myself and the vet was astonishingly vague about everything.

I'll leave you on a happier note. These are photos I rediscovered a few days ago showing me in 1981, age 14 or so, with our English bulldog Meatball. Check out those groovy shades! (At the time my stepmother was a distributor for Foster Grant, a brand of sunglasses, so we had lots of samples lying around.)

Meatball had evidently just had one of her litters of puppies -- or maybe she was pregnant. As you can see she was definitely lactating!

Anyway, funny pictures -- a blast from the past.