elanya

So, Back in November - on Woolfenoot, to be precise - I noticed that my dog, Jola, had developed what seemed to be a large swelling on her right chest. I took her to the emergency vet, thinking she'd hurt herself some how and was just swollen, or that it was a fluid edema, or something. It was not.

At my home vet, they did a fine needle aspiration, then a real punch biopsy, and blood tests, none of which were at all conclusive. They did radiography, x-rays to start, where they thought it was maybe her heart (though I am still not clear why they were looking there...), and then a CT scan which showed the large mass to probably be a sarcoma. Well encapsulated towards her head, but with "stranding" where it led further back towards her tail. They didn't see any metastasizing in her lungs at least. The differential diagnosis from the CT scan, from the radiologist was a sarcoma.

Today I went to the Animal Cancer Center at the University of Guelph to meet with member of their oncology team, to talk about where we are, what is left to learn, and options on where to go next.

Thy think it is probably a sarcoma, but can't confirm that without further tests - specifically it would require another histology test from a biopsy taken with ultrasound (to make sure they are getting a good sample) to determine what kind/level of aggressiveness. They would also want to do an ultrasound of her abdomen to make sure that she doesn't have another issue already that would make treatment of this mass pointless. I think the CT scan actually covers all the area they'd want to look at, but they hadn't received it before the appointment because of some communication issues with my vet (they don't have the CT, they don't have the software to look at it, so they sent the Cancer Clinic to the radiology peeps). I actually have the CT scan, because we have the MicroCT at work (at least physically) and very definitely do have the software to look at DICOM stacks, so I have some images, and was able to show them to the resident on my phone at least. I am not going to pay $1300 for radiography and not insist on a copy :p

Anyway. Those tests (plus a urine tests to make sure her kidneys are okay for NSAIDS) are the very next steps they would do, to identify the sarcoma, and then it would be surgery, and then a regimen of radiation therapy. All of this would need to happen at Guelph. It would be a major surgery and she might lose her leg. She would have to be sedate for every treatment, and complications could arise from it and she would be very sick, and it would have to cover a large area. I would have to take time away from work to get someone else to drive me and her to a city an hour and a half away for each treatment and test. And then at best she'd go into remission, Oh and also it would run around $10,000 for the surgery and radiation. One without the other would not be effective - without radiation it would come back, and considering how quickly it has grown this time, it could happen very quickly, and she would have gone through a very complicated major surgery for nothing.

So, I am not doing any of that. I decided that at this point, I will do my best to manage her quality of life. I will keep her on pain killers (and do the urine test to see if I can add NSAIDS to the mix), and be careful with her, and monitor her behaviour and activities and general health to try and track her quality of life as best I can, until I feel like she is suffering too much.

I think this is the right decision, I think I have done everything within reason and possibly beyond, but I'm still really really upset. She's 11, which is and isn't old for a dog her size. She'd been very healthy all of her life. She's still eating and everything else about as well as she ever has, she's still a complete and utter sweetheart. I love her very much.

I bought her a very big bone when we got back to town.



( CT scan images under the cut )

Stepping out of the woodwork to record a weird dream I had last night/early this morning. I can identify some of the things that prompted it, I think, at least...

Weird dream last night/this morning that I was on a road trip with a bunch of larp peeps. There were 4 or five if us in a black car driven by D. F. He and the person in the passenger seat got out at some place (to do.... something?) leaving myself and A. S. in the back seat. It was a standard and for some reason he'd left it in neutral, and the car started rolling into the street. After a brief moment of 'wait this can't be happening', I desperately tried to get into the driver's seat to stop the car (I was behind the driver's seat). Only when I got there, my glasses were all fogged up and I couldn't see at all what was happening. I managed to get us stopped, but we were in the middle of a street. So I thought that it would be better to try and move off the street or more out of the way (only I still couldn't see well). we'd wound up in the wrong lane and there was an oncoming car that was trying to move around us as I was trying to get back into the right lane... The car was not running, still just rolling in neutral (I'm not sure how we'd gotten it moving again anymore... dream logic!). I somehow got us around the other car, but there was, for some reason, a GIANT (like 20 feet tall) snow bank in our lane, and I gently rolled into that.

At this point, D. and co. returned from wherever they had been to see the chaos that had ensured. he was pretty pissed but I think we gave him shit for leaving the car in neutral and it all balanced out somehow. Also we'd somehow arrived at the little remote chalet that sold fancy larp supplies anyway - we just had to get up the steep snowbank/hill on the side if the road. It was a nice chalet and they had some cool stuff, very little of which I remember. I remember A. caught some shit from one of the proprietors (maybe dream H. I.?) for doing people's nails to test out their nail polish selection? Also they had some cool little enameled metal puzzles and I thought about getting one for Wererogue, but when I was talking to the sales person, it turned out that my 6 yo nephew had been here like three months before and solved them all, even though they were supposed to be super difficult, so I decided maybe they wouldn't pose enough of a challenge. And that's basically all I remember at this juncture :x

I finished the first story for my fan_flashworks bingo card! And I posted to the community for the first time in... let's just say a while.

It's here if you're curious - it's a story about butts. Well, okay, maybe just one...

Now, I think, a shower, and maybe early bed.

I made a Yuletide Reveals post on my writing journal if anyone is interested but doesn't already read that.

And then because my ambition is on a high lately, I signed up for a bingo card for the fan-flashworks bingo! I can't believe the comm is sever years old, that's bananas! I haven't done too much with it in a while, but I've been following there basically since it started :3

Anyway, here's my card!

Station	Cliché	Numbers	Midnight	Solitary
New	Memory	Not What It Looks Like	Monsters	Never
Horoscope	Anywhere But Here	ANY PROMPT	Butt	Photo
Borrowed Title	Double	Up	Disaster	Revision
Locked	Ship	Messenger	Flight	Season

I'm going to aim to do the fourth column.... because Butt ;p Open to suggestions though, as I don't have strong ideas for the other. The stories need to fill the current community prompt as well as the card prompt. Current challenge is 'Promise.'

:D

So 2019 is upon us.

I'm not super looking forward to going back to work next week, but it does feel like I've had a real break, and I'm glad it's only a three day week ahead of me.

Jola is getting a CT scan next Sunday. She seems fine but the swelling is not getting any better, and is, if anything getting worse. She's on some pain meds that seem to help - I haven't seen her limping much except right in the morning or in the evening before they get refreshed, or if I cave and take her on the too-long walk she demands. She's been a bit more sookie lately, but only for her. However we confirmed over the break that she has been peeing in the basement, generally when she can't get someone to take her out, and are looking for a solution o she can let us know when she needs to go. Probably we'll try the old 'bells on a rope by the door' trick, which she used to know and should be easy enough to go back to.

Maze is okay. I need to take a urine sample to *his* vet at some point soon, but its so friggin *far*. I think my best bet would actually be to walk it down after work some day and then bus home from there. I'll let him out of kitty jail after the tree is down and general Christmas Debris put away. Every time I think I'm doing better with his boxes I find out that I am not, so, uh, I really need to do better. At least (other than the ego table), the other things we thought were him are *not* him. However this means that the toilet in the downstairs bathroom is leaking :p

In non-pet news, I did basically no knitting over the break, even though I'm really pretty close to finishing my shawl and super close to finishing my headband. I *did* do a ton of writing, which was nice. After not really feeling it, I got very into the yuletide spirit when it came time to help the tag-mod team with story checking. I finished my assignment and wrote two treats, and everything seemed pretty well received, with a bunch of comments on everything. I'll do a separate reveals post. I also did noms for chocolate box... I talked to Nary and Longpig and we decided to nom and request a bunch of Diablotin stuff, even though really we'd just be writing for each other if we get matched to it. I'm excited! I should do my signups...

What else, hmm. I'm not really much one for resolutions or anything like that, but I have some general goals. I'd like to write more, and journal more. I want to focus on some more original fiction, but I also just want to make time more consistently for writing. Writing everyday would be great but I'm not sure its reasonable or not. Maybe? Maybe I can start carrying a writing journal and just writing... whatever in it. Release myself form the idea that it needs to be coherent or complete or relevant. Just anything. Maybe I'll use the journal Nary got me for my birthday for that. I started poking at a bigger project yesterday but I have no faith in my own staying power there, so we'll see. It's all good practice, right? I also finished an AW fic I started before yuletide and posted it, which also feels like good momentum.

How are you all, internets world? Any fun projects planned for the new year?

Also, does anyone know any good ways to crosspost form DW to pillowfort yet?

so, since Tumblr is imploding, I thought i would remind myself that this is a place where there are people I like, and I should maybe start engaging here again?

We'll see how it goes. NO promises :x

Work is bananas lately. The museum officially took over the repository on the 1st, so I'm working through a lot of stuff regarding that. Plus we have a big meeting thing next week to prep for, and I have a new volunteer starting, and my job role is still kind of... conflicted in some ways. but that should be cleared up in April. I've been told my contract will definitely be extended, for three years, so that's nice!

I've been super busy... I'm in two tabletop games with a third starting this weekend, plus larp. I've been tryng to make myself do more writing. I have a shawl and my first colourwork project on the go.

My dog has a Large Mysterious Growth (waiting on biopsy results) in/on one of her lymph nodes.

I had to get new wear-all-the-time glasses and then promptly lost them a week later and have since had to buy a new pair.

I've started my Christmas shopping?

I had a great weekend a few weeks ago seeing some scattered friends for a gaming weekend, and we also did se fun Wolfenoot things

Kind of a mixed-bag of life things, all around.

I'm on mobile so this will be a mess.

I'm visiting college station and I just had a stress dream so bad that I woke up crying.

Do I have issues with my PhD experience? Gosh maybe.

The dream was very much inspired by reality but with heavily fantastical elements. I wasn't really me at all, I was a character, but that character's experience was similar to mine, especially on an emotional level.

As part of this program, we were supposed to make a dinner for the faculty to express ourselves in some way. I'm not sure what they expected - that was part of the problem. No one had really explained this to me. There was one person who went before me (who was an amalgamation of real school and LARP people I know. She put on this bug feast aytslked about the meanings of all the dishes as metaphors and I left to sulk and freak out because even if I had ideas and understood the expectations, I had no time to prepare because I was so busy. I'm leaving out some of the cool background fantasy things, like the moose and dragon wars, and the setting, but there were a lot of background politics about everything going on in the background too.

Eventually I went home to see my parents, and my mom (not my actual mom, clearly) and dad (who were divorced in this dream even if they weren't my real life parents) didn't have any good ideas or help anyway. Like many real-life situations where someone who doesn't really have the full context is trying to help but their suggestions just aren't practical. One if them suggested that I take the faculty out to the woodlot that my dad (my actual dad) owns and talk about that, for example, but that would have entailed getting them out there and still serving them dinner, and I didn't feel like the hike would have gone over well when what they really wanted was for students to suck up to them with food.

Some of the faculty were real people too, proffs from my last two degrees, haaa.

My parents essentially told me they couldn't think of anything either. My dream-parents (and it was my dream-parents who delivered this) didn't think I was interesting enough to have anything to express to these people.

Waking-up but still semi dreaming me decided that the best solution was just to serve them plain ramen, and to tell them that what they got out if me entirely related to what they put in, and so this is what they got. Maybe I would have things they could put in it with me and they could try and earn it, but this was basically a protest anyway, because is was an absurd expectation.

Anyway, it was stressful and upsetting and I do think that the fact that I'm in CS is related. Ugh.

However real life me doesn't have any plans to spend any time with my department other than my friend Megan, who I saw last night and is really the sole reason I came to town.

Hello internets! I live!

I was going to just pop in to do an update about how Jukebox went (wonderfully), but I realized I probably have other things to day as well.

But I'll start with jukebox. I got THREE GIFTS :D And all were really excellent and well tailored to my likes and interests :3 Two written pieces and one art (by someone who I think must have done art for literally everyone who asked for it, not near enough o_O).

In no particular order (they really are all excellent):
Two Point Five Megabytes Across A Quarter Million Miles (617 words) by AlexSeanchai
Chapters: 2/2
Fandom: 250000 Miles - Patty Griffin (Song)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Additional Tags: Near Future, Science Fiction, Implied/Referenced Homophobia
Summary:

SEEKING ADVENTURE? ROMANCE? THE GREAT UNKNOWN?

The American Tau Ceti Company seeks venturers to Lán Hǎi!

The Kǎilíng sets sail from East Tsukishi Port on 30 June 2047—be aboard!

This has Complicated Family stuff that is both painful and liberating. I really enjoyed the perspectives offered in the two chapters, though my sympathy lies with the second.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ (6 words) by AlTheAlchemist
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Culling of the Fold - The Decemberists (Song)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Additional Tags: Blood, Art
I just love this. Best title. Whelp, someone's got to do it :x

His White Hause-Bane (2369 words) by Edonohana
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Twa Corbies (Traditional Song)
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Summary:

I rode to the castle, thinking to ask for directions to put me on my way and hoping for an invitation to dine with the lord and spend the night, for the day was very cold. Perhaps it was my hopeful thoughts of mead and hot meat that distracted me, or perhaps it was something else. But I had dismounted before I realized that there was something strange about the place, and was almost at the doors before I knew what it was.

There was nothing else in sight. No other homes, no fields, no orchards. Nothing but the castle, rising from the mud like a great white tooth.

This is just a really wonderful take on the song, and a nice creepy faery tale to boot.

As for things I wrote, one full length fic for my assignment, and then three drabbles as treats, both of which seem better received. Such is a writer's life!

Traps for Troubadours (3459 words) by Measured_Words
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Sympathy for the Devil - The Rolling Stones (Song)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Original Characters
Additional Tags: Music, Musicians, Band Break Up, Partying, Crossroads Deals & Demons
Summary:

We have a chance to make it big.

"What will you do to make it happen?" Kana asks me.

I don't think she's going to like the answer.

Crusade (100 words) by Precisely_Measured_Words
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Blood Under the Bridge - Frightened Rabbit (Song)
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Original Characters
Additional Tags: Trauma, Crusades, Drabble, Good versus Evil
Summary:

Empathy can be a fleeting thing, and comfort hard to find.

Undermine (100 words) by Precisely_Measured_Words
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Build That Wall (Zia's Theme) - Darren Korb (Song)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Original Characters
Additional Tags: Insurrection, Conspiracy, Construction, Drabble
Summary:

There's more than one way around a barrier.

Vows (100 words) by Precisely_Measured_Words
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Rusalka Rusalka / Wild Rushes - The Decemberists (Song)
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Relationships: Original Male Character/Rusalka
Characters: Original Male Character(s), Rusalka (Rusalka Rusalka)
Additional Tags: Marriage, Sea Monsters, Regret, Curses, Horror, Drabble, Canonical Character Death
Summary:

To have and to hold...

As for other things to natter about... I finished a couple of pairs of socks a few weeks ago, and now have only one real project on the go. I started some handwarmers at larp but I was doing them on the fly and don't really know if I want to finish them or not. I've been reading on the bus, too, so I haven't really started anything new, just working on the one shawl. I did start a new long-term weaving project, which someday will be a scrap blanket. I wove one strip basically in an afternoon after I got the loom warped, but what will take longer is amassing the scraps! Gotta knit more socks I guess, oh well :V

Speaking of things ending, Diablotin 3, which we started playing in October 2014, ended last Sunday. I'm gonna miss it for sure, though there has been some talk of another game to replace it, and the eventuality of Diablotin 4 in another year or so, or in a few years... we;ll see :3 Meanwhile I still have Fuck Squad and YOAW and Larp! SO basically I ca't really complain even though I haven't really quite accepted that its done ;_; My Character had a pretty good ending - she got married, she works for the emperor, and she got to take down the final boss with a ridiculous amount of damage. She's got a better relationship with her family, who are all themselves doing better, with the exception of her sister who got stuck as the guardian to a semi-sentient extra-dimensional gate. But it's only for a few years, and we can visit :3 It was at least a good and satisfying ending, if it had to end ;_;

I feel like I had other nattering to do but I can't remember what, and I wanted to start working on my fic for the Throk Zine (Scorpius!), so I think I might go grab a snack and do that.

I had *really* weird, elaborate soap-opera-y dream last night and I'm scrambling to write down the bits of it I still remember. I haven't had a weird dream like this is a looong time. I blame... reading through bits of my sister's 20th anniversary edition of Changeling: The Dreaming yesterday, and the number of amusing Thor things that I've been seeing on tumblr lately.

It involved the Addams Family (kinda), and Thor (kinda) and Hela form Marvel (kinda), and my friend C (kinda).

The basic gist is that someone came to the Addams' to help them bring people back to life who had been dead for years. This involved putting them into other people's bodies and some kind of rite where they had to marry children (like, older children, who had to 'agree' to this)? It was really *really* elaborate. Like, seriously it was watching some weird soap opera with whole different generations of stories. Things I remember:

-This was all taking place in some kinda southern gothic plantation mansion house
-The three people being reincarnated were Hela, Thor, and some woman with chin length black hair named Janet
-There was a little white terrier of some kind with brown on its face that later became a plot point
-Possibly there were time-travellers? Or something?
-Theoretically everyone was acting together to bring these people back, but in practice there were different factions who wanted their person awake first. Only Morticia and Wednesday really knew how to do things, and everyone else was sort or scrambling to figure it out or guess. I don't remember why the Addams' agreed to do this.
-This had been done or tried with Hela before? she didn't have much presence in the dream, except people were scared of her and she had some associate with Wednesday. Either Wednesday married her, or she was reincarnated into her? Maybe the kids who 'married' the people were the actual hosts?
-While Hela was basically Marvel Hela, Thor was not, or he was more entitled arrogant early-first-movie Thor who did't really question what he had or why he had it
-Thor got done first. The person whose body he'd gotten reincarnated into had a loyal and dutiful servant who was mistreated and used as comic relief, and didn't really understand what was happening to his master. -When Thor got reincarnated into his body he a: was a kid and b: didn't know who he was and was kind of mean to him and it was sad.
-At that point they were basically in a fight of some kind and Kid Tho was like: Oh a fight! Fetch me my hammer! His servant had wanted to be his second, but Thor'was like 'lol you can do my laundry' or something along those lines and he was crushed.
-Possibly this whole thins was an elaborate plan to get control of mjolnir? They didn't have the hammer, but I think they needed either Thor or Hela to get it back in this battle.
-Janet (or whatever/whoever she really was) was only brought back as a secondary consideration, because someone (possibly Morticia) had insisted she would be important, or had just cared for her/missed her sort of thing. Like if this was the plan of some evil overlord, and she was his rebellious daughter that he loved and wanted back even though she was a goodie two shoes. Something like that. Maybe they just needed to do three for Reasons? Oh - maybe she was supposed to be Jane, from the Thor movies, only.... highly filtered :p
-Her ritual didn't get brought back until the others were already awake, because she wasn't a priority and the people who were in her 'faction (one of who might have been Rupert Giles, or looked like him), knew the least about what to do and had the most moral quandaries about all of it. There were people at the house who cared for her and were genuinely worried about what was going to happen to her in his scenario.
-Predictably when she was brought back she was confused and horrified, but she wasn't as powerful as the others.
-The others were off at the fight, but she was still weak. Someone came to report that there was 'some Inuit girl' (WHAT BRAIN) collapsed on the grounds.
-It was my friend C (who is... not Inuit IRL, nor was she in the dream? But people thought she was?).
-Janet had apparently known her in life and insisted on being brought out to see her. I don't actually remember what information she was acting on in he dream - if she just wanted to go see the hurt person or what.
-She was helped/carried out to where she was lying, and then freaked out because it really was C only way older than when she'd seen her last (they were childhood friends?). She healed her some and they talked a bit about what she knew was happening which was not much.
-They wanted to help each other more, but it was deemed too dangerous, and Janet thought that if C were brought to the house she'd probably be killed (though someone was arguing that she might die anyway, I think? But maybe they were lying?), so C had to run away to...wherever she'd come from (still unclear)
-Later I was in the heads of two people who'd been sent to figure out what was really happening, if the rumors were true, or what.
-They had known some of the people involved, especially Janet, but also some of the behind-the-scenes folks, in an earlier generation (i.e. the bad guys).
-When they came to the door, the dog (who had also been de-aged? Or brought back?) recognized them and was SO EXCITED to see them! So they were able to convince the people who had come to the door to give it to them by saying it was theirs and they had lost it (?). This was close to when I was waking up so the logic was extra shaky. Like the people at the house were afraid that if they didn't just give up the dog they would get caught out somehow, but the people who'd come to check them out were like "omg its totally [dog] but de-aged into a puppy again so we can totally prove this is happening!" Neither of these arguments really hold up to scrutiny of awake-logic. I think the people at the house felt that no one would believe them that the dog was de-aged even if they knew, and that it was better to let them take the dog than to stay around the house. And they couldn't pretend it was a different dog because it was clearly so happy to see them in particular. So both sides were pretending to believe the lies of the visitors about the lost dog? That makes a little more sense, ish.
-the dog was Janet's though, and I think they were going to use it to show people and recruit allies. Janet was sad to lose her friendly little doggo, but glad that it got away to friendly people
-That's really all the details I can pull?

It was waaaaay more complicated than that, with the multi-generational thing and the ritual near the beginning and everything

Working on my Jukebox Noms... Morbane likes to provide resources for nommed songs, like accessible online versions and lyrics and such... But I can't find posted lyrics for this one song, bah! So clearly the solution is to post them myself :V So, here they are!



Evil Overshadows Joe - The Poppy Family

I look at you, Joe
I look you up and down
I shake my head
And then I turn around
'Cause you don't look to good to me now, Joe

Evil overshadows Joe
Evil overshadows Joe
Evil overshadows Joe
Evil overshadows Joe

When you were mine, Joe
You were alive, Joe
You knew of love, Joe
You were above the pack that now walks upon your back

Oh, remember the days, Joe
How it hurts to watch the time go
And the love that I gave you
Oh my God how I tried to save you

Evil overshadows Joe
Evil overshadows Joe
Evil overshadows Joe
Evil...

Your story's told, Joe
I should think by now you know
Though it's started small it*
Don't take long for it to grow
And you don't look too good to me now Joe

Evil overshadows Joe
Evil overshadows Joe
Evil overshadows Joe
Evil...

When you were mine, Joe
You were alive, Joe
You knew of love, Joe
You were above the pack that now walks upon your back

When you were mine, Joe
You were alive, Joe
You knew of love, Joe
You were above the pack that now walks upon your back

When you were mine, Joe
You were alive, Joe
You knew of love, Joe
You were above the pack that now walks upon your back
...

*the only line I'm not 100% confident of. Am willing to take corrections!

If you aren't familiar with Jukebox, it is a SUPER AWESOME fic exchanged based on writing stories from songs and music videos. It is probably my favourite exchanged, and some of my best writing has been for Jukebox. Nominations are open for another few days, and you can see the details here: https://jukebox-fest.dreamwidth.org/39380.html