I’ve been overwhelmed this past week with worries and sadness and I just couldn’t bring myself to write—about anything. Rick’s Dad has finally turned the corner and is now being moved from ICU. It took him about four days to come around once they removed his “doze” meds. He had a low level pneumonia after the surgery and we were worried as he only has one complete lung. They got him out of bed yesterday for the first time in a week and he’s as weak as a newborn kitten. It’s going to take some time to bounce back, but he’s on his way to recovery finally.

While we were worrying about Vaughn’s heart, it turned out that is was our dog Daisy’s heart that we should have been concerned about without even knowing it. I can’t quite believe it myself, but we lost Daisy on Friday, July 6th. She’s gone from us ... our Daisy-Doo. Just like that. I won’t go into the details here but if you remember I mentioned she was sick. We had thought it was an infection of some kind and she was on antibiotics. They had done x-rays and on Monday her heart looked rounder than normal. Our vet wasn’t overly concerned since her heart sounded fine in all respects and Daisy was back eating and she wasn’t as lethargic as she had been. Then on Friday she took a turn for the worse and was having difficulty breathing. We rushed her to the ER at 10:00 p.m., but her heart just stopped on the exam table as she was being given fluids. We didn’t even get to say good-bye to her. We had no clue when we handed her over to the triage nurse and she led her back to the ER room that we would never see her alive again.

As it turned out she had a tumor in her heart that had started to bleed. The fluid was accumulating around her heart and before they could tap it to drain the fluid, she was gone. It’s just too sad. Even if we had diagnosed it earlier her prognosis would have been grim. At least she didn’t suffer, but we would have liked some closure with her with some advance notice. They assured us that this kind of cancer usually is hidden until it becomes critical. Daisy was only five-and-a-half. We will miss her sweet smiling eyes and silly “Doo-ness.” Rest well, sweet Daisy ... we’ll miss you so ...