The Best of Days, The Worst of Days

Yesterday was one of those days. It started with me waking up to discover that the tooth that had been bothering me finally revealed what was wrong. It had split in two and the loose part was hanging in there causing pain whenever it moved.

I went out to the Den to check on Sunshine and while she was still alive, she was looking bad. She had lost control of her rear legs and although she didn’t appear to be in pain she hadn’t eaten for over a week and was just literally skin and bones. She still was appreciative of attention and turned her head toward me so I would scratch it. I knew she would only get worse so I started preparing myself to have her euthanized.


Back to my tooth – I called my dentist and she told me to come right in. She said she expected me to dress appropriately – that meant I should wear my red dancing shoes. That should give you some idea of what type of person she is. After looking at the tooth she said she would have to extract it. I didn’t like that idea so I asked her if it could be saved. She said that if the tooth broke off to the side and not in half then maybe – but you would have to be awfully lucky for that. She juiced me up and yanked out the broken part of the tooth exclaiming, “You are a lucky, lucky man!” The tooth can be saved. All I need is a root canal, a crown lengthening procedure (actually cutting away gum and bone to make better room for the crown to fit on the tooth) and then to have a post put in and a crown applied. Cha-ching! So, I’ve got appointments with 3 dentists to have all that done by the end of the year.


I didn’t like the idea of all that dental work, but at least I would have a solid tooth instead of some sort of appliance. By now I was pretty depressed. It was a dreary rainy day, I knew I had to do something about Sunshine before she went into bad pain and I was facing lots of time in the dentist’s chair. But God was watching out for me. As I left the dentist’s and walked to my car, the clouds broke just enough to let some sunshine through. A beautiful rainbow appeared just for a few minutes. This type of thing has happened before. I take it as reassurance I was doing the right thing and a reminder to have a little faith in him. As I drove home in the rain, I gathered up the will to do the job.


It is hard not to feel like you are betraying the trust that an animal has had with you to take care of it and protect it. Brie, for example, wont trust anyone but Penny and I (and to some degree Christy). So being the one to make the decision and bring our 16-year-old companion to her death was very, very difficult.


After Sushine was put to sleep I wrapped her body in one of Karen’s old shirts and buried her beside Friskie and Allie in our side yard.


Today Brie is visibly upset. She goes around the house meowing looking for Sunshine. She sniffs everywhere that Sunshine was in the last week – even the litter pan, and wanders around in a confused manner not knowing why her friend is gone.


So why was yesterday also the best of days. It’s because we saw Christy. She had to turn in a bid in Tallahassee so we drove over and had dinner with her at Applebee’s. Sorry to say her company did not win the contract but Christy looked good and we enjoyed our time together. We also found out yesterday that the kids are coming home for Thanksgiving.


Hopefully today will be just a normal day or if is going to be some extreme I would much rather have just one of those “best of days”.