The dog I love

Watching TV with me

I've been sick with a cold or sinus infection for seven days already. A few days, I was stuck in bed, watching TV. But I wasn't lonely, because Mimi the wonder dog was also there watching TV with me. She's eyeing DiNozzo on NCIS.

Downstairs lobby ain't much to brag about

Thank goodness I have an elevator! Mimi and I use it many times a day to go outside. There's an annoying little lobby at the bottom of the elevator, though, that we have to walk through to get outside. Some neighbors park their e-bikes in the lobby, instead of parking them one more floor down in the basement where they have ramps for easy in-and-out access. We have to squeeze by them to go in and out. There are signs in the lobby that say "no parking," but those signs have been there eight years and no one enforces the rules. In the photo above, Mimi and I have just come back inside the lobby from outside. We entered through a clear glass door that we have a key to.

The lobby is L-shaped, and we've just turned the corner of the L. There's the elevator on Mimi's left side. The lady from the 9th floor lets her brown male poodle pee at the very bottom of the stairs every single day (you can't see the stairs, but they are to Mimi's right side). People walk through the pee because they don't notice it until it is too late. Mimi, on the other hand, swings way out so she doesn't get anywhere near the puddle. 

Two families have first floor apartments. I wouldn't want to be them, with people right outside your door all the time waiting for the elevator.

All my neighbors used to be afraid of Mimi, because she barks loudly at them. Most of them have gotten used to her and laugh at her now. They know she's not going to bite. Maybe they don't all love her, but I'm not really thrilled with all their e-bikes and dog pee either, so we're even. 

In China, public areas like lobbies and stairwells are not well maintained. We have cleaners who come every morning with a wet rag mop. They go up to the 10th floor with the wet mop, and walk down the stairs mopping as they go. They never clean or re-moisten the mop during this routine, and things don't get very clean. The walls are black where the dirty mop slaps them when moving from side to side. 

Even very rich people live in this kind of environment where they have to put up with less-than-stellar public areas. What I mean is, I think the people on the 10th floor of my building, who have two floors and roof garden access and drive BMWs are probably millionaires. They have to deal with the dirt, clutter and dog pee just like us regular joes do. 

Can't get enough of my Pekingese

 

I know one day I won't regret all these photos I've taken of Mimi. Sorry if looking at her isn't your thing. Just scroll on down. This blog is like my journal and I go to it to remember the days of my life. Mimi's a big part of it all. 

Mimi says "hey"

Mimi, my beautiful Pekingese

Mimi is doing well. She has had an eye infection for two months. Once it was almost clear, but she rubbed it and it got messed up again. Now, it's almost better again. She's taken antibiotics and had eye gel applied -- not willingly though. She is 12-1/2 years old, and I guess it is taking her longer to heal than it would if she was younger. She's more moody and grouchy than she used to be, and I don't know if it can be attributed to age or illness or both. I love her and I know she feels the same about me, even when she's grouchy.

And for those smarty-pants among you who wonder exactly when it was that my dog was NOT grouchy, all I can do is wrinkle my nose and glare at you. Please leave my doggy alone. What you consider as aggressive behavior, I consider part of her job as my protective detail. She was merely protecting me. :-)

It's been awhile

I'm sitting on my balcony with Mimi, watching the rush hour traffic below on this cool, overcast spring day in the Middle Kingdom. I know it's been way too long since I updated this blog. I don't even know if anyone bothers to check it for updates anymore. 

Since I finished cancer treatment in January 2016 and had surgery later that same month, I've been on the mend. But just when I thought I should be feeling better, I felt worse. I returned overseas according to schedule, but endurance to make it through the day without napping eluded me. I would do my work during the day, then crash before I could make it through the evening hours (when I would normally update this blog). Furthermore, I couldn't catch my breath, huffing and puffing when it didn't seem reasonable that I should be doing so. Doctors checked me out, and even tested me for heart failure due to the gasping for breath. No one could find anything wrong.

But when I went to MD Anderson for my annual check up in February 2017, they did a chest x-ray. They checked my previous x-rays against the new one and realized that the phrenic nerve in my neck had been severed in one of my neck surgeries, and it had paralyzed my right diaphragm. 

(Radiation can also sever phrenic nerves, but two doctors told me they believed it to be a result of surgery.)

A paralyzed right diaphragm buckles, pushing up against the right lung so that it can't fill up with air. There is no medical solution for a paralyzed diaphragm. One just learns to live with it, making sure not to do things that cause shortness of breath, like climbing stairs, jogging to the mail box, or visiting Lhasa. The pulmonologist said I can't run (because I can't breathe), and I can't lift weights (because my right arm can't be raised more than 45 degrees). He suggested walking for exercise and keeping to light housework and office work. Another doctor suggested I take up yoga, but what yoga pose doesn't require the use of your arms to hold you up off the floor? I tried yoga before cancer came my way, and it was painful even then.

So my new normal is to take it easy. I've had a spurt of energy the past week that has kept me awake in the evenings, like normal people, and I hope it stays around for a long time. I'll make every effort to post more bloggy stuff soon, so I hope you'll check back from time to time.

The birthday girls

Mimi and I share a birthday! 

I've been homeschooling her lately. Most of the time she sleeps during class -- but when class is over she eats her homework. Mimi is 12 years old now, equivalent to age 74 according to the veterinary charts for small dogs. 

I chose her tiny furry body out of a cardboard box on the sidewalk on a Sunday afternoon in early 2005, and it has proven to be one of the best things I ever did. I thank God for this warm fuzzy blessing in my life. 

The first day of 2017

I took Mimi on a walk through the neighborhood today. I captured the blue sky with wispy clouds visible behind the stark bare branches of a winter tree.

I used to have a young American friend, Katherine P, who lived in one of those twin towers just outside my apartment complex. She's been gone for 7.5 years, but every time I go on a walk, I see her towers and think of her. 

Mimi was walking on the boardwalk when I started taking photos. She turned her back to me so her face wouldn't be in the photo. I whistled shrilly to try to get her to turn her head, but she knows that trick too. Finally, she couldn't take it anymore and did a fast two-step u-turn to put an end to the nonsense. I caught her in motion. She looks a little uncomfortable, but she's just twisting her body and getting ready to run.

A canal runs through the middle of my very large apartment complex. There are two bridges over it, a walking bridge and a drive-over bridge. Mimi's goal in life is to cross to the other side of the walking bridge as often as humanly (caninely) possible. She enjoys the smells on that side, and she gets more exercise. No one else knows this little secret, but as far as we're concerned, the name of the bridge is "The Mimi Bridge." Shocker, huh?

That's the first day of 2017 here in Bamboo Forest. Have a year full of God's blessings!

So far, so good

                                        
It's 2017 and all is well in the Middle Kingdom. I think 2017 is going to be a better year for this blog. (I found a better internet solution, and I'm not as exhausted as I was during most of 2016.) Keep checking back. 

Shot day

              

My babe is wrapped in swaddling clothes and laying in front of the door so she can see who comes and goes. She had her rabies' shots on Monday and shot day always mellows her for a day.

Smarty pants dog

She knows I'm taking her picture. She's acting like she's ignoring me, but she is completely engaged in the situation. She plays the game better than anyone I know. She is one smart doggy. This photo was taken at my parents' house, and I ran across it the other day. I love it because -- even though you probably can't see them like I can -- I can see the wheels turning in her brain and it makes me laugh out loud. Ah, she's so hilarious and I love her. Here's to YOU, Mimi!

Random Summer Summary 2016

HOTNESS

You know it is hot when you have to travel to Thailand to cool off.

The heat index got up to 126 degrees Fahrenheit one day here where I live in the Middle Kingdom. Most evenings the heat index has been at least 100 degrees. Not every summer is this hot. For instance, any summer I am not here, it is not that hot. It wasn't that hot here last summer.

THAILAND

I am not in this picture and I did not wear a swimsuit, so don't be wondering which one of these Russian exhibitionists is me. 

Some day when I am full of energy, I will get the good photos off of my good camera instead of just showing you my phone photos.

Honestly, while in Thailand I saw the beach for about five minutes every day, usually just before the sun set, but I wasn't at the beach much. 

I have been on three trips this summer. I have been to Taiwan, Thailand, and a desert area of China. I did fine on each trip, but when I got home from the trips I had trip recovery issues. Maybe when the weather cools down, I can recover more quickly. My health still drags me down. 

FRIENDLY MUSLIM LADY

One day near the end of Ramadan, on one of my trips, I was out in a public park and the Muslim lady above invited me to her house for dinner. She was very friendly and insisted. I told her I would visit her house, but I wouldn't eat because I'd already eaten dinner. I got there and she started cooking, because she didn't believe I'd really already eaten. I wasn't really planning to eat her food, and she wasn't planning to eat it either because she was still fasting. So finally we just took photos and laughed and talked about things. Here she is at the sink washing the food she planned to cook for me. Her hat is what Muslims wear. Sometimes they wear scarves, but the purple hats are easier to throw on. 

She told me that her husband was staying with their daughter for a few weeks, because he wanted to eat and his daughter would cook for him. So this lady was willing to cook for me but not for her own husband.

UNFRIENDLY MUSLIMS ... OR NOT?

One day, in my own city, I went to eat at a Muslim restaurant. The Uighurs who work there are very conservative, cover up with scarves, and are very unfriendly. You can say hello to them and they won't even acknowledge your existence. People go there to eat because the food is good, not because they want to be acknowledged as human beings. 

So imagine my shock when I went to the restaurant one day and one of the women came over to TALK TO ME. She wanted schooling help for her children and thought I would have information to help. Her husband came over and we exchanged contact information. I texted a Chinese friend to say I was at this restaurant, and that Chinese friend wrote back asking if they were being mean as usual. I wrote back and said "NO, WE ARE FRIENDS NOW!" My Chinese friend thought I was being sarcastic and didn't believe me! Haha.

I've been back several times. The last time I was there, a torrential thunderstorm came up. The sidewalks became rivers. I had to stay at their restaurant a really long time. I thought I could chat with them more, but they were busy running the restaurant. 

COFFEE SHOP IN THE RAIN

When a mild break in the rain came, I ran across the pathway to a coffee shop and hung out until the storm ended. It was one of the most beautifully decorated coffee shops that I've ever been in.

                  

I felt bad that Mimi was home alone during the storm though. Poor dog child.

IN CONCLUSION

Besides going to the doctor for appointments, these are the sad little highlights of my summer so far. Thank God I've been able to do this much!

I've tried to write blog posts more often, but the internet always seems to cut out when I have time to write. Thanks to the Great Firewall of You-Know-Where, I have to use a VPN to write on this blog, and VPN slows down the internet and doesn't work at all sometimes. I do the best I can with what I have.

Please pray for good health for me and my family (my parents in particular). And, as always, please pray that cancer stays away from my body forever, please.

"He was asking for it," says Mimi

My dog bit the groundskeeper this morning. I was trying to talk to him and I was holding her usually tight leash a little too loosely. She must have not liked the look or smell of the guy, because she went right for his ankle, a move she tries on every person and dog that comes too close that she doesn't take an immediate liking to.

I think Mimi thought in her own little brain that she was playing with him, because she didn't try to kill him or anything. She just got her slobber all over the leg of his trousers, like she was teasing him to come chase her or something. He pulled up his trouser's leg to see if she broke skin, and though we could detect a little redness, she hadn't broken his skin. The groundskeeper is such a good sport though; he laughed it off and said "mei shi," no problem.

Mimi was all smiling and everything. She looked at me for approval and wondered why the game ended before it ever got started good. If only we could find a game for her that didn't involve her teeth and "mouth water" as they call it here....

I understand the groundskeeper's initial fear. In this country, rabies are a big problem. If you get bit by a rabid dog (which Mimi acts like sometimes, but is not), you have to go to the hospital and pay a couple of hundred dollars for a series of rabies shots. If you don't, you may start foaming at the mouth, bite people and die within a few months. If Mimi had seriously bit this guy,  I would have had to pay for his shots, and rightly so. I know, I must remember to keep that leash tight, or else pick her up and throw her over my shoulder like a baby when I stop to talk to someone!

In America, Mimi and I would walk and walk and walk and never encounter another person. But in this most populated country of the world, we can't walk more than five seconds without passing someone or some group of people. I'm usually very careful to keep her leash pulled tight so she can't lunge at anyone.

I told the guy Mimi has had her rabies shots and cannot carry the rabies disease. But no one here believes that story, although in my case it is true. Even if you showed them your pet's rabies' certificates, they would assume they were forged. Lots of people try to save money by not getting their pets vaccinated, and some find fake certificates to use. But my dog really did get rabies shots, in Texas in December. So she is really good.

And when I say good, I mean bad. Mimi is really bad to be biting people. She has a bad master who could never figure out how to train and restrain this notoriously off-the-wall doggy breed.

On the other hand, her behavior works great for her watch dog status, and I always feel very safe with her around. If the delivery guy tries anything funny, Mimi will have him for lunch.

My 11-year-old Mimi is so sweet, calm and loving when she is home inside with me with the door closed. My neighbors who share the elevator with Mimi wouldn't believe it. I've told them as much, and they are like "are you kidding me?"

Anyway, she's my sweet little wolf, and I'm keeping her.

Elephants never forget

After a year and a half in Texas, in a one-level home that has a fenced in backyard with grass, you'd think this little Pekingese might have been confused when she returned to her high-rise apartment, elevator, in-door potty training expectations, and all the other things that are different in her life in the Middle Kingdom.

She acted like she hadn't been away a single minute.

They say elephants never forget. Nor do Pekingese.

Hiding

I can see you little Meems!

One year ago today

It happened August 17, 2014 – exactly one year ago today. It was a Sunday, I was in China, and I had hosted the Sunday morning gathering at my home that day for my group of expatriate friends. I’d made breakfast and coffee for them. I think we even had a light summer a.m. rain, making me glad I wasn’t the one who had to go out that morning, as was usually the case. When they left in the early afternoon, I went out on my motorbike, did some sightseeing, and met up with Chinese friends at a coffee shop. I came home that evening, gave Mimi a doggy head massage, and reveled in the lovely day I’d just had. I was in excellent health with lots of energy, especially since going off statins two years prior, and going off of sodas, sugar and wheat one year prior. At 10:25 p.m., I got in my pajamas, stretched my arms into the air, and decided to rub my own neck, something I never did. It was then that I discovered a funny little hard bump on the back right side of my neck.

I checked the left side and found nothing. I didn’t know if a lump on my neck was normal or not, but the lack of symmetry startled me. I decided I would be at the clinic run by English-speaking Singaporean doctors when their doors opened the following morning.

The neck ultrasound worried my doctor, and he suggested I get it checked elsewhere, outside the country. My organization’s medical consultant recommended waiting two weeks to see if the lymph nodes in my neck were just swollen due to an infection.

I went ahead and took my scheduled train trip in which I traversed half the distance of China from south to north, headed to the northern port city of Dalian to meet up with colleagues and friends. I felt fine, but the hard lump on my neck didn’t go away during that week of travel. If anything, the rest of my neck felt tighter than before, something I told the medical consultant.

She arranged for me to have an appointment in Hong Kong, and I showed up at the doctor’s office there two weeks and two days after finding the lump. On Tuesday, September 2^nd Dr. Chen, a graduate of Harvard Medical School, did a fine needle biopsy, and on Wednesday, September 3rd he called me back into his office at noon to tell me the news that I had cancer in my neck that had spread there from some other yet unknown part of my body. I assumed that since we just found it, it must be in the harmless early stages, but my doctor told me otherwise. He told me it was serious and that I should get home to the U.S. as soon as possible to get it taken care of.

I was stunned that this thing could happen to me at all, much less at a time when I had never felt better in my adult life. I had faithfully and meticulously done cancer screenings during annual physical exams. I had done everything I was supposed to do and probably more than what most people do. How could I have cancer, much less cancer that had spread, when I had done everything right?

I flew back to my home in China the next day, on September 4th. Under a heavy cloud of grief, I spent days trying to figure out what to do about my dog, closing out bank accounts, shredding papers, trying to pack, making travel arrangements, trying to make doctor’s appointments in the U.S. (I had to stay up at night to do this due to the time difference) and saying goodbyes as best I could. I only had five full days. How do you bring 19 years in China to closure in just five days? I didn’t know if I would ever be coming back to China, if I would ever see my friends again in this life, if I should leave my belongings behind (in case I returned to China) or would need them for a new life in the U.S. or -- in the worst case scenario -- not need anything ever again.

Now, by the grace of God, it is one year later. I have more hope and peace now than I did at that time.

The excellent news is that my doctor at MD Anderson says the cancer is gone now as far as they can tell -- but then again they haven’t seen my type of cancer very often, as I have the most unusual of cases. The request for complete healing is always in my prayers, even now, as it is in many of your prayers as well – thank you. If all goes well between now and the end of January, when my every-three-week maintenance IV treatments end, my doctor says I will be fit to return overseas.

God is surely the One who prompted me to touch my neck on that evening one year ago today, to give me warning before it was too late, something my cancer screenings had failed to do. God is certainly the One who stepped in to rescue me. I trust in Him to navigate these murky waters and see me through.

All I know is that – and I hope it never happens to you – my life unexpectedly changed forever, and it started one year ago today.

Mimi joy

Mimi and I have been going on walks in the neighborhood lately, right around sundown when the weather is bearable. Mimi LOVES to get out the front door of the house to see what's going on in the neighborhood. Access to the fenced backyard just doesn't hold the same appeal for her.

Indoor exercise always seems to involve re-arranging things in the house. Mimi knows that toilet paper doesn't belong in the living room, so she brings it there to get a rise out of me. Smart little doggy knows how to have a really good time. She's the best. I wouldn't trade this little doggy for anything.

My lovely little Pekingese

It sure is nice to have Mimi with me in the U.S. She keeps me laughing, smiling and happy all over.

Mimi has been an "only-dog" for ten years, so she's had a hard time adjusting to sharing a house with a poodle. Mimi is aggressive, even hostile towards the other dog, thinking it might steal her food. My parents have really big hearts though, and they love Mimi despite her personality flaws, knowing she's been through a lot lately.

Right now I'm in Houston for six weeks, so my parents have kindly taken on the responsibility for keeping the dogs alive and happy during my absence. I kind of miss my cuddly little sidekick. I know she's in good hands though. Hang in there little baby!

Cold Saturday in January

It's a cold, bleak January morning, a Saturday. I get up and out the door early.

Mimi's excited to have her pink sweater and her leash both on. It means something is going to happen to her. But when I put her in her carrier in the back seat of my car, her excitement morphs into terror. I tell her not to worry, that we're just going to the nearby small town of Noonday, not back on an airplane to China. As usual, she doesn't understand.

We ride through nearly vacant roads on this weekend morning, made empty as others sleep in. These are back roads, lined with bare trees reaching their limbs to the frosty gray sky above.

This would be a charming ride through the woods if it were not for the wailing dog in the back seat.

We arrive ten minutes before the traveling small town veterinarian staff opens for business under a tent next to the Dollar General store. I don't want a line to form in front of me, so I get Mimi out of the car and we wait in the cold.

No line forms. No one else thinks it is warm enough to visit the outdoor vet today, not at this early hour anyway. Whether he offers cheaper prices or not, they have decided to stay home in their warm beds and postpone their doggy disease prevention to another day.

Mimi gets a blood test. We wait another ten minutes to get the result. Good news, no heart worms. We buy a year's worth of preventative medicine and jump back in the car.

Even though we had no stops at airports, Mimi is still not happy. She shrieks all the way home, over the undulating hills of east Texas.

I think she must get car sick, like me.