I'm so sorry for your sad January. You gave your doggies a wonderful life.

Sounds like your dog had the ideal life though. I bet he wouldn't have traded for anything.

You take care of yourself. We need you in fighting form for the road ahead.

I really, really get the dog thing.

I'm glad you shared. Even doing that can help ease the stress induced by grief. If you feel up to it, perhaps when you get out of the hospital you can adopt a shelter dog. Or even 2. It sounds like your previous dogs were great companions and new life in your household would help.

So sorry for the loss of your babies. I'm hoping you have insurance for all this.

Sounds like you are in the right place, doing the right things and are justifiably cranky over the challenges thrown at you.

On the road to recovery, you may find you have become ready for some new pet therapy to speed things along. That could be a blessing for you and your new "health aide."

rescue you.

rescue you.

Best wishes on your hospital visit. Stick around! --Tace : )

results. I know how hard it is to lose dogs. In 2004, I lost 4 out of 5 of my dogs within 4 months of each other. A brother and sister died 35 days apart. Only one died from old age. Hang in there.

And scared, and sad...
Know that many are wishing you the best and caring that you come thru this all well.

one dog, horrible to lose two.

Keeping you in my thoughts and hoping for the best outcome on your stress test.

It sounds like you may be in northern Wisconsin. If you are being treated at the Marshfield Clinic, you can be assured that they are very good docs!

And sympathy for the passing of your furry kids.

It is a very undiagnosed condition especially in men, but becoming more recognizable lately. The hall marks of the syndrome are changes in the Echocardiogram and a slight elevation in troponin or cardiac markers (as if one had a mild heart attack). Chest pain and shortness of breath are the usual symptoms hat bring a patient in to be seen and many of them as well as their physicians think the Pt is having a heart attack. When the Pt has their cardiac angiogram there is little or no coronary artery disease. In other words the coronary angiogram is negative which is diagnostic or indicative of takotsubo syndrome.
Takotsubo syndrome or stress cardiomyopathy is precipitated by stress, usually an emotional stress in which stress hormones are released by the adrenal glands which affects the sympathetic nervous system and other organs. The left ventricle of the heart balloons outward or weakens and cannot pump blood to the body effectively. The ballooning out of the left ventricle causes it to resemble an octopus pot--or so the Japanese doctor thought when he named this disease.
Usually the heart recovers and goes back to normal in a few weeks or so but the condition can be fatal especially if not treated in a small percentage of folks. There is a great web site for those with or interested in this syndrome and there is much research being done on it these days.
I do think You should mention this to Your doctors. Of course You have to have the angiogram especially since You have a history of heart disease. It shouldn't take but an hour and Your kidneys are good so that's good also in this situation. The main thing is that this is probably a transient or temporary situation and recovery is likely. If You have any questions let me know.

Here it is: http://www.takotsubo.com/

must be overwhelmingly sad.

Sorry too about your health condition and hoping you will be back home before long and on the road to recovery.

Take care and let us know how things are going.

.

Hang tough.

... one of my favorite DUers is having a bad time. But I'm glad you told us so we can all send positive thoughts and hopes for your quick recovery.

Sometimes our bad luck seems to come in clumps and it sure sounds to me like this clump is done!

positive thoughts and good wishes your way. I hope that the rest of the year is much much improved.

I can see how 14 is not your favorite number.
Wishing you a speedy recovery and sending you my best wishes.

So sorry to hear of your dogs. Here's hoping your test results are the best possible and that you are home and healthy soon!

Loss of pets is devastating. I had heart trouble after losing my 7-1/2 y.o. Collie. They were never able to find out what was wrong with him. My issue was diagnosed as severe stress.

I found a pet grief meet up group and went religiously for 4 months. It helped me heal my heart and my heartache. It's over a year and I'm still dealing with it, but my heart is ok medically.

Wishing you the best. It's time like these that we wish we had a magic wand.

That is a very tough place to be.

I always smile when I see one of your post. Back in the mid 60s I use to spend my weekends in the summer watching motorcycle scrambles at the Jackpine Lodge just north of Lansing Michigan. Your handle always takes me back to those great times, therefore I always read your post.
I'll be pulling for you.

Your 2014 sounds like my 2010. Stay strong. It should get better.

with all of this and although so much is unfortunate, a bright spot is it seems you are getting some good medical help! Hopefully all of this will soon pass and you'll be better!

Sometimes they've been known to help.
If not then maybe some good old fashioned well wishes will.
At any rate you get both

So sorry for your loss of both doggies. Goldens are so sweet and good.

And then your poor heart. Oh my gosh. Hope you get patched up good as new. Vibes and prayers. ( They maybe atheist but it's the best I've got)

As a matter of fact, I have a rather strange set of beliefs myself, founded in certain--for lack of a better word--mystical experiences that I had at various times in my life. I have no urge to "convert" others to my point of view, and will let it suffice for me to say that they revolve around a perception of the interconnectedness of all things, and their most significant impact on my life has been to enhance my compassion.

are the most healing of all medicines.

Keep thinking compassion. It will return to you.

Get better!



(FYI, being done for your wife, too.)

I'm truly sorry for all of that. It's hard to lose our pups, that's for sure. Get well!!!

to you recovering fully from this major setback. Take Care.

I wish I was as eloquent as many of the other posters here have been in wishing Jackpine comfort, solace and healing.

Don't underestimate your talent as a writer. I frequently read your posts with awe and smiles. Glad you're better from your incident.

That others share your sorrow. Take very good care of yourself, and your broken heart. Your beautiful golden retrievers - if they could speak - would tell you that would be their fondest wish.

Your DU team is cheering for you!

Things will improve for you!

Sending healing thoughts your way to get strong again.

It is so very hard to lose our furry friends, nothing I could say would make your losses any easier to bear, so I give you a big hug and all of my sympathy.

You loved your dogs and they loved you. And they left a big hole in your heart. And now this. I am sending prayers and hope and some hugs. Looking forward to future posts re your return to your normal life, and the adoption of some doggies to share your farm and love and life.

I'll be holding you in the Light.

Wrap your spirit into the lifeline of love and concern and good wishes going out to you. It can't make any of what's already happened unhappen, but maybe it will remind you of the strength you can draw on to make it through today.

There is still beauty.

diffidently,
Bright

Sending positive vibes your way.

You take care, and for all you know you set a new hospital record. We have a friend who did over the holidays. His cholesterol is so high he should not be in the land of the living. But he is, and you will too.

And as to Gus and honey, we saw real grieving when Tuky died. Out Nanday, to this day, cannot be shown photos of his best buddy. He just gets into a funk. Animals grieve.

It's been almost four years. Oh and the tiel died of really old age, and we did show his buddy his friend's body.

And sending good vibes that your health improves.

-Laelth

My own story.
Never lost two dogs in the time ya did, but.....

Lost one, my bestest friend, lived a long time, he shouldn't have. Born with cancer, lived with tumors, loved us and we him.

Moved off our farm, 90 acres, his rule, his territority, not ours, his smell ruled all at the farm.
Cattle obeyed, foxes stayed away, groundhogs and possum kinda cowtowed to his scent.

I, was told at that time I have CHF. Had a very risky heart surgery, a five-way pass. My dog, Taz, never left my side when I came home, 5 weeks later. I developed an infection in my sternum, and was readmmited to the hospital. Bone infections are not a great thing to have.

As I was in hospital, Taz was beside himself. His cancer grew and overtook him. I came home, I had to! We took him to the vet later in the day, not great news.

My last seconds with him were, his exhalation of his last breath and my drawing it in to me.
My best friend, my dog, my zen, giving me his last breath so I could have a remembrance of him.

Time has passed, I haved healed better than expected. But my heart is still with my dog, my friend.

I have a new buddy now, a great friend, best dog I ever had. He is so smart it hurts. Loves to look at pictures of our old dogs. We play them on the television. Barks, then whines, he sees us with them,
loving them. I think he just wants to be there.

Time is like a river. It flows one way but has many twists and back currents. It takes us forward but let's us enjoy the current backwards, and we should. Remembrances are what make us.

Time will heal us, we can't forget the past, loves, life, enjoyments.
New companions will come, new to us, new to them. Love has no boundary.

You will be fine. You will survive. Your love will be passed on. Believe!

Hope JPR feels well enough to read this.

I am sorry for your losses! I know you are in good hands. I am at the Mayo facility in Red Wing right now with spouse who just had cataract surgery, and who has had a heart valve replaced at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester. You are at the best place possible for your medical concerns.


I don't blame you for not liking 2014!


Keep us posted!

You are in my thoughts. Always love your posts.

that you have lost your two good friends.

Take good care of yourself; get well so you can go home and possibly get another wonderful companion.

I'm so glad I read your post. I hope you are feeling better soon.

My medical advice would be: Get another dog soon.

Sending some good vibes your way, my man.

I am so sorry for your troubles. I may be facing a similar dog issue in that my beardie is going to be 15 in March and the breed normally lives 10-12 years.

You're one of my favorite posters here !

I think you'll be okay, but these recent sad losses have put a lot of stress and grief on you. It sounds like your dogs had a wonderful life with you. I hope they will be there when you reach the other side, a long long time from now.

all the best,
LibE

It's so hard to lose a pet, and then two in such a short time.

Good luck with your medical issues and hang in there.

I'm so sorry for all the troubles you're having - it'd be bad enough one at a time but at all at once?

Stay strong.

please keep us updated

A Huge

And another from me

It's gotta get better... and I send (((good thoughts and vibes to you))).

My condolences on your sweet fur babies.

and heartbreaking loss. I can only hope that your beautiful and strong spirit and the good wishes of others will help you heal and become whole. sending good feels and cosmic love your way.

Last edited Sat Feb 8, 2014, 03:19 AM - Edit history (1)

It's a pretty mellow experience... I had some very talented folks taking care of me. It was actually a somewhat comical experience. They certainly had some of the coolest equipment I've seen... right out of Star Trek. I'm sure whatever happens you'll be just fine. I'm really sorry to hear of the loss of your two dogs especially in such close proximity to one another. You and your wife must be devastated. Which brings me to my final thought... she's probably really freakin' out about you... as much as may be concerned for your future put on your best "John Wayne" for her. Your one of the folks I've come to look up to her on DU so GET WELL. Or I'll ask Skittles to come up to Wisconsin and kick your ass.

Enjoy the journey with it's ups and downs... its all we get.


Namaste

Sorry to hear of all this happening!

Best wishes to you, your wife and family... get better soon.

... you're going to pull through this. Sounds like you're in a good hospital. The best thing you can do right now is lay back and relax. REST. Wear those aides butts out waiting on you hand and foot. Thank them profusely and blow a kiss at them once in a while, and their yours.

Thank you for your OP of what has been happening. Take a break from DU too. Things get kinda' heated on here, as you know and you don't need it right now. We'll be right here waiting when you get back. Meanwhile, we'll fight the injustices of the world and put a little more gusto in on your behalf.

I'm so sorry about your best friends. God love em'. But they had a good life, because you gave it to them. And they loved you, heart and soul, and appreciated you so much, though they couldn't speak the words.

Get well soon, JR.

RR

And to fall back asleep, I read DU. I'm glad I saw this so I could wish you peace and wellness. I will be sending you healing thoughts. Take care friend.

My best healing vibe are heading your way for your stress test and recovery. All of my best.

So sorry about your dogs. Losing a pet is hard but giving them a good life is what it's all about and it sounds like they were 2 very happy pups. I hope you will get another pet.

As for you...

I only know you from reading your posts as a lurker for years, and now as a member. Always enjoyed them. Look forward to many, many more.

Sending good thoughts and vibes your way. You've got a lot of people pulling for ya'.

Now if I can just shoulder my way in with everyone else.

I am forwarding healing vibes. I hope that's alright.

You are wonderful writer.

I'm very sorry about the loss of your dogs. I could feel Honey's sadness at the loss of Gus. We had a similar experience recently when we lost our 18 year old dog. It was bad for us. But it was devastating to our kitty to lose the dog. We knew they were close but not to such a degree.

You need it right now. Be well.

Bummer so far. Hope things get better for you quickly.

Jackpine. I could so easily see that happening here down the road. We have our crazy purebred that I was insane enough to buy after his initial owners returned him (there's always a reason for that ... ha) and the rescue we adopted a year later (and they are about the same age as far as we know).

I can also empathize with your health issues. I have a few of my own and I have to say it is somewhat sobering to be under 50 with a chronic illness that has no cure (I also have hypertension for which I take a daily med). I do all the things I'm supposed to - take my meds, good diet, lots of walking, not too much wine (!) but you never know when something is going to happen. I am thankful you are getting medical care and don't worry if they transfer you to a bigger hospital. All of my family in Wisconsin seem to start out in one of the small hospitals but then eventually wind up in Theda Clark for actual treatment. So if that happens don't worry. In my experience TC kicks ass.

We're not going to let you leave you know, because you write really good OPs.

((Hugs))

Funes, the Memorious    
      
      

       By Jorge Luis Borges
      
       I remember him (I scarcely have the right to use this ghostly verb; only one man on earth deserved the right, and he is dead), I remember him with a dark passionflower in his hand, looking at it as no one has ever looked at such a flower, though they might look from the twilight of day until the twilight of night, for a whole life long. I remember him, his face immobile and Indian-like, and singularly remote, behind his cigarette. I remember (I believe) the strong delicate fingers of the plainsman who can braid leather. I remember, near those hands, a vessel in which to make maté tea, bearing the arms of the Banda Oriental; I remember, in the window of the house, a yellow rush mat, and beyond, a vague marshy landscape. I remember clearly his voice, the deliberate, resentful nasal voice of the old Eastern Shore man, without the Italianate syllables of today. I did not see him more than three times; the last time, in 1887. . . .
      
       That all those who knew him should write something about him seems to me a very felicitous idea; my testimony may perhaps be the briefest and without doubt the poorest, and it will not be the least impartial. The deplorable fact of my being an Argentinian will hinder me from falling into a dithyramb - an obligatory form in the Uruguay, when the theme is an Uruguayan.
      
       Littérateur, slicker, Buenos Airean: Funes did not use these insulting phrases, but I am sufficiently aware that for him I represented these unfortunate categories. Pedro Leandro Ipuche has written that Funes was a precursor of the superman, "an untamed and vernacular Zarathustra"; I do not doubt it, but one must not forget, either, that he was a countryman from the town of Fray Bentos, with certain incurable limitations.
      
       My first recollection of Funes is quite clear: I see him at dusk, sometime in March or February of the year '84. That year, my father had taken me to spend the summer at Fray Bentos. I was on my way back from the farm at San Francisco with my cousin Bernardo Haedo. We came back singing, on horseback; and this last fact was not the only reason for my joy. After a sultry day, an enormous slate-grey-storm had obscured the sky. It was driven on by a wind from the south; the trees were already tossing like madmen; and I had the apprehension (the secret hope) that the elemental downpour would catch us out in the open. We were running a kind of race with the tempest. We rode into a narrow lane which wound down between two enormously high brick footpaths. It had grown black of a sudden; I now heard rapid almost secret steps above; I raised my eyes and saw a boy running along the narrow, cracked path as if he were running along a narrow, broken wall. I remember the loose trousers, tight at the bottom, the hemp sandals; I remember the cigarette in the hard visage, standing out against the by now limitless darkness. Bernardo unexpectedly yelled to him: "What's the time, Ireneo?" Without looking up, without stopping, Ireneo replied: "In four minutes it will be eight o'clock, child Bernardo Juan Francisco." The voice was sharp, mocking.
      
       I am so absentminded that the dialogue which I have just cited would not have penetrated my attention if it had not been repeated by my cousin, who was stimulated, I think, by a certain local pride and by a desire to show himself indifferent to the other's three-sided reply.
      
       He told me that the boy above us in the pass was a certain Ireneo Funes, renowned for a number of eccentricities, such as that of having nothing to do with people and of always knowing the time, like a watch. He added that Ireneo was the son of Maria Clementina Funes, an ironing woman in the town, and that his father, some people said, was an "Englishman" named O'Connor, a doctor in the salting fields, though some said the father was a horse-breaker, or scout, from the province of El Salto. Ireneo lived with his mother, at the edge of the country house of the Laurels.
      
       In the years '85 and '86 we spent the summer in the city of Montevideo. We returned to Fray Bentos in '87. As was natural, I inquired after all my acquaintances, and finally, about "the chronometer Funes." I was told that he had been thrown by a wild horse at the San Francisco ranch, and that he had been hopelessly crippled. I remember the impression of uneasy magic which the news provoked in me: the only time I had seen him we were on horseback, coming from San Francisco, and he was in a high place; from the lips of my cousin Bernardo the affair sounded like a dream elaborated with elements out of the past. They told me that Ireneo did not move now from his cot, but remained with his eyes fixed on the backyard fig tree, or on a cobweb. At sunset he allowed himself to be brought to the window. He carried pride to the extreme of pretending that the blow which had befallen him was a good thing. . . . Twice I saw him behind the iron grate which sternly delineated his eternal imprisonment: unmoving, once, his eyes closed; unmoving also, another time, absorbed in the contemplation of a sweet-smelling sprig of lavender cotton.
      
       At the time I had begun, not without some ostentation, the methodical study of Latin. My valise contained the De viris illustribus of Lhomond, the Thesaurus of Quicherat, Caesar's Commentaries, and an odd-numbered volume of the Historia Naturalis of Pliny, which exceeded (and still exceeds) my modest talents as a Latinist. Everything is noised around in a small town; Ireneo, at his small farm on the outskirts, was not long in learning of the arrival of these anomalous books. He sent me a flowery, ceremonious letter, in which he recalled our encounter, unfortunately brief, "on the seventh day of February of the year '84," and alluded to the glorious services which Don Gregorio Haedo, my uncle, dead the same year, "had rendered to the Two Fatherlands in the glorious campaign of Ituzaingó," and he solicited the loan of any one of the volumes, to be accompanied by a dictionary "for the better intelligence of the original text, for I do not know Latin as yet." He promised to return them in good condition, almost immediately. The letter was perfect, very nicely constructed; the orthography was of the type sponsored by Andrés Bello: i for y, j for g. At first I naturally suspected a jest. My cousins assured me it was not so, that these were the ways of Ireneo. I did not know whether to attribute to impudence, ignorance, or stupidity the idea that the difficult Latin required no other instrument than a dictionary; in order fully to undeceive him I sent the Gradus ad Parnassum of Quicherat, and the Pliny.
      
       On 14 February, I received a telegram from Buenos Aires telling me to return immediately, for my father was "in no way well." God forgive me, but the prestige of being the recipient of an urgent telegram, the desire to point out to all of Fray Bentos the contradiction between the negative form of the news and the positive adverb, the temptation to dramatize my sorrow as I feigned a virile stoicism, all no doubt distracted me from the possibility of anguish. As I packed my valise, I noticed that I was missing the Gradus and the volume of the Historia Naturalis. The "Saturn" was to weigh anchor on the morning of the next day; that night, after supper, I made my way to the house of Funes. Outside, I was surprised to find the night no less oppressive than the day.
      
       Ireneo's mother received me at the modest ranch.
      
       She told me that Ireneo was in the back room and that I should not be disturbed to find him in the dark, for he knew how to pass the dead hours without lighting the candle. I crossed the cobblestone patio, the small corridor; I came to the second patio. A great vine covered everything, so that the darkness seemed complete. Of a sudden I heard the high-pitched, mocking voice of Ireneo. The voice spoke in Latin; the voice (which came out of the obscurity) was reading, with obvious delight, a treatise or prayer or incantation. The Roman syllables resounded in the earthen patio; my suspicion made them seem undecipherable, interminable; afterwards, in the enormous dialogue of that night, I learned that they made up the first paragraph of the twenty-fourth chapter of the seventh book of the Historia Naturalis. The subject of this chapter is memory; the last words are ujt nihil non iisdem verbis redderetur auditum.
      
       Without the least change in his voice, Ireneo bade me come in. He was lying on the cot, smoking. It seems to me that I did not see his face until dawn; I seem to recall the momentary glow of the cigarette. The room smelled vaguely of dampness. I sat down, and repeated the story of the telegram and my father's illness.
      
       I come now to the most difficult point in my narrative. For the entire story has no other point (the reader might as well know it by now) than this dialogue of almost a half-century ago. I shall not attempt to reproduce his words, now irrecoverable. I prefer truthfully to make a résumé of the many things Ireneo told me. The indirect style is remote and weak; I know that I sacrifice the effectiveness of my narrative; but let my readers imagine the nebulous sentences which coulded that night.

       Ireneo began by enumerating, in Latin and Spanish, the cases of prodigious memory cited in the Historia Naturalis: Cyrus, king of the Persians, who could call every soldier in his armies by name; Mithridates Eupator, who administered justice in the twenty-two languages of his empire; Simonides, inventory of mnemotechny; Metrodorus, who practised the art of repeating faithfully what he heard once. With evident good faith Funes marvelled that such things should be considered marvellous. He told me that previous to the rainy afternoon when the blue-tinted horse threw him, he had been - like any Christian - blind, deaf-mute, somnambulistic, memoryless. (I tried to remind him of his precise perception of time, his memory for proper names; he paid no attention to me.) For nineteen years, he said, he had lived like a person in a dream: he looked without seeing, heard without hearing, forgot everything - almost everything. On falling from the horse, he lost consciousness; when he recovered it, the present was almost intolerable it was so rich and bright; the same was true of the most ancient and most trivial memories. A little later he realized that he was crippled. This fact scarcely interested him. He reasoned (or felt) that immobility was a minimum price to pay. And now, his perception and his memory were infallible.
      
       We, in a glance, perceive three wine glasses on the table; Funes saw all the shoots, clusters, and grapes of the vine. He remembered the shapes of the clouds in the south at dawn on the 30th of April of 1882, and he could compare them in his recollection with the marbled grain in the design of a leather-bound book which he had seen only once, and with the lines in the spray which an oar raised in the Rio Negro on the eve of the battle of the Quebracho. These recollections were not simple; each visual image was linked to muscular sensations, thermal sensations, etc. He could reconstruct all his dreams, all his fancies. Two or three times he had reconstructed an entire day. He told me: I have more memories in myself alone than all men have had since the world was a world. And again: My dreams are like your vigils. And again, toward dawn: My memory, sir, is like a garbage disposal.
      
       A circumference on a blackboard, a rectangular triangle, a rhomb, are forms which we can fully intuit; the same held true with Ireneo for the tempestuous mane of a stallion, a herd of cattle in a pass, the ever-changing flame or the innumerable ash, the many faces of a dead man during the course of a protracted wake. He could perceive I do not know how many stars in the sky.
      
       These things he told me; neither then nor at any time later did they seem doubtful. In those days neither the cinema nor the phonograph yet existed; nevertheless, it seems strange, almost incredible, that no one should have experimented on Funes. The truth is that we all live by leaving behind; no doubt we all profoundly know that we are immortal and that sooner or later every man will do all things and know everything.
      
       The voice of Funes, out of the darkness, continued. He told me that toward 1886 he had devised a new system of enumeration and that in a very few days he had gone before twenty-four thousand. He had not written it down, for what he once meditated would not be erased. The first stimulus to his work, I believe, had been his discontent with the fact that "thirty-three Uruguayans" required two symbols and three words, rather than a single word and a single symbol. Later he applied his extravagant principle to the other numbers. In place of seven thousand thirteen, he would say (for example) Máximo Perez; in place of seven thousand fourteen, The Train; other numbers were Luis Melián Lafinur, Olimar, Brimstone, Clubs, The Whale, Gas, The Cauldron, Napoleon, Agustín de Vedia. In lieu of five hundred, he would say nine. Each word had a particular sign, a species of mark; the last were very complicated. . . . I attempted to explain that this rhapsody of unconnected terms was precisely the contrary of a system of enumeration. I said that to say three hundred and sixty-five was to say three hundreds, six tens, five units: an analysis which does not exist in such numbers as The Negro Timoteo or The Flesh Blanket. Funes did not understand me, or did not wish to understand me.
      
       Locke, in the seventeenth century, postulated (and rejected) an impossible idiom in which each individual object, each stone, each bird and branch had an individual name; Funes had once projected an analogous idiom, but he had renounced it as being too general, too ambiguous. In effect, Funes not only remembered every leaf on every tree of every wood, but even every one of the times he had perceived or imagined it. He determined to reduce all of his past experience to some seventy thousand recollections, which he would later define numerically. Two considerations dissuaded him: the thought that the task was interminable and the thought that it was useless. He knew that at the hour of his death he would scarcely have finished classifying even all the memories of his childhood.
      
       The two projects I have indicated (an infinite vocabulary for the natural series of numbers, and a usable mental catalogue of all the images of memory) are lacking in sense, but they reveal a certain stammering greatness. They allow us to make out dimly, or to infer, the dizzying world of Funes. He was, let us not forget, almost incapable of general, platonic ideas. It was not only difficult for him to understand that the generic term dog embraced so many unlike specimens of differing sizes and different forms; he was disturbed by the fact that a dog at three-fourteen (seen in profile) should have the same name as the dog at three-fifteen (seen from the front). His own face in the mirror, his own hands, surprised him on every occasion. Swift writes that the emperor of Lilliput could discern the movement of the minute hand; Funes could continuously make out the tranquil advances of corruption, of caries, of fatigue. He noted the progress of death, of moisture. He was the solitary and lucid spectator of a multiform world which was instantaneously and almost intolerably exact. Babylon, London, and New York have overawed the imagination of men with their ferocious splendour; no one, in those populous towers or upon those surging avenues, has felt the heat and pressure of a reality as indefatigable as that which day and night converged upon the unfortunate Ireneo in his humble South American farmhouse. It was very difficult for him to sleep. To sleep is to be abstracted from the world; Funes, on his back in his cot, in the shadows, imagined every crevice and every moulding of the various houses which surrounded him. (I repeat, the least important of his recollections was more minutely precise and more lively than our perception of a physical pleasure or a physical torment.) Toward the east, in a section which was not yet cut into blocks of homes, there were some new unknown houses. Funes imagined them black, compact, made of a single obscurity; he would turn his face in this direction in order to sleep. He would also imagine himself at the bottom of the river, being rocked and annihilated by the current.
      
       Without effort, he had learned English, French, Portuguese, Latin. I suspect, nevertheless, that he was not very capable of thought. To think is to forget a difference, to generalize, to abstract. In the overly replete world of Funes there were nothing but details, almost contiguous details.
      
       The equivocal clarity of dawn penetrated along the earthen patio.
      
       Then it was that I saw the face of the voice which had spoken all through the night. Ireneo was nineteen years old; he had been born in 1868; he seemed as monumental as bronze, more ancient than Egypt, anterior to the prophecies and the pyramids. It occurred to me that each one of my words (each one of my gestures) would live on in his implacable memory; I was benumbed by the fear of multiplying superfluous gestures.
      
       Ireneo Funes died in 1889, of a pulmonary congestion.
      
       Note: The Eastern Shore (of the Uruguay River); now the Orient Republic of Uruguay. (Return to top of page.)
      
       Translated by Anthony Kerrigan
      
       In Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges, edited by John Sturrock (original publication 1942; English translation, Grove Press, 1962; rpt. by Alfred A. Knopf/Everyman, 1993), 83-91.

      
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Somehow, everything and everyone and everytime are connected. Get well soon, Brother Jackpine Radical!

Hope all goes well

Condolences on the loss of your two friends. To those who have never had a friend like that, there is no explaining the bond that forms and grows over the years. I care not what the religious "experts" say about companion animals, your friends are waiting for you, and will greet you when it is your time.
In the meantime, please do what is needed to stay healthy. We need your common sense and skill with words. Your sentiments are felt by many, but seldom expressed as well as you are capable of doing. Your posts would be sorely missed if something were to happen to you. You are needed.
As a transplanted Cheesehead, it it always a treat to read of the good fight going on in Packerland. You WILL get rid of the bozo in Madison, AND drive out the vultures bent on ravaging Northern Wisconsin with strip mining. Your posts are valuable tools in these endeavors, and are appreciated.
Get well friend.

Thank you for sharing....it's strange how your sharing has lightened my load.

There are more loving wet, cold noses in your future. Be well. {{{Hugs}}}

missed this when you first posted it, Jackpine. I too will hold you warmly in my thoughts and send healing vibes to you and your wife. So sorry about your dogs...

Now you've gotten all the bad stuff out of the way for the rest of the year- - - take special care!

just seeing this thread after clicking through from your update post.

What a horrible month, indeed. I am so sorry for the loss of your two doggies.
I had a Honey dog, once, too, a rescue that was part Golden Retriever.
She was a real sweetie.

Glad to read that it looks like medical stuff may not be as awful
as anticipated when you wrote this thread...but ouch for Mrs. Jackpine
and the dental issues! Been dealing with some of that myself recently,
but fortunately, not lingering pain.

Hang in there, both of you! Healing vibes for you!

Goldens are the best companions in the world.

Hope you will be feeling better soon. When you are fully recovered, maybe it will be time for another fur baby to create some new adventures. You have the perfect place for them.

get better somehow. I know that our home and some others I know are having horribly sad trials lately. What the F)(*^^ is going on on this planet???????
I am hoping you and wife will get better really soon.
We also lost our oldest closest sweetest dog, Hattie, last month. She died at home with only a few days warning on ill she really was. Similar to Gus' situation. She died in my arms.
I am sending my heartfelt love and energy out to your home. Please be well.....