Bad Ideas

Well, I've been a little quiet lately. I'm laying low because I've been a wee bit indisposed.

It all started so innocently. I got this cold. A little tiny cold. The wimpiest cold ever. No big. But then, I made a mistake. A Very Bad Mistake.

See, I posted on FaceBook that I had the wimpiest cold ever. In effect, I laughed at it. I gave it a virtual raspberry. I might as well have waved my metaphorical private parts at its aunties (silly English ka-nnnigit... with apologies to Monty Python and the Holy Grail.) Ultimately, it boils down to this: I taunted the virus.

Never taunt the virus.

Thing is, if you taunt the virus, it goes, "Oh, yeah?" and then it calls in reinforcements in the form of a secondary bacterial bronchopneumonia. And having pneumonia of any form, let me tell you, is a Bad Idea.

It's not my first round with pneumonia. I had it when I was an intern. I worked every day for a month with it. This also: Bad Idea. However, I was in a seven-intern program and we'd already lost two: One had broken her leg whilst cowboy dancing (no one could say she wasn't enthusiastic) and the other had wrecked her motorcycle. Five interns can (with great difficulty) do seven interns' work. Four interns can't. I knew if I went down the whole house of cards was going down with me. I wasn't going to do that to my intern mates. So, I lay on my side at night, feeling the secretions rolling down my airways, and then I coughed and coughed until I cleared them out. Then I rolled to my other side and did it again. I started on antibiotics and I got up in the mornings and I went to work. I also developed an interesting drug eruption as a result of an allergy to the antibiotic, but that's another story. But I got through it, my injured intern mates recovered and returned to work (one of them in a wheelchair at first), and I gradually got better. The intern program returned to full strength (for a while, anyway, until one of the interns left to give birth slightly prematurely - some people will do ANYthing to get out of their intern presentation! - and another had to leave the program for personal reasons.)

However, the entire experience left an indelible impression on me. Coughing your brains out for a month will do that to you. Go figure.

Which is how I knew, four days after the wimpy cold had started, that I was heading into Big Trouble. One day I was fine - mild sore throat, no cough, a little stuffy, a little blah. The next day I started coughing. Still no big, not much coughing. Par for the course. The next day, like a fool, I posted the wimpy cold status on FB.

Day after that, coughing a little heavier. By that night, it was kicking my ass. But I was off the next day; I figured I'd sleep it off. Still no big. Except that by the evening of the following day I Could. Not. Breathe.

If I concentrated hard I could draw a full breath, but I was drawing it against resistance, and it took effort to exhale. This - slow, deep respirations with effort - is an obstructive pattern, which indicates airway narrowing. A rapid, shallow pattern would indicate restriction, such as would occur with air or fluid inside the chest, anything compressing the lung tissue. But I couldn't tolerate any compression of my chest - not leaning back against the pillow, not laying down - and I had to concentrate on every breath. I didn't need a stethoscope to hear the crackles and rales in my chest. I could hear them just fine without (and feel them even better).

Okey-dokey. Time for a pulse-ox, and I may be heading to the people hospital to admit myself.

I struggled into clothes and tottered down to my truck. It was cold and the wind was absolutely howling - gusts into the 70 mph range. I warmed my truck up for 10 minutes - it took that length of time to recover from the trip down there, anyway - and I drove to work, concentrating on driving, concentrating on fighting the heavy winds as they snatched at my truck and bounced it around, concentrating on breathing. I made it to the clinic, went inside and leaned on a table for a while til I could breathe again. I put the pulse oximeter on my finger. I waited for it to pick up my heart rate - 120, too high - and my oxygenation - 90, too low. On room air I should be 98 to 100%, and standing at rest my heart rate ought to be in the high 80 to low 90 range.

This means that my lungs are impaired, but not as much as my bronchioles. My oxygenation is down about ten percent, but that's better than my respiratory effort, which is up by a factor of two or three above normal. I've never had this much effort breathing - ever in life - and that's for just standing there, doing nothing. Still, 90 isn't good - but it isn't dying, either.

Okay then. No hospitalization. On the other hand, big Yes to getting some meds (and yes, I do have a people doctor, why do you ask?)

So I started on antibiotics. I'm a proponent or reserving the use of antibiotics for those situations that merit them, which means I never take them for a cold. Especially not for a wimpy cold. But if said wimp-cold calls in a nice bacterial backup - okay, then. AB's it is.

Two hours later I felt markedly improved. Pulse ox had climbed to 92 (okay, not great, but I was getting it without the extreme effort.) I went home. I laid down. I slept. A miracle has occurred, and I can do both now. Or maybe it's not so much a miracle as the glory of antibiotics, appropriately applied, and thank God I live in a time and place where these things are available.

Meanwhile I got my truck stuck at the bottom of my driveway. The screaming winds have blown away the sand on my drive and polished the ice to something that even my Yak Trax are slipping on. It was a struggle to make it up the hill in the howling winds and the dark, but fortunately for Christmas (thanks, Dad) I got a headlamp that I believe might be visible in Russia. This means I could see even the slightest patch of traction, so I managed it in a under ten minutes, and only had to stop for breath every twenty feet or so. Easy-peasy. Fortunately I'd taken one Border collie along for moral support (I wanted two, but couldn't manage both), and he kept running back to check on me, facing into the knife-blade of the wind to watch me with quizzical gravity, moving up the drive when I did, as if concerned I'd forgotten the way. Every time I stopped, he'd run back down to me, watch, wait, lead me again.

Getting inside the house was lovely.

I slept and coughed the next day. I drank water and ate antibiotics and felt better. The following day I took a sick day and did it again. I called Rock Ridge and asked them if they had any miracle solutions for my driveway. They did, they assured me, and if I needed anything - food, medications, help of any description - I was to call them for rescue.

Gotta love Alaskans.

The next day I had challenges to face. Challenge number one was getting out of bed. That managed, I faced the Big One: making it down the drive to my truck, preferably without falling and breaking anything important. I put on my Yak Trax and crept out onto the icy drive, into the face of the howling winds. In the main, there are trees to grab onto - well, saplings, at least - and maybe a tiny rim of traction right at the very edge of the drive. Most of it I managed to do completely upright. Part of it I did literally on my hands and knees, where it was too slick and steep for the Yak Trax to grip the ice. The bank beside the driveway is devoid of both snow and ice, but the dirt is frozen so hard that there is no traction on it; my boots just slip off. I solved this by toeing in hard to the bank, bracing my knees against the steep slope of it, and using my frozen hands to find meager hand-holds of equally-frozen knobs of dirt knurling the surface. I crab-walked down that part sideways on my knees, but soon the bank's slope levels out and there is real footing again. Ah, success: My truck is there, the door is open, the dog and I are inside. My hands ache with cold and I can't feel my fingers, but steps one and two are complete.

Challenge number next: starting the truck, which has not had its block heater plugged in in three days. It is three degrees at my house - and, most unusually when it's that cold, the wind is still screaming by at vicious speed. The wind-chill is brutal. This might be a problem. But no, the truck fires right up.

Okay, now all I have to do is ease it out of the driveway without sliding into the lake, and then do my solo day at work. Piece of cake. Well, maybe not a piece of cake, but at least manageable. After getting down the hill, the rest of the challenges combined seem reasonably undaunting. My staff hunts around and finds me cough drops. They help me wrestle the tough dogs. They volunteer to slap me helpfully on the back if I need help coughing. We treat everything that comes in the door successfully.

Time to go home. Parked in the teeth of the wind for almost eight hours, the truck is dreadfully cold and won't start. It floods, straining to kick the engine over. Crap. I regroup, press the gas pedal to the floor, coax, pray. She tries, fails. Tires again, fails. Then a little gift: She turns over for me now, gargling and choking, but fighting through it to roar into life. Bless you, my little Canyon. I love this truck. I know Rock Ridge would come rescue me if need be - and so would any number of others - but I want to go home, crawl under the down comforter surrounded by dogs, watch Phantom of the Opera again (love that score), sleep. And that's what I do, because Rock Ridge has made my driveway navigable again, and the truck climbs right up.

Today I am better, and continuing on. It'll be a bit before I'm back to normal - once things settle into my chest, they stay a while - but I'm on the mend. But this is why I haven't posted the Bison story I promised Jenny - or anything else, for that matter. I'll get to it, eventually. I promise.

Meanwhile, on the plus side, I'm up to 94% oxygenation (heart rate mercifully 89 now). As a handy bonus, I think that all the coughing must be an excellent abdominal exercise, since my stomach muscles are sore, sore, sore. (Somehow, however, I doubt that the Bronchopneumonia Ab Workout will catch on and make me a million dollars.) I can think, I can breathe, and while I still have a lot of coughing in my future, I am now on the up-slope.

Also, I've learned an important lesson: Never taunt the virus.

Going To Extremes

So Monday night it was 25 degrees below zero at my house. The next morning it had warmed up to a balmy twelve. By Tuesday evening it was 42 degrees and raining.

Crap.

You may recall that in years past I've had some issues getting up my driveway when it rains on top of the ice. But now I have the wonderous Rock Ridge Services on my side. Just about the time I was feeling a strange combination of persecution, outrage (it's JANUARY IN ALASKA, for %#^$ sake! It's not SUPPOSED to be 42 freaking degrees!), gratitude that I didn't have to drive to work on disasterous roads the next day, and resignation (oh, well... you deal with what you have to deal with), I hear a strange growling rumble outside. Eh? Could it be...? It IS! FW of Rock Ridge is out in my driveway with the sanding truck, making my ice-white, running-with-rain driveway look like a dirt road.

Ahhh. I feel so pampered. (This may be an Alaska girl thing... who else will feel all cosseted if you bring them dirt?)

The next day it was still 42 and still raining. And the next. Friday I went to work and it was 52 degrees.

We've had the mid-January warm-up before, one year or another. I don't recall ever having a 67 degree temperature change in 24 hours, but maybe we have. However, I'm CERTAIN that since I've lived in Alaska I've never seen it break 50 dregrees in January. January. The coldest month of the year. In theory, anyway.

So, as if that wasn't extreme enough, on the evening of the freak 52 degree weather I left the balmy climes of Alaska (although by then it had droppped from 52 to about 45 - but still raining) and I am now blogging at you from central Florida, nearly as far away from Alaska as I can get without leaving the US. I could go to the Keys, I guess, if I really wanted to make a point; and as jet-lagged as I am at this stage, I feel like I could just about drift out the window and float there without the airplane.

So, as long as the WiFi holds out, I will see what I can do about showing up here (in between trick-or-treating in the exhibit hall, catching up with sleep and with old vet school friends, and... Hmmm, what else was it...? Oh, yeah, attending classes for the CE I'm ostensibly AT this meeting for...!) I will apologize in advance for fat-fingering the keys more than usual (just getting used to the netbook's smaller keyboard, and I'm one of the world's less acconplished typists to begin with - and did I mention jet-lagged? - so the results may be either hilarious, pathetic, or unintelligible.

Possibly all three.

Nothing Normal Times Three

Bizarre case du jour...

We have a cat (Frank) come in to be checked for a problem following a declaw. Evidently Frank has had a persistent discharge from one toe since the surgery - which was two years ago, but never mind that. If the owner had taken Frank back to the original doctor who did the surgery, it probably would have been repaired for free. This would be our policy, at any rate; we don't charge to re-check our surgical incisions, and in many cases we don't charge (or charge only the anesthetic fees, to cover costs) to re-do something on a surgery that needs attention for a reason other than owner negligence. (If the owner lets the dog chew all its sutures out and then roll in dirt, that's THEIR choice, but as they have ignored our after-care instructions, we then charge normal fees.) I have no idea if this is a good policy or not, but it seemed fair to the two owners, anyway, so that's what we do. However, since it wasn't our surgery we were correcting, we charged full fee. Still, the owner wanted a second opinion, so we were happy to oblige.

I happened that day to be giving a tour of the hospital to a friend of my nurse JG, and we went back into the wards. I was explaining what cases we had, and explained Frank's, at which time I got my first good look at little Frank. (Since Dr. J was his surgeon, I hadn't really seen our Frankie before then). The first thing I notice is that Frank is a calico, which means he must be a girl. The way calico happens (for the uninitiated) is that the cat has genes on the X chromosome that allow for either red coat color or black coat color. No cell can have more than one operational X chromosome, so in female animals, which have 2 X's per cell, one wads itself up into a Barr body and inactivates itself. This is random, so some cells will express red, and others will express black. If the cat has only the genes for red and black, but not the gene for spotting, it will be a tortiseshell, which is red and black mixed togehter randomly. If it has the gene for white spotting, it will be a calico, with the white spotting expressed along with random patches of either red or black, depending on which X chormosome (the red-bearing or the black-bearing) is being expressed in a given area.

Male cats, however, are XY, not XX. They only have one X chromosome to begin with, so there's no need for a Barr body. Their one and only X is always expressed, so if you have spotting genes, you would get a black and white cat or an orange and white cat, but not a black and orange and white cat.

I explain all this to JG's friend (who listens with every evidence of interest, though I suppose that's fairly esoteric and likely boring), who then wants to know why the cat is named Frank.

"I don't know, but I guess maybe they thought the cat was a boy and when they found out she wasn't they just didn't change the name," I speculate. This is common enough, after all, and people sometimes like to name their pets opposite to their gender deliberately, for unknown reasons. What the hey, the pet doesn't care, and for most owners that's likely a harmless amusement.

A few days later little Frank is in for a recheck. It's Saturday, which I work alone, so I see her. Except the owner says she's a he, absolutely; even Dr. J checked him and says it's a he, and besides, when it was time to spay him, they took off a nice pair of testicles. No WAY, I'm thinking. This cat has Kleinfelter's syndrome. He's an XXY male.

You hear about these things, of course, but I'd never seen a Kleinfelter's cat. It's pretty rare. In people I believe the symptomatic victims (because if I remember right, not all are obviously symptomatic) are unusually tall, and sort of spindly in build, narrow of shoulder and broad of hip, and nearly always sterile. I seem to recall they have potential bone and immunological issues, and some frailty of constitution. Now, I'd go for the 'sterile' part in this cat (and if he hadn't been before, he certainly is now, what with having had his testicles removed and all), but other than that he actually looks perfectly normal. Except for the fact that he's a calico with a penis. I'm sort of curious to see if he lives a normal life span (I don't believe human Kleinfelter's victims do, but this is all pretty vague... I took human genetics back in 1982, which makes it kind of a while ago. Maybe I'll look it up, just to refresh my memory.)

Horror story du jour...

I go in to work the other day (having been off for a couple of days) and hear Dr. J talking about thawing out a deceased dog for creamation. This makes no sense to me, since we typically store bodies in our freezer for the cremation service to pick up (they come once a week). So, since they are normally frozen before the cremation service picks them up, why do we need to thaw this one out...?

Turns out that the dog had fallen through the ice on a lake and drowned. Dr. J needed to get the ice off the dog to get an accurate weight (since the cremations are charged based on body weight). When Dr. J said the dog was covered in ice, I was picturing that the animal's coat was soaked through and had frozen. No. The dog's body had been frozen in to the re-forming ice. It had ice eight or more inches thick (I'm not kidding) frozen all around it when it was brought in. The owner had to chop the dog's body out of the ice to get it free of the lake. Yikes. I can only imagine what it must have been like for this poor man - who was no doubt distraught about the dog's death to begin with - to have to carve his way through all that ice, and then somehow get this large dog, plus all hte associated ice, out of the hole he'd made, and then get it in to the clinic. Dr. J (who is a strong guy) was estimating that there was a good 60 pounds of ice alone, let alone the weight of the dog. Even after melting for 24 hours there was still ice at least 6 inches thick laying in the run where they's laid the dog to thaw out. Poor dog. Poor owner. What a sad event.

Incomprehensible client behavior du jour... (or, Why this job will never be boring, or Why I'll never understand some clients...)

A client comes in to have one dog neutered and another vaccinated. Before I even go in a room with her I am mildly exasperated with her... she has let her male dog urinate all over the reception area and seems incapable of recognizing that if she lets him stand next to any vertical surface he'll do it again (a fact he has already demonstrated with great thoroughness). She also just has That Look, the look of someone I know I will have trouble communicating with. I can't describe it exactly, but my radar picks it up as someone who believes they are an animal expert, better qualified to understand their animal's medical and behavioral conditions than I am, and who is unlikely to either heed my advice or pay for it. Since I won't cater to their ignorance and will persist in correcting their errors regardless of the hopelessness of such attempts, typically I rub these clients the wrong way. Certainly they rub ME the wrong way, and it is always a struggle to keep them from knowing that; it is, after all, not their fault that I find this irritating, so there's no reason to take it out on them. This has the possibly negative side effect that I tend to overcompensate in the niceness department.

Unfortunately I get to vaccinate the female dog, who arrives in the exam room already muzzled. Oh joy, it's a Rottweiller in need of a muzzle. My favorite. [Here I must digress: I have nothing against Rotties in general, but I will say that due to their size and power, when they want to bite, they can be quite dangerous. Also, unfortunately, there is a population of poorly-bred Rotties up here - and some beautifully-bred ones, as well - but amongst the poorly-bred group are quite a number with incorrect temperaments and horrific orthopedics. Unfortunately, many of these dogs also have no training, having been bought by people either ignorant of or unconcerned with the quality of the dog they were purchasing, and most of whom do not follow up with apporpriate management.]

I look at the chart and see that they have the dog down as a labrador mix. Which in fact it may be, but if so, it owes none of its looks to that side of the family.

"So, we're seeing her for vaccines today?" I say. "We should put her down as a Rott mix, not a lab mix, since that's what she looks like," I add, scratching-out and writing-in on the chart.

"No, she's a lab mix," the owner says.

"Even so, we like to put them in the computer as what they most resemble in case someone finds them loose one day. If they call in, they'll say she looks like a Rott cross, so that's where we'll look in the computer. We'd never find her under lab mix."

"But you're messing up my insurance," the owner says. I don't tell her that I could care less what lies she tells her insurance company, or that if the dog needs a muzzle because she bites, most insurance companies won't cover her anyway even if she's a golden retriever, or even that in deliberately misleading the insurance company she is much more likely to be liable if the dog ever does bite anyone.

"We'd never find her under Lab mix in the computer," I repeat, and make no move to alter my scribblings. The owner subsides, looking disappointed.

On to the physical, during which our erstwhile lab mix is snarling and glaring at me, making abortive lunges as I crouch beside her while (attempting to) listen to her heart. This is a task rendered more difficult by the steady rumble of growls rattling through her chest. It is only possible to touch her because the owner has a good grip on the dog.

"None of that, now," I tell the dog firmly, partly for the owner's benefit (most of whom will take this cue to tell the dog to be quiet). The growling continues unabated. "I can't hear her heart over the growling," I tell the owner. "See if she'll stop for you."

The owner, who has been crooning "Good girl, it's okay, GOOD girl!" to the dog, says to me, "She's just talking, she likes to do that."

"Actually," I tell her, removing my (useless) stethoscope from the dog's chest (which is still vibrating with menace), "she isn't talking. She's looking me strait in the eye, which is a dominance gesture, and given the opportunity she'd be MORE than willing to bite me. Don't make the mistake of thinking she's all talk. She means it, and if I were you I wouldn't take a chance on putting her to the test. Also, don't tell her she's a good girl when she's growling inappropriately. I know you're trying to reassure her like you would if she were a child, but she isn't a child. She's a dog, and she'll read that as praise for the agression. When she does something like that you need to tell her to knock it off, and tell her like you mean it." I am having a very hard time keeping my annoyance and impatience out of my voice by now; even to my own ears I sound bitchy.

After a short wrestling match (during which more lunges are made toward my face), I manage both to feel the dog's abdomen and to vaccinate. I mention that the dog is fat and needs to have her food restricted (which puts me at strike four in the "Things that piss off clients" remarks column. Well, maybe I'll piss her off enough that this will not only be her first visit but her last, and someone else will get to wrestle her agressive Rott mix - oops, I mean lab mix. Sigh.)

After all this she has some questions about the effects of the neuter on the male dog. She's afraid that the neuter will leave an unsightly flap of hanging scrotal tissue, as happened with her other dog, a mastiff-pitbull cross (well, she does like her dogs big, it appears).

"Depends on the dog," I tell her, "but most of the time in a young dog the scrotal tissue will shrink up over time and disappear. If the dog is older or has a particularly pendulous scrotum, then it may persist that way."

"Hmmm, that must be it. Jeffery Dahmer was four when we had it done."

Here I am momentarily completely confused... how long ago WAS this? and how would SHE know when Jeffery Dahmer was four years old, unless she was a close personal friend? After all, he wasn't newsworthy until all that murdering and necrophilia and cannibalism and whatnot.

Then it dawns on me: she's talking about the DOG. She named her dog after a cannibalistic necrophiliac serial killer. I just KNEW we were going to be best friends, she and I.

"We had to do it, though," she adds. "He was getting to be too much of a pain." Oh, brrr. A giant sized mastiff mix (some members of which clan have been known to have aggression issues) who is being too much of a pain for this owner, who is quite tolerant of her Rottie mix lunging repeatedly at my face. That sounds just peachy.

I shake off the whole creepiness of naming your dog after infamy (and the weird perversity of being so proud of that that you have to refer to the dog always by the full name "Jeffery Dahmer", which isn't an easy or convenient-to-say sort of name), just in time for her to ask me, "Are you going to do the surgery today?"

"Probably not," I tell her. "On days when we have a lot of procedures like we do today, we usually put our faster surgeons on. Drs. J and P are both faster surgeons than I am, so I'll probably just do appointments today." The woman looks both disappointed and disturbed by this. I wonder if she has a dislike for one of them. Although this is her first visit, sometimes another client has referred them, and has passed along their personal preferences as well.

"Any time you have a doctor preference, you're welcome to state it, though, and we'll do our best to honor that," I add, since she looks so dismayed.

"I want YOU to do the surgery," she says. "I like the way you talk to me and explain things."

Say WHAT?

I KNOW I sound waspish and pissy to my own ears. Further, I have contradicted her and corrected her at every turn. And she LIKES this?

Then I stop and think: if she is has pitbull-mastiffs named after serial killers and dominance aggressive Rott mixes, maybe her standards of good behavior are not what I'd call normal.

Slip-Sliding Away

It's a grey morning here in the Greatland, a foot of snow on the ground and the air raw and wet with threatened rain. Now, being of Scottish descent, I love rain; I just don't love it in December and January, when it makes my steep driveway at times completely impassible, even with the hubs locked and studs on. I love where my house sits - on small ridge overlooking the lake, with spectacular views of the Chugach and Talkeetna mountains - but the downside is my driveway. It's long, and while it enters the property on the level, it takes a U-turn about halfway and goes immediately up the hill. The first part of the hill is rather steep, which means that you want some momentum, but the U-turn is pretty much a hairpin, which means that you're of necessity going kind of slow. This is normally not a problem to negotiate; in fact, in my old truck I had mastered the art of doing a deliberate fish-tail at the U, revving it in the turn, letting the rear end of my truck skid sideways and fetch up against the snow berm, so that the instant the side-slip stopped and the right rear tire was at the far edge of the ice, my momentum, combined with the RPMs and the small slice of traction at the verge of the snow berm, would conspire to get me past the steepest part of the hill. The new truck, which has a locking rear wheel differential, does not perform this maneuver (although it has many advantages over the old truck, not least of which being that it is 18 years younger.)

However, there have been times when I've come home to find literal sheets of water rolling down the ice on the steep part of the drive, ripples gleaming in my headlights as the rain falls, diamond-bright through my high-beams. This is a daunting sight. It means that I am highly unlikely to make it up the driveway in the truck, which would be no big deal except that A) whatever I need to take into the house I have to now carry up the drive, and B) if the truck in 4-wheel drive with good studded snow tires on it can't make it up the slippery hill, I'm not going to have a much better time of it on foot, being as how I have only two wheel drive myself, have no studded snow tires, and am carrying an undisclosed number and weight of items in my hands.

Usually I'll make the attempt with the truck; having failed the first time to pass the steep bit, I'll have allowed the truck to slide back down. I'll back it up as far as I can against the snow berm (there are trees behind that, so there's only so far I can go) and try to aim her as strait up the drive as I can, if possible grabbing a little traction from the rougher ice at the plowed edge where the berm starts. From experience I know that I may manage, after two or three failed attempts, to hit it just right and, by pushing the revs, crest the worst of the steep to where the drive starts to level out a little and the laws of physics are again on my side.

One night a few years ago I came home to the cascading water rolling down my driveway. I'd known I would find that on getting home - it had been raining hard for a few hours and I'd been watching the water pour down the sloped back driveway at work - but all the same, it was a bit daunting. I was tired after a long day, and disinclined to make three trips to carry my groceries (purchased at lunchtime in the foolish optimism that it wasn't going to rain, since at that time it was only 26 degrees) into the house. But along came a storm front heavy with moisture and warmer temps, with the result that I was sitting in my truck, worn from the day, looking through the sweep of the windshield wipers at my own personal Waterloo.

I tried it. Three times I made it almost to the break-even point, but had to put in the clutch and step on the brake, letting the truck slither backwards down the hill with as much control as I could give it. On the fourth attempt I fishtailed so badly that the truck was sliding sideways down the hill, a move that prompted me to start thinking about roll-overs (which would kind of wreck my day, not to mention my truck, besides which - and here put on your surprised faces - I thought it might somewhat inhibit my morning commute the following day.)

Bowing to the inevitable, I let the truck slide side-on to the end-of-the-U-turn berm and managed, maneuvering gingerly, to park it in a position where I hoped it would not start to slide on its own. The lake edge is mere feet from the edge of the drive, and if the truck started to slide, momentum might carry it further over the berm than I would like, potentially even onto the lake itself. It wouldn't likely go through the ice - which is thick enough at that time of year, despite the rain, to be just another parking lot - but I couldn't picture being able to get it back up off the ice without some kind of major help. Even presuming that it stayed upright on its tires.

I gathered what items could not be left in the truck overnight and stepped with extreme caution onto the ice. It was every bit as slippery as I had expected, and my boots skidded incessantly as I shuffled my way carefully to the front of the truck, using its bulk as a bolster to help me keep my feet. I managed to get into the snow berm without falling flat on my back, and after that it went a bit better; the berm, usually so hard-packed that even the snow plows sometimes struggle with it, was soft with rain, but it provided the traction necessary to get me up the hill on my own two snow-booted feet.

Big sigh of relief. Put away perishables and let dogs out, then in to shake their wet coats all over me and eat their dinners. Make something to eat and hope optimistically that the rain will stop and everything will be better in the morning. Carefully avoid wondering how the hell I will make it down the steep part of the driveway in the morning if it doesn't.

Which it doesn't.

In the morning it is still raining steadily. Not enough, unfortunately, to have eroded all the way through the ice on the driveway. From my window I can still see the pale gleam of the ice in the reflected light from the house. Sigh.

I gather my lunch and a paperback to read while I eat, and I go down onto the ice, which is visibly running with water. I stick to the berm nearest the house, which will get me to the front of the truck without having to twice cross the ice on slopes without any support. The driveway is bordered by a steep up-sloping embankment on the near side, as it is cut into the hill upon which I live. The berm is slushy with rain and collapsing under my feet. For the first little bit I have willow scrub to hang onto, and the going isn't bad; it's the shallowest part of the slope and the willows have protected the berm a bit. All is going as planned, even when I get to the steep part of the slope.

For a while.

About a third of the way along the steep, the berm is collapsing faster than I am walking. I am side-stepping up the hill, reaching for better snow, still moving forward, hoping to outpace the berm collapse. If I can just get past this section, there are more willows to help me out and then I'm at the truck, home and dry. I'm golden for about five steps... and then my right boot hits the ice.

Now I have no chance whatsoever. The laws of physics are now against me, since there is zero friction on the water-slick ice. The weakened berm has no more strength than a wet paper towel, and collapses under my left boot, which follows the right in a graceful arc onto the ice, sliding sideways like a skier in a tight slalom turn. My left knee skims side-down onto the ice, and then my left hip. In the speed-of-light way of thought, my brain is racing ahead, estimating that if I slide as I am aimed I will hit my truck amidships, either going underneath it, or fetching up against a tire. I am afraid to do either, since I'm afraid I will get hung up under the truck, or the impact of hitting a tire might jostle the truck into sliding toward the lake, or both (a very untempting option.) There's nothing to do but try to steer. I twist up onto my seat (in the 3 milliseconds it has taken for all that to go through my mind) and lean, changing my course and aiming my feet behind the truck. At the last second I twist slightly onto my side so that my feet hit the berm pointed 45 degrees to the left, allowing me to bend my knees to take the impact and throwing an artistic arc of water glittering into the air.

I realize I am laughing, laughing like you do when you're on a really great roller coaster, laughing like you do when you're hand-galloping a horse going just a little faster than feels safe. I am also soaked, not just wet, but wringing wet, with ice-cold water. I get to my feet. My lunch and my paperback have both escaped my grasp on the way down, and have come to rest along the berm, about a third of the way up the steep. I debate, but end up going up to retrieve them, using the willows on the lower third of the drive to help me and crawling on all fours when I get to the steep part (what the hell, I can't get much wetter). I think about changing clothes, but can't envision getting to the truck any drier than I am now. I think about sliding back down on my seat, since I am still laughing to myself, and it WAS fun; but in the end I just use the willows and extreme caution.

I laughed all the way to work, little fugitive chuckles bubbling out of me unexpectedly as I drove the rain-wet (but luckily not icy) streets. I was a bit damp and squishy, but I was mostly dry by noon, and in all it wasn't a bad experience. I get a good laugh out of it even now. Which brings me to today, when I have to put up 25 bales of hay for the sheep. Because I just heard the faint rattle of rain hitting my windows and my driveway is just as steep as ever. Not to mention the fact that the farm has a bit of a slope I have to negotiate to go up to it (as it is also situated on a hill), and - just to make things easier - the sheep (and their hay barn) are at the bottom of that hill on the back side. The side with the steepest slope and the deepest snow. Yee-hah. This ought to be fun.

As it happens, my hay supplier, JW, is also the person who plows (and sands) my driveway. She's a bit late getting to the farm, as she has thought ahead and asked her husband to precede her up the driveway in the sanding truck. That means we only have to off-load the hay from the truck to the 6-wheeler, 5 bales at a time, which R will then drive down the hill to the hay barn to be stacked. Only it turns out that Mr. W thinks he can drive the truck down there and - and here's the big feat - get it back up again. Well, okay, then. That's easier for US, but I'm dearly hoping he has not overestimated his driving skills or his truck. The snow is deep and wet in the falling drizzle, and it would be all too easy to mire down back there.

We offload the hay and stack it in the barn (and THAT'S a lovely feeling, let me tell you, having a barn full of hay for your stock). Mr. W turns his truck around and makes a run at it. And mires down, tires churning, about a third of the way up. He backs it up and makes another run at it. We are all - S, R, me, and JW - watching as he mires in a second time, and a third.

"He's packing himself a trail," JW says suddenly, grasping what her husband is up to. And she is right, as his fourth try takes the truck, straining and flinging clumps of heavy snow off its tires, up to the top. We all cheer and trudge through the heavy snow up in his wake, and I pay JW for hay - and for sanding, if her husband will go on over and do my drive. He will, a thought that makes me feel completely content with the world, although he has another drive or two to do before me. I have a barn full of hay, my sheep are snug and have food against the winter, and if I dawdle long enough, I will be able to get up my driveway when I get home. JW improves my good mood by giving me a tub of home-made hot buttered rum mix (which I can tell you, from experience, is excellent). She trundles off in her husband's wake, and I chat with S and R for a few minutes in hopes of letting Mr. W get ahead of me in his sanding truck, but they have a tub of hot buttered rum mix of their own, and a sudden driving need to go buy rum and fire up their hot tub. So I get into my truck and drive home. I turn into my ice-white drive but when I get to the slippery part, it looks like a dirt road. Mr. W, bless him, has been and gone, and my truck doesn't even hesitate as it climbs up the hill.

So now I'm sitting here, a mug of hot buttered brandy (since I don't like rum) close to hand, looking out at the fading day. Winter has its compensations - many of them, for me, as I like the cold weather and the snow, and I don't particularly mind the dark. One of the best is the fact that, as satisfying as it is to put up hay for your stock, it is that much MORE satisfying to do it against the brunt of winter. Even better to have been working outside in the cold, and to come in to a cozy house to sit with a border collie draped across your feet, watching the leaden sky fade to a smoky lavender as you work on your computer, hot drink to hand.

Kinda puts the slippery driveway blues into perspective, don't you think?