I have had enough of 2013. This year has been bad from the start, for countless reasons. But I won't bore anyone, including myself, by reciting all of them. But I will go into a few.
1. 2013 started out as crap, with my best friend ever, my Rottweiler, being afflicted with apparent excruciating pain while we were on a trip to see family, several states away. We ended up having to take him to the emergency vet over the holiday time. They gave us good drugs, didn't know what the cause was, except maybe he pulled something, but the vet expressed enough concern that I started worrying from that point forward that something was going bad with my friend.
2. By February, the progressive, liberalista governor of MD had pushed (at the request of the White House, I found out) for a complete ban of modern sporting rifles, and severe restrictions on all handgun purchases. I and many friends spent days in Annapolis in the halls of the Senate and House of Delegates fighting that legislation. In the end, in spite of over 19 hours of testimony by thousands of people against the legislation, the law was passed, and a big chunk of our freedoms in the "Free State" were taken away.
3. In May, one of my other best friends unexpectedly passed away. I had been in Annapolis numerous times with this guy while we were fighting the governor's gun ban. I had been hunting with him in Missouri, where I got my first deer ever. I had shot competitively and leisurely with him numerous times at our local firing range. In fact, I was supposed to shoot with him in a match the day before he passed away, but I had a severe cold, and had to text him that I wouldn't make it. He texted back to get plenty of rest and fluids. That was the last communication I ever got from him. He died in his sleep the night after the match.
4. At the beginning of August, the other shoe dropped on my Rotty, after he had started having trouble getting up, in obvious pain (which I had been increasing arthritis pain medications thinking that was what was causing the problem, since he was 10 going on 11). The beginning of August, he wouldn't get up to eat. We managed to get him up to the vet, where she said that the swelling in his hip that we thought was arthritis was actually osteosarcoma, and we confirmed it with x-rays. There was no specific prognosis for how much longer he would live, but it "wouldn't be years." There was nothing we could do other than try to control his pain. There never was anything we could have done, as the cancer was in his pelvis so it was inoperable from the start. And without excising the tumor, there is no treatment that battle the cancer. I got to watch his pain and swelling get progressively worse, as we fought it with more and more pain medications, and eventually he was no longer using that leg at all. It was the worst thing I have gone through so far, and I say that as a guy who lost his dad to lung cancer when I was 12 years old.
5. At the end of September, I got more bad news. My mother had a tumor in her abdomen the size of a "partially deflated soccerball." Emergency surgery ended up with her having a full hysterectomy and part of both large and small intestines removed, and the tumor was cancer. The tumor was found on her 89th birthday. At the time I write this, she is still trying to recover from the surgery in a nursing home. I'm starting to lose hope that she will ever get out of the nursing home.
6. October 23rd, approximately 1:15pm EDT, I lost the best friend I ever had. My Rottweiler, Kona, having turned 11 years old at the end of August, could go on no longer with the osteosarcoma. His pain had gotten bad enough the drugs were not keeping it in check. He stopped eating that day, which was a profound change for him. I think his kidneys failed sometime over the previous night, and we had had to give him 5 times the usual dosage of drugs to get his pain to subside to the point he could at least rest, although I don't think he slept at all. The vet came out as soon as she could that day, which ended up being 1pm. I lost a part of me that day, and I don't think that I will, or perhaps even want to, get it back. I'm not depressed, but I am certainly having a hard time, even to this day, of finding things to be happy about.
So, enough of 2013. It could get worse. Things will get worse, at some point. But this has been an epically bad year for those around me, people and friends that I am and have been close to.
