Day 9

Peanut had abdominal x-rays today and there are no tumors or masses on his kidneys or liver. His liver is enlarged, but that can be a side-effect of his kidney disease, some over compensation on behalf of his liver working overtime. If he was a person he would be on dialysis immediately, but that's not something they do for dogs. It's a Freudian thing, but when I mean to type "dogs" I always type "gods" by mistake! That will tell you how highly I think of our canine companions...especially my Peanut Butter. His middle name is Butter - it's on his medical records and everything.

I am so exhausted. It's been back and forth to the vet at least twice a day since Monday and now that most of the diagnostic work is completed, I feel like I can exhale. I bet I sleep like a rock tonight. I prayed so hard for there not to be any tumors on his internal organs...big thanks to God for that being the case. I believe in prayer. And that faith without works is dead. To me, that means that I can have all the faith I want, but unless I do the footwork of what I can do, my faith isn't worth a hill of beans. I do what I can and leave the rest to God. I struggle so hard with that sometimes because I want to yank back that control and do it MY way damn it, most of the time. Well, some of the time.

Since I've been feeling so low emotionally lately, my faith has fizzled. It's not gone by any stretch of the imagination, but I used to pray twice a day, every day. Today was the first time I've prayed in at least 2 weeks. I feel like I'm the walker in that parable, "Footprints in the Sand." I feel like I'm walking alone when I know God is carrying me...but I don't feel like I'm in anyone's arms right now. I feel alone.

I saw my MD today and he's not up for switching my anti-depressant right now. He thinks I need some serious therapy time and I don't have a lot of faith in my current therapist. I am out of mental health benefits for the remainder of this calendar year so I've been seeing an intern (student.) And there are a lot of great interns out there, I know because I plan on being one in about a year, but this chick and I just don't mesh. I feel like I have to come up with things to say. There's no direction at all from her and I need someone way more involved. Don't get me wrong: I can talk about myself all day, but when I start to go into past issues or situations, she wants me to talk about what's going on here and now. I don't have a problem with that either, but she's too stuck to the theory of DBT and not everything fits into that one bag of tricks. I'm not going to go into describing the theory of DBT because I wrote a 7 page paper on it recently for my Theories class and I'm kind of sick of it. I should get that posted somewhere on my blog. I need to look into how to do that because I have some poetry that I want to post as well. Anyway, I have an appointment with this therapist intern tomorrow. My MD sent her a note today giving her some direction on what to work on with me and one of them is marital counseling with my husband (which neither of us have any issue with.) I know she doesn't do couples therapy so I'm hoping to get a referral out. If not, I need to be honest with her and let her know it's just not working. We don't even fill an entire 50 minute session because SHE WON'T SAY ANYTHING. I'm glad I got that out. :-)

So I plan on watching the two episodes of The Simpson's "Treehouse of Horror" V and VI tonight from 6-7pm. Then I plan on having some pleasant dreams for once. Right after I pray.

Enjoy.