Still Here - San Antonio, TX - Jan 2010

We're still in San Antonio and trying our best to deal with a number of things going on in our lives. We normally use this time to take care of our annual medical and dental needs, take care of the dogs veterinary needs, deal with the annual maintenance, registration and insurance on our vehicles, manage our annual financial issues and deal with taxes. We also take care of any RV improvements and repairs while we have easy access to tools and supplies that are needed. All of that gets done on top of plenty of visiting with family and friends, enjoying the holidays and keeping up with the daily chores of life. Needless to say, in a typical year we manage to pack a lot of stuff into these two months.

This year however, has been extraordinarily challenging and we both feel like we're running on fumes. Between our own health issues and those of our aging dogs, we've had dozens of medical appointments and have an arsenal of prescriptions that Walgreens would envy. We've had some family issues to attend to and financial issues to deal with and it's been just about all than our weary bodies and frazzled brains can cope with.

Frank's recovery from his back injury took weeks to heal to the point where he could sit up for more than an hour and just as he was beginning to start walking for exercise, he bent over and his back went into spasm again. That set him back another week before he was able to get up and around again. Then, just as he was starting to go on short exercise walks, he lost his balance, fell and twisted his ankle. Thank goodness that he didn't re-injure his back, but the sprained ankle took another two weeks of recuperation time. I'm happy to report, that things are better now and he's worked his way up to walking two miles a day.

Another one of our issues has been taking care of our dog Rudy, who has late stage congestive heart failure. For over a year, we've managed his disease with a cocktail of heart drugs -- including massive doses of diuretics. The diuretics keep fluid from building up in his lungs, but at the same time he drinks a whole lot more and pees a whole lot more. We don't have the luxury of a doggie door, so we were having to take him out for a walk every 3 to 4 hours -- rain or shine, day or night. The lack of being able to get a good night's sleep was a huge drain (pun intended) on our own energy reserves and we had to figure out some way to deal with it.
Luckily, the RV park here in San Antonio allowed us to put up a small, temporary fence so that now we are able to just let Rudy go out in "the yard" instead of having to take him for a walk. While we still have to get up several times during the night to let him out, that's a whole lot easier (and less disruptive to our sleep) than having to get up, get dressed and take him out for a walk. Frank & I are also trading off "doggy duty" nights so that one of us will be able to sleep while the other takes care of the dogs. Ah, the things we do for our fur kids, but they are so worth it. Rudy is hanging in there and seems to still enjoy life and his good days outnumber his bad ones.

So, all-in-all, we're managing to stay on top of things, but the time, energy worry and expense have all taken a toll and we're both feeling pretty weary. We still have a few doctor appointments to follow up with, so it looks like we'll be here in San Antonio for another month. After that, we're hoping to head back to New Mexico where the rent is cheap and yet we're still close to Texas should we need to return.