Curlychaos SoapDragon

And a good lesson that I need to start saying no to things I don’t want. I went out to a lake to do some barbequing with my ex, which was nice. But soon after we arrived, we heard thunder at a distance. I don’t like being outdoors during thunder and lightening, it’s quite scary. So I said maybe we just have to pack up and go back soon, we’re going to have rain and thunder. But he said “no,no, why are you so pessimistic, it won’t come here” and insisted we should stay and eat there. With the result of course that we had to run back to the car for 15 minutes in pouring, freezing rain, with thunder and lightening all around us.

Then just after we got back to the car and started driving, ligthening actually struck just a couple of meters from the car. I know cars are among the safest places to be during lightening because of the rubber weels, so it probably wasn’t really that dangerous. But still, it was seriously scary! I’ve never seen lightening strike right next to me before, that is a scary force.

Then of course, I remembered I had left all my windows open, it was sunny and very warm when I left the house. And when I went back, there was a serious flood in my kitchen. Sigh.
That was some weather change, we’ve had a serious heatwave for 2 weeks, nothing but sun, and all of a sudden it changed, and they say lightening struck 2000 times in Oslo in less than an hour.

I can’t believe I let my ex talk me into staying though. When dark clouds are building up all over and you can hear thunder coming closer, there will be thunder and rain. But he had gone through the trouble of buying food and things for the barbeque and I didn’t want to disappoint him I guess. Next time, I’m definitely leaving no matter what.

changing music genre now, and try to learn classical piano instead.
Piano just hasn´t been that much fun lately, and as a result, I hardly practice. Partly because my new teacher just wasn´t right for me. And partly because I´m just not getting anywhere with the jazz improvisation thing at all.
I think a lot of jazz pianists, the teachers I´ve had included, are classically trained first. Which means they have the technique, the understanding of music, they know the music theory, and then they move on to jazz. Starting with jazz on the other hand, has proved really difficult, and improvisation, which is essential in jazz, requires a lot of theory background and understanding that I just don´t have yet.
Plus, my teacher kept telling me to listen to more jazz. I did listen to a lot of jazz when I started playing piano, but then I discovered classical music, and after that, I have started listening to more and more classical music and less and less jazz. And learning to play jazz without listening to it is less inspiring and quite difficult.

Changing genre means I´ve wasted a lot of time though. My practice until now have not been a waste either way of course, any kind of pianoplaying is good to learn any genre. But it is very different. I for instance can´t read sheet music at all, and I mean at all, I am used to simply having the basic melody lines and list of chords, and playing from that. And none of my teachers have ever been very interested in teaching me tecnique, they focuson the creative playing from chords only. While classical music of course requires music reading and tecnique to play it the way it is supposed to be played.

Hm. Not sure about this though. I am a very enthusiastic sort of person who gets all excited about new interests. Two years from now, I may have moved on to being superenthusiastic about pop or rock or whatever, and I can´t keep changing genres, learning one is hard enough.

The good thing is, there aren´t any lessons until mid august anyway, and then I will get a new teacher. So this is the perfect time to try it. I´ve just been to the library to borrow some sheet music. I went for seriously easy stuff, to easy really, but I figured it would be more fun if I can start playing right away instead of struggling with something too difficult. And then we´ll see. If I do find it more fun, I´ll change. After all, I´m not going to be a concert pianist either way, it´s all about having fun, so if I´ve wasted some time on other things, who cares really. And if I try it this summer and realize jazz is actually more fun anyway, I´ll keep doing that.

The vet called, and at the beginning of the conversation, I was very happy. He said she does not have addisons, and the nausea is probably caused by a treatable inflamation. But then he went on to say: Her lungs don’t look good at all though, but that was to be expected of course.
Turns out Cora was diagnosed with a chronic lung disease three years ago, they just didn’t explain that to me.
I took her to the vet in 2006 because she was coughing a lot. They did some tests, found the cause, gave me some meds to give her for 10 days and said it would hopefully go away after the treatment. And it did, more or less, so I didn’t think much more about it. But now the coughing is back, and the vet said he could see changes in her lungs that are to be expected in a dog with this condition as the dog gets older. But Cora is only 4, she’s still a young dog!

I’m just in shock now, I can’t think clearly at all. So many questions. The fact that Cora doesn’t like to walk on a leash at all, that I have just accepted as the way she is. Is that really a result of poor lung capasity, that she doesn’t want to run and cause heavy breathing unless she’s doing something that gets her really excited? And that very intense, fast breathing and panting she does constantly when she’s excited, very different from Agatha, that I have just interpreted as a good sign that she’s happy and excited, is it really heavy breathing due to a lung problem?

I asked the vet if there is anything I can do to keep her as healthy as possible, and he said no. There are treatments for the sympthoms, but there are serious side effects, so they don’t do that unless it is clear that the dog is very uncomfortable. The disease itself can not be treated.
I asked him if she will get progressively worse, and if this will affect her life expectancy. He said “well, not necessarily. She might just be able to have a reasonably good life”. That is not the worst news of course, it would have been a lot worse if he said it would definitely go downhill from here. But still. “Not necessarily” means there is a chance it won’t work out well. And I don’t want her to have a reasonably good life, I want her to be happy and have a good life, period.
And what worries me the most is that he said there are changes in her lungs that are to be expected as the dog gets older. But she’s not old. If her lungs are changing a lot already, at the age of 4, how will her life be when she’s 8 or 10? One of my greatest fears in life is developing a disease that makes it hard to breathe, I can’t think of many things worse than the feeling of not getting enough air. Am I going to watch my dog go through just that as she gets older?

I know I should call the vet back and ask more question when I’ve had some time to get over the shock. Maybe their answers will calm me down a little. But maybe they won’t. I’m not sure I can take hearing what they will have to tell me.