*

This week had a lot of ups and downs. First, Maggie. After I wrote that things were looking up last week, she wound up having a bad reaction to her chemo and I had to take her to the dog emergency room. They admitted her overnight for dehydration and, the next day, James and I decided to switch vets because the vet we were using was colder than Barbra Streisand's face watching herself be honored at the Kennedy Center. Andrea McArdle had been touting her vet to me, so James and I took Maggie up to Yonkers and we loved it. If only I knew as a kid that one day I would not only meet Andrea McArdle, but actually be able to call and text her! Although, I don't know if I would have understood the concept of texting. My mother still doesn't. Actually, that's an exaggeration, but suffice it to say that literally any verb relating to a computer is "downloading." She told me recently her printer broke and she therefore couldn't download anything. Download = print? Anyway, we took Maggie to the new vet, who we really liked, but Maggie wound up having a bad week. Daily, she hasn't wanted to eat until the very end of the day. It was so hard to know if this was nausea from the chemo or loss of appetite from the cancer. Is this the way it will always be? Is she suffering? So, that's the incredibly difficult background that was present all during the week. (But, P.S., every time Maggie would suddenly get some energy back and start to eat, James and I would cry with joy. So, there were up-sides to each day with her.)

	Maggie

After I wrote the column that follows, however, Maggie declined and the doctor told us she would need a blood transfusion and that the tumor hadn't gone away. Her hind legs were incredibly weak and looked hopeless. We put Maggie to sleep last night, Feb. 12. I can't describe the incredible sadness I feel. She was 14, and I had her since she was 7 months. We took trips to Provincetown together, where she learned how to swim. We went to Salem, CT, where she'd run in the woods. She slept next to me every night. I wrote the rest of this column before I knew what was going to happen.