Unbelievably, another cruising season is upon us. As I write this, I am skying eastward aboard United Express 3456 to Toronto, then on to Frankfurt and finally Malta. Son John is accompanying me to start the season, though he’s not on this particular airplane. He’s now on a flight to Dulles, and then on to Frankfurt where we will join up, the separate itineraries a vestige of the proclivities of award travel booking.
Cruising season comes none too soon. This past winter ended up to be quite unusual. A paralyzed dog and a slow building back injury took the winter off course, ultimately requiring extraordinary measures to save the dog and the back.
It’s hard to pin down exactly why back discs herniate. Is it simply “old guy syndrome,” a traumatic event, or some combination of these? In my case, though, you could build the case that my suffering was sympathetic with that of our dog, Maya, an eight-year-old Rhodesian Ridgeback.
One morning shortly after we returned home from Malta last fall, Maya couldn’t get up. Since it was a Saturday, her usual veterinarian couldn’t see her, so she was taken to a K9 emergency room not far away. There, she was found to have contracted Coonhound Paralysis, a rare disease that dogs get after scrapping with raccoons. Given the rapid onset and the symptoms – Maya could wag her tail, eat and drink, but couldn’t stand or move her limbs -- the doggy neurologist was quite sure of the diagnosis. The prognosis was equally certain. Given time and proper care, Maya would recover, if she got past the first week.
We decided to give her a chance. We took her home and set up the front hallway as a sort of doggy nursing center. We followed the vet’s discharge instructions as closely as we could, “bicycling” Maya’s limbs as often as possible and taking her outside to eat, drink, and eliminate. We kept up this routine for six weeks.
And there was the rub. Repeatedly lifting Maya, who weighs in at 75 pounds, was my back’s undoing.
Six weeks after Maya’s diagnosis, ski patrol season started. I began the weekly commute to the mountains to log duty days, staying in a slope side condo each night. Back at home, Jocelyn couldn’t manage Maya’s care by herself, so we would have to find someone else to take over.
Fortunately, Craigslist came to the rescue. Within a few hours of posting an ad with our predicament, we received two responses to our appeal. We checked them out, and ended up leaving Maya with one of them. Wouldn’t you know it, the guy’s name was Craig!
Soon thereafter, my back started giving me trouble. As the New Year wore on, the symptoms worsened. Concurrently, Maya’s disease progressed. With each passing week, we watched her regain some function, first the ability to raise her head, then to lift her torso into a sitting position, and to moving her limbs. As I am nearing full recovery six weeks after surgery, Maya is now standing for brief moments, seemingly very close to the full recovery promised by the doggy neurologist.
I know it sounds crazy, but wouldn’t it be mysterious, miraculous even, if Maya’s and my suffering and return to health were somehow connected? You’ll probably be very skeptical of this notion unless you’re a “dog person.” But if you are, maybe, just maybe, it’s a plausible explanation.
Regardless of which explanation you buy, the fact remained that the back was acting up. Conventional wisdom says all possible “traditional” treatments should be exhausted before accepting surgery as a remedy for back trouble, and horror stories of back surgeries gone bad motivate one to heed this advice. I certainly did, pursuing one cure after another. Acupuncture, physical therapy, steroid injections, electronic stimulation, infrared treatments, muscle relaxers, medical massage, holistic healers – all were tried, with enthusiasm, but to no avail. Day by day, the back resisted, taking matters into its own hands, inch by painful inch extending down my left leg until the entire sciatic nerve screamed at me from bottom to top.
If you’ve ever had sciatica, you understand what I went through. If you haven’t, it’s impossible to describe. Like seasickness, death seems a realistic option to stop the suffering. Thoughts of suicide were never really that close, but the pain was, and the failure of traditional remedies, one by one, brought me to tears.
I finally got in front of the right doctor who took one look at me and said he needed to see me on his operating table by the end of the week, quite a trick in the usually slow paced world of hospital scheduling. One February 28th, Jocelyn’s birthday, I went under the knife. Six weeks on, my recovery is well along, though lifting more than 20 pounds is forbidden for now, one reason why John is along as my assistant.
And now we find ourselves deep into boat commissioning work. The two big acquisitions this off-season were a new 130% North Sails genoa and a EchoTEC watermaker. The former was no trouble to install, the later took quite a bit of doing, on top of the lengthy punchlist for getting the boat ready for launch. (For a review of this list, see the September 10, 2011, blog entry.)
Forty knot winds set in on April 24th, the appointed day for launching the Windleblo. So we had to wait two days before the splash. Finally in the water on the 26th, we set about the last preparations before setting sail for Cavtat, Croatia. On board were a crew of me, John Hoopes, John O’Riordan, and Karolina Schulz. En route, we paused to anchor in Syracusa, Sicily, and played tourist all afternoon in this ancient city. After a night’s sleep on the hook, we sailed for two days to Brindisi, Puglia, on Italy’s heel, to examine the Yard where Windleblo will rest for the hot part of the summer. Surprisingly, this town, known only as the place to catch the ferry to Greece, Albania, or Turkey, offered some very satisfying tourist opportunities, which Jocelyn and I will enjoy in two months’ time.
A final overnight passage north from Brindisi brought us to Cavtat and the beginning of our two month exploration of the Dalmatian Coast.
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