For me you would make an exception

My last post may have come off as sulky and irritable. That's because it totally was. Vancouver, after that blissful week on the island, was making me crazy. It felt like I'd been turned out of an Edenic paradise. Like: I have to wear clothes now? What is this thing called rain? And what do you mean I have to find my own food? This food SUCKS. I mean it's necessary you surround me with my friends, animal companions, and beauty, and be sharp about it.

I'm not sure, come to think of it, that the biblical Eden even had friends and animal companions. But mine did. They were there making me tea in the morning and swimming with me in the evening and always singing. Singing songs about the dogs and songs about why living under the sea is just better. And helping me pick through Happy's fur at night to look for spear grass. And making the most delicious meals I've ever tasted, swear to god.

You can see why I was upset. Everything was perfect for a week, I was completely insanely happy, and I knew it, too. Usually you don't realize you're happy until something changes and you miss it, but this was too obvious to ignore. Like running into the freezing, thrilling, crystal-clear ocean when you're really hot. The kind of happiness that's all over you and up your nose.

So then I came home and woke up and it was raining. And it wasn't even flat-out raining, music-video style, but sort of drizzling and humid. And my dinner at Ousi tasted like cardboard. And I was lonely. And I was talking to Marian on the phone about all of these now-strange and unpleasant elements of life when Happy started having a partial seizure under my roll-top desk.

I didn't post about it, but there was actually a third seizure, before this one, on the way to Bowen island in July. So I'd already decided to bite the bullet (or the wooden spoon, or rolled-up towel, or whatever people stick in your mouth when you're seizing to stop you from biting your tongue, which isn't really an apt metaphor at all since I'm not the one with epilepsy, but anyway) and go see Dr. Potter about medication. But Dr. Potter was out of town, so we went to Saturna instead and found bliss.

In any case, I took Happy in this morning, and Dr. Potter said I had two options: drugs now, or go see a neurologist for more information. This was a new one on me, this neurologist idea, because the first vet I talked to told me my options were drugs now or drugs a while from now. Also, Dr. Potter told me that you can go off epilepsy medication once you start it, as long as you do it gradually. This was also news.

But Happy is a big question-mark right now. We still don't know if she's epileptic. So giving her Phenobarb would be guesswork, and it's not Dr. Potter's specialty, as she told me herself, and she recommended the neurologist. So she referred me to the critical care centre out in Burnaby (where I've been to have Ema's eyes looked at), and I left feeling much better than I had going in. Happy felt the same way. Mainly because they took blood and made her pee into a metal bowl, but still. The critical care center is going to call me in a few days and I'll email them the video I took of Happy's third seizure, and then we'll head over there and figure this stuff out. Which is an incredibly satisfying thought, really. Maybe worth leaving paradise for.