Yesterday we took Roxy (the dog) to the vet. She's had any number of problems since we adopted her in April (some of which are poop related), including Lyme disease. She's been having difficulty getting up and down stairs and sometimes her back legs will just give out on her. Turns out she still has Lyme, despite two complete courses of antibiotics - the vet said it can take 4 or 5 times to get rid of it and even then it may have caused permanent neurological damage. So now she's on vitamins, joint health medication, arthritis medication, antibiotics, and something called "Deter" to prevent Coprophagia (the disgusting, but not uncommon, habit of poop eating). One the positive side, she was a scrawny 34 pounds when we adopted her and has gained a whopping 13 pounds to tip the scales at 47 pounds. No more weight gain because of the strain on her joints.

On a somewhat related note, a guy I work with has a 6 year old son with chronic Lyme disease. There is apparently great disagreement in the medical field about how to treat Lyme when it just won't go away. The patients, and in this case the parents, are caught in the middle between the practitioners who argue for aggressive IV antibiotics and those who prefer a more conservative approach via oral antibiotics. Lyme contains up to 10 organisms that can all cause terrible effects, and certain antibiotics only target specific organisms. Consequences can include severe neurological damage, extreme fatigue, low grade fever and joint damage. For a 6 year old this can mean taking three days to recover from a single soccer match, having to carry around a portable IV pump and facing an uncertain future in terms of long term effects (of both the disease and the treatment).

On a completely unrelated note, Penn's Humanities Forum is presenting a series of lectures on Sleep and Dreams, topics which fascinate me (problems with sleep, lots of bizarre dreams). I've registered for To Sleep, Perchance to Kill; Cutting Cinematic Dreams; and Modern Humans at the Boundary of Sleep and Waking. Having not attended many lectures since my college days, I'll see if I need Vivarin to stay awake.