May the 4th Be With You and Other Stuff

Today there will be nothing but Star Wars movies all day long. Who would have thought much less what George Lucus would have thought that back in 1977 when it was first released on May 25th that the Skywalker saga would take off and explode into something so big.

Episode 4 Star Wars : A New Hope came out in 1977. Episode 5 The Empire Strikes Back in 1980. Episode 6 Return of The Jedi in 1983. Then the prequel to the first 3 films, the time, and the CGI was right. Episode 1 The Phantom Menace came out in 1999. Episode 2 Attack of The Clones in 2002. Episode 3 Revenge of The Sith in 2005. If you look it up you will find that the first 6 films were released all in May; interesting.

Lucasfilm then was sold to Disney and they completed the Skywalker Anthology with Episode 7 The Force Awakens in 2005. Then Episode 8 The Last Jedi in 2017 and the last of the Skywalker Saga was Episode 9 The rise of Skywalker in 2019. There were two other sequel films Rogue One: A Star Wars Story in 2016 and Solo: A Star Wars Story in 2018. All in all the Star Wars Saga has raked in over $10 billion. Not a bad haul.

Lucy before the cataracts

On other fronts, last week Tuesday, David and I took Lucy for her eye exam. We had an appointment at 10am for the doctor to see if she would be a good candidate for cataract surgery. We got there 15 minutes early because the traffic was with us for once. I called them to let them know we were there and waiting. an hour later one of the techs came out to get her. We waited another 15 minutes and a call came into my phone explaining that it will be at least 3 hours before they bring her back to us so we decided to get small lunch. About noon I got another call on my phone. It was the doctor. He talked and talked and TALKED. I finally got tired of him and broke in and said what is the prognosis. The doctor started talking 60/40 that she might see and there was also a chance the retina would detach. So I stopped him again from yammering on and on and asked him the $100 million question which was what would you do? He started yammering again and I gave up. I said okay then hung up. I told David her chances and asked what he wanted to do. He looked at me and I could read his thoughts. Let's just go get our little girl. So we went back to the Vet parking lot and I called and said we decided to just take Lucy home. The vet prescribed eye drops to keep cataracts at bay and we waited another half hour before we got her back. By then I was in so much pain I could barely believe it. I had a couple of my pain pills in my purse and I took them but they never helped. The ride home was fast but not fast enough. I'm thinking sitting in the car for almost 3 and 1/2 half hours took a toll on my back. I took a nice hot shower and took two more pain pills and fell asleep. I was stuck in bed all week long. I barely ate anything but toast and tea. My stomach was just not willing to take on anything and my body was racked with pain and fatigue. By then I knew it was also Lupus that claimed me. So I missed a whole week. I did post when I was up and around but that was all I did. I finally was able to get up and move normally without too much pain since Sunday. It feels good to be among the living. 

Back to Lucy, I forgot to mention that she had a really bad Nystagmus episode two weeks ago this Thursday. I was cooking dinner when all of a sudden she started lunging at one of the island chairs and then walked into the wall and started twisting and flopping on her side. It was so violent that I screamed for David to come and subdue her so she doesn't hurt herself. Well, David just stood there and asked what do you want me to do? I turned off the flames on the stove and ran to Lucy and held her close so she wouldn't slam against the floor. The episode was the longest that she had ever had, three minutes long. I timed it from the moment I saw her thrashing. As soon as she was normal I called the vet here in Seguin and asked if I could get an emergency appointment they moved us into the last slot for tomorrow, Friday. So, the next day we went in to see the vet and he examined Lucy and they did full blood work testing. Her CBC showed no signs of infection or cancer and her blood chemistries were normal too. So it's most likely this, what the vet called Geriatric Canine Idiopathic Vestibular Syndrome. Our vet said it might be nothing or it could be a mini-stroke. So he issued us a prescription of Gabapentin 100mg to be given every 12 hours. So far so good. She gets the eye drops and the pill every 12 hours. Right now she seems fine. The pill makes her a bit groggy but she seems fine. If she has another episode we are to bring her in right away. It's just a wait-and-see thing right now.