I'm not even halfway through this, and I have **THREE** stories for you!
One: When DP and I were still dating, she owned a small, obnoxious dog named Pepe. Pepe had belonged to her ex, and was abandoned when her ex ran off with another woman. He was a much maligned little scrap of meanness - ate things he shouldn't have, bit everyone, peed and pooped everywhere. Sadly, he died of old age while DP was visiting with me (actually, helping me pack to move), and our dear friend found him. She wasn't sure what to do with him, so he ended up wrapped in a couple of plastic bags, IN OUR FREEZER. That was fun - I threw all the food out when I got there. Ugh.
Two: When I was first living with DP and DD, they had a sweet, hand-me-down guinea pig named Cheesenips. He was a sweet baby, whose owner was a friend at church and he'd gone to college and couldn't take the piggy. His parents were afraid of him, so DD took him in. Sadly, he too died of old age, and DD decided (for reasons known only to her) to put his body in a five gallon plastic bucket, which she intended to bury when it got warmer (it was the depths of winter and the ground was really hard). He stayed there, under the carport, forgotten by us all, until summer, when the bucket opened due to gas pressure.
Three: DP has, thanks to the chemo and other things last year, a not-normal immune system. She's prone to picking up everything under the sun. Thanks to the cut watermelon we bought at the farmers market, she ended up with Lysteria poisoning last month. She was in the hospital, on antibiotics, with horrible diarrhea, for about a week. She's also an ostomate. The diarrhea was so bad, she'd literally have a stomach cramp, and then a completely full ostomy bag, within seconds. One night, she and I were both just totally exhausted, and they'd finally gotten her pain meds where she could sleep well, so we actually slept about 6 straight hours (the nurses were keeping guard over the room - we were both just wrung out). She woke up, to find that 1) the bag had dislodged itself overnight 2) the bag had been full, and there had been at least 1 more movement overnight and 3) it's amazing where liquids will put themselves when you sleep. We didn't know what to clean first. It took a nurse, a tech, me, and about 45 minutes to get her clean again. Thank goodness she was calm through it - I can't imagine how much worse it'd have been if she'd had a panic attack in the middle.
