Living Well with Parkinsons Disease
Dancing in the Rain: Lessons Learned on my Personal Journey with PD (more at www.PDPlan4Life.com) Copyright 2013-20 Sheryl Jedlinski
Wag your tail
By Sheryl Jedlinski
My son and daughter-in-law put their dog down today. She was 13-1/2 years old (elderly for a “big” dog), and had a list of chronic ailments that robbed her of her vision and hearing, and made it extremely painful for her to move, much less navigate the many flights of stairs in their house. Steve made the accommodations he could (even carrying her up and down the stairs), but Sophia’s ailments became too much for her to bear.
Sophia joined our extended family eight years ago when Steve bought her from a fellow law student for a box of chocolates. It was a perfect trade for such a sweet dog. Sophia was “Daddy’s little girl,” and he loved that. On game days, they wore matching Bears jerseys while snuggled up on the couch watching the action on tv, whooping and high fiving every Chicago team’s good plays. On weeknights, Sophia would wait at the front door for Steve to come home from work. She would wag her tail excitedly, and drop a stuffed toy at his feet… which in any language means, “Play with me.” Lately, Sophia could barely raise her tail, let alone wag it. That was when Steve and his wife, Megan, knew it was time to let her go.
Watching the two of them handle this end of life process with such compassion, confirmed our decision to have Steve handle our final medical issues as well. That is until he warned us to: “Make a note to self, if you are not ready to leave this world, make sure to wag your tail.”
3 comments on “Wag your tail ”
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Living Well with Parkinsons Disease 
Great picture! Great story and tie in message to “take care of business” with someone you trust, care about and love. They certainly deserve this fun adventure of Costa Rico after the many long weeks of hard work that Steve has had and then this emotional loss,,, if you r still looking for a play we saw some wonderful acting and interesting performance last night: “Beast Over the Moon”at the Raven theater. It is a don’t miss…hope you r having a good weekend. Tem
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Having just lost my sweet Dreamsicle the week before, I was particularly struck by this tender post. Since Heaven is a much more tolerant place than Earth, I’m pretty sure Dreamy the cat and Sophia the dog are up there running around together and having a grand time. XXX
we have an 18yr old little chararua that I know doesn’t have very long to live. My husband who has pd and I have lupus are going to take his leaving very hard. He has been such a bright spot and sometimes a crazy spot in our lives. I just hope we can handle his parting after all he is our baby. I am thankful that God let this little fellow bless us with so many laughs.
Linda,