Allison Raskin's Blog

When I think what I most want to avoid it is knowing, even for a second, that I am about to die. My fear of any physical threat pales in comparison to my fear of this feeling. Being aware of your imminent demise? What a horrible way to go! No thank you. I would much prefer to be taken in my sleep or hit by a bus I never saw coming.

Obviously, this is not a healthy relationship with death. In an ideal world, I would view the potential end to my consciousness and definite end to my physical form as a natural progression. I’d see it as the circle of life rather than something that is so upsetting I can’t even think about it if I want to be able to fall asleep. At only 36, you’d think I still had a good amount of time to work through my death-related hang-ups, but nothing has made me confront my mortality more than entering middle-age. I shudder just writing those words.

In my defense, it’s hard to have a positive relationship toward death in a society that vilifies aging. Everywhere you look twenty-somethings are getting preventative Botox. Celebrities are having their faces surgically reimagined. Looking your age is no longer the expectation but a failure of your skincare routine. I know that for a lot of people, wrinkles aren’t intrinsically tied to their lifespan. They’re just an aesthetic nuisance. But for me, whenever I focus on my deepening crow’s feet it makes me feel like I am running out of time.

The idea of running out of time has become especially painful since losing my mom. The day we told her she was going to die, she replied, I thought I had more time. We all did. She was only 69. Before she got sick, I used to calm myself by assuming I’d live until at least eighty-five. Maybe ninety something with the advent of better medicine. But I’ve always been my mother’s clone. What if I’m halfway done already? What if I have less time to go than what’s already gone? This potential change to my life expectancy is even more reason for me to get on board with dying. I don’t want to waste my sixties freaking out that the end is near.

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One obvious way to combat my existential dread is to shift my mindset. I could start to see aging as a privilege rather than a harbinger of doom. Unfortunately, it’s hard to convince yourself to see things that way when any physical sign of aging is met with what feels like universal revulsion. People could argue there is a difference between wanting to look young and wanting to be young, but I think the distinction is slippery. If I fight to keep my face from changing, aren’t I also fighting the passage of time? Aren’t I trying to hold onto something I have to learn how to let go?

When I told my husband I was worried that getting Botox would make me more afraid of dying, he laughed. For him, the two have nothing to do with each other. This makes it less dangerous for him to one day engage with anti-aging procedures. I, on the other hand, want to be careful. Getting Botox or filler or whatever they are doing at those health spas would be a tangible way for me to avoid my existential dread. It would enable me to ignore the inevitable passing of time whenever I looked in the mirror. And as someone who preaches the merits of exposure therapy, I know how much harm avoidance can do.

I wish we lived in world where wrinkles were seen as beautiful. Where deep laugh lines were coveted and the elderly weren’t discarded. Imagine how much priorities would change if our value as humans wasn’t tied to the elasticity of our skin but the collection of our experiences. Death wouldn’t be as scary if we weren’t constantly taught to fear it.

I know I have a lot more work to do when it comes to accepting my mortality than simply opting out of microneedling or laser resurfacing. I’m not even sure I will opt out forever. One day I might be at peace with the fact that I won’t live forever. If/when that happens, injectables won’t hold the same, destructive meaning. It is okay for me to engage with a cosmetic procedure because I like the visual outcome. It is less okay for me to engage with a cosmetic procedure because I think it will fight off my aging genes and postpone my inevitable death.

This is not some manifesto where I am swearing off all anti-aging treatments for the sake of my soul. If you check back in with me in five years, you might find a smooth and taut face staring back at you. But right now, there is something exciting about not fighting whatever physical changes are coming my way. I’m not the same person I used to be on the inside. I have evolved and grown and morphed into someone almost unrecognizable from my younger self. It might be nice to let my face reflect that.

xoxo,

Allison

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“I just love her so much,” my friend gushed about her baby.

Really?! Why? I thought, pregnant and unenamored with the fetus in my belly. Her comments made me uncomfortable, and I realized I was jealous of my friend’s uncomplicated affection toward her daughter. She’d wanted a baby, she’d gotten pregnant, and now she was smitten. I had followed the first two of those steps easily enough but was having a hard time figuring out how to get to the third. Pregnancy was fascinating from a scientific standpoint. I learned more about the human body in nine months than I had in the previous nine years. But the journey hadn’t been an emotionally rich one. My husband felt more of a connection to our unborn child than I did, and he couldn’t even feel him kick.

Not one to overreact about the big stuff—I prefer to overreact about inconsequential things—I decided to wait it out. Although it seemed unlikely, maybe one day I would be the one sitting at lunch gushing like a teenager in love. I hoped and prayed for that kind of transformation. Perhaps, I thought optimistically, my experience of unconditional love would finally arrive during golden hour. That first hour after birth where skin-to-skin contact is crucial and the concept of being a mother becomes a reality. It’s a magical moment expecting parents spend months fanaticizing about.

I didn’t get one of those.

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A few years ago, I came across a social media post where a woman said she didn’t deserve to be praised for getting married because it wasn’t an accomplishment. Her implication was that unlike the choice to get married, true accomplishments involve effort and skill. I agree with the effort and skill part, but I reject the idea that a good marriage doesn’t require either. Good marriages are built on both.

As a relationship coach, I see firsthand how much energy it takes to not only go through the arduous task of finding a compatible partner but to then do the necessary work to keep that partnership going. I’ve had multiple clients lament how much easier it is to be single. Dating forces you to go on an emotional rollercoaster. Suddenly your internal world is tied to other people’s whims, biases and baggage. You are basically signing a social contract that says, “you are allowed to reject me, and I am allowed to reject you at any moment for any reason.” Engaging in that contract requires bravery. It shows you are willing to do hard things to pursue what you want. (Which is another way to define an accomplishment in my opinion.)

I had a client recently wonder why dating stirs up more discomfort for them than making new friends. Friendship also comes with the possibility of rejection and heartbreak after all. What makes dating bring out all our insecurity? My suspicion is that unless you are non-monogamous, you only have one person filling that role in your life and that exclusivity creates higher stakes. Monogamous romantic relationships come with an element of feeling chosen. Out of everyone in the world, I want to spend my life with you.

Through that lens, being partnered can feel like a stamp of external approval. And when someone doesn’t “choose” you, it’s easy to interpret that decision as implicit disapproval of your very existence. Even though it’s really just a lack of compatibility. Plus, the entire framework that “being chosen” directly correlates to your worth is a flawed premise. (Think of all the horrible people you know who are in relationships. Like most of the people in Congress.) However misguided, though, this belief system, often reinforced by societal messaging, is part of what makes dating so activating.

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Partnership requires a level of vulnerability we avoid in other areas of our life. You are often sharing your body, your daily routine and your bank account. While this level of intimacy can be extremely rewarding, it forces us to confront our issues. Because suddenly they don’t just belong to us anymore. You hating your body or not being able to sleep or being in credit card debt directly effects this other person. This doesn’t mean you have to change for them. But it does make these problems harder to ignore than when you slept alone and no one was trying to see you naked or buy a house with you. This is why people often say your partner becomes a mirror. They expose every part of you—including the stuff you’d rather not see.

Deciding to get married—if you aren’t being driven by an outside pressure like your family or the need for health insurance—involves a certain level of self-trust. Even in the age of no-fault divorce, there are major risks involved with legally binding yourself to another person. It is not a decision anyone should take lightly, which makes it the perfect breeding ground for doubt. People can be indecisive over what to eat for lunch because they are worried about making a mistake. Who you decide to marry impacts a lot more than if you enjoy your afternoon. For someone to feel confident in their choice of spouse, they have to have a certain level of confidence in their decision-making abilities. Getting to that point is an accomplishment in its own right for people who are used to doubting themselves.

No one can guarantee that you are marrying the “right” person.” No one can promise that it will work out or that you wouldn’t have been happier with someone else. These are not easy things to accept. They require us to unlearn the narrative that “when you know you know” and instead get comfortable with making a calculated risk. Tolerating discomfort and accepting uncertainty are two of the most important skills a person can develop. Getting married requires heaps of both. (Assuming you are taking the time to think about it rationally.)

It is for all those reasons that I view getting married as an accomplishment. It is an act that forces us to confront our fears and our flaws. While there are always exceptions, most people don’t come to modern marriage easily. The journey requires introspection, personal growth and significant communication skills. Plus, unlike publishing a book or running a marathon, the work isn’t over until you or the relationship dies.

To me, the problem isn’t framing marriage as an accomplishment. The problem is prioritizing it over so many other types of triumphs. But we don’t need to minimize what couples go through because other accomplishments aren’t getting the same type of attention. Instead, we need to expand which ones we bother to acknowledge both for ourselves and for each other. Accomplishments are deeply personal. They take on so many different forms—from leaving the house for some to landing on the moon for others. There is no limit on the number of accomplishments people are allowed to have. So let yourself celebrate all of them.

xoxo,

Allison

P.S. It would mean a lot to me if you hit the like button to increase chances of engagement! Also, if you are able to upgrade to paid subscriber or share my posts with a potential reader, I would be incredibly thankful! Thank you for reading!

Gifts for my four-month-old son have started showing up at the house. First, it was a blue stuffed bunny for Easter. Then a series of books. Each time we get an Amazon package addressed to John P. Blakeslee, rather than the more informal John Blakeslee, there is a moment of fear. What have his parents sent now? Will the adjoining card be kind or cruel? If we put these items in the nursery, will they be a constant reminder that we are estranged from Parker’s paternal grandparents?

Then I remember that we don’t need a visual cue to be reminded of this painful reality. Because, in between all the laughter, silliness and baby babble, our home is stuffed full of grief. Both for my mom, who has died, and for John’s mom, who is still alive.

There is a strangeness to us both being motherless but in such different ways. I would give up all my possessions to be able to talk to my mom again. While John had to make the difficult decision to block his mother because being in touch was too harmful and dysregulating. Both scenarios are horrible in their own ways. We each long for mothers we can’t access. Mine, because she is decomposing in a New York cemetery. And his because she can’t seem to stop hurting him.

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There has been a lot of discourse lately around what is an appropriate response to a memoir. Are readers allowed to come to their own, oftentimes strong, conclusions about the people featured in the pages? Is it appropriate for the writer to come out in defense of those conclusions and ask people not to make assumptions? Does being a voluntarily public figure unavoidably expose you to judgment? (My answers to those questions are yes, no, yes but feel free to disagree! That’s the whole point of us being able to share our opinions all the time.)

In many ways it used to be much easier to be a celebrity. Sure, you might not have had the opportunity for as many brand deals, but if someone in Oklahoma thought you looked like a less attractive version of Eliza Thornberry, you didn’t have to read about it in your Instagram comments. People were free to think whatever horrible things they wanted about you. They could even talk about with all their friends and neighbors. The difference was you never had to find out!

This same protection can still apply today if you are famous enough to not need social media and you have enough will power to never read a review of your work. But if any of your creative currency comes from having a direct relationship with your audience, that option is out the window. Especially if your career is built on providing a window into your lived experience through memoir, autofiction or those really popular videos of people talking straight to camera in their cars.

The moment you make content about you is the moment you become a commodity that can be dissected and appraised in the public square of the internet. That is the inherent if unspoken agreement that we sometimes try to pretend isn’t true because it’s unseemly.

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As someone who has been sharing intimate details of my personal life online for over a decade, I have come to accept that doing so is similar to making a deal with the devil. If the devil were an internet troll, which is something we actually can’t rule out. My openness has allowed me to connect with a large audience, make a good amount of money, and publish multiple books. It’s also given me a front row seat to people’s opinions about my life choices and creative abilities. (Along with their thoughts on my voice, weight and Jewish ethnicity.)

I am lucky that the majority of the people who interact with my work seem to like me. But a majority simply means 51%. There are still plenty of people who have taken issue with me for some reason or another over the years, and because I am not one of those people with the willpower to never check a review, I have probably read exactly what that issue was. Some criticisms I can ignore on the basis of them being unreasonably cruel and/or antisemitic and others cut me to my core, causing days of self-reflection and occasional penance.

I find it important to know how I am being received because I do not create into a void. My work is built on my relationship with my audience and their opinion of me matters. Our connection is bidirectional, even if I don’t know as many vulnerable details about their lives as they do mine.

Friends, family, and well-intentioned acquaintances have often remarked that they don’t know how I do it. It being exposing myself to public opinion by being so open and honest about my life. They don’t have thick enough skin, they tell me. I nod in understanding. Even though my actual skin is extremely sensitive and prone to rashes, my metaphorical skin is weathered and calloused. It’s not impenetrable, but it heals fast enough to not interfere with my work.

In an ideal world, I wouldn’t need to be so tough to survive as a medium-level public figure. In that world, people would censure their worst thoughts and only share what could be considered constructive criticism. Actually, in an ideal world, people would only share compliments and keep anything negative they think about me to themselves. It wouldn’t be scary to publish your work because people would understand nuance and their own biases. They would engage thoughtfully with the content rather than have swift emotional reactions. Unfortunately, that isn’t the world we are living in. And even if it was, sometimes I would still have a shitty take that deserved to be called out (or, in this scenario, called in).

While it’s unfortunate that putting yourself out there as a professional or as a regular person posting on social media opens you up to the possibility of a wave of vitriol or just old-fashioned judgment, this isn’t a new problem. Sharing yourself publicly has always come with risk. That risk used to be mostly contained to professional critics and your mom’s friends. Now it includes anyone with an internet connection and a strong opinion. For a lot of people, that risk isn’t worth taking. But for those of us who choose to take it on, we can’t pretend not to know the deal.

I get to decide what I put out in the world. I can be mindful and strategic about what I share and how I share it. All of that is in my control. I do not get to decide, however, how you react to it. Once my work is public, it is no longer just mine. It’s a shared commodity that can travel to the darkest corners of the internet or land in welcoming communities who benefit from it. Sometimes it does both. From there, I can disagree with people’s opinions. I can clarify my point of view if I feel misunderstood. I can screenshot rude comments and send them to my friends so they can be enraged on my behalf. But I can’t force you to think about me the way I want you to.

Every time I hit publish on a post, podcast, or essay, I am choosing to put myself in a vulnerable position that could very much be avoided by being a private person. But for me, the only risk that isn’t worth taking is the one where no one engages with it my work at all because I am too afraid to share it.

xoxo,

Allison

P.S. It would mean a lot to me if you hit the like button to increase chances of engagement! Also, if you are able to upgrade to paid subscriber or share my posts with a potential reader, I would be incredibly thankful! Thank you for reading!

“I’m freaking out,” I announced to my husband as he sat in our bed, trying to get some work done now that our baby was down for the night. I didn’t have a clear purpose for sharing my raging anxiety other than the fact he is my best friend, and I like giving him a play-by-play of my life. I wasn’t looking for him to soothe me because I couldn’t be soothed. What was happening was hormonal. Something postpartum moms call the Sundown Scaries. It’s a period each night when dread takes over my body and I pray for the clock to turn to nine so I can go to sleep and escape the terror coursing through my veins.

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At 36 years old, my closest friendships don’t make a lot of sense. Aside from those I’ve accumulated through my husband, my inner circle currently consists of:

A friend I met on the sidewalk during a stand-up open mic.

A friend I worked with as an assistant at a management company in my early twenties.

A friend who started dating a guy on my indie improv team back when I did indie improv.

A friend who I met through my ex-boyfriend and managed to keep after the breakup.

A friend who lives next door to the house I randomly moved into.

A friend I encountered the first week of college because we were in the same rush group and then had no overlap or reason to stay in touch the next four years.

Another friend from college who was my best friend and then real world roommate until we fell out of touch. We only reconnected because we ran into each other at the gym.

None of these people have any connection to each other besides me. There are no regular group hangs or built-in interactions like a shared workspace. Maintaining each of these friendships takes effort, intention, and, aside from my neighbor, long car rides in LA traffic.

I often wonder: why them? Out of all the former best friends and false starts I’ve had throughout my life, why are they the ones who remain my closest friends?

Unfortunately, there isn’t one clear reason like they are all Libras or from the Midwest. Instead, my best attempt at an answer is multifaceted: a combination of luck, timing and personality traits. Factors that are a lot harder to replicate than simply befriending anyone from Ohio, but I still think the throughlines are worth examining.

For starters, the earliest I met any of these people was eighteen with most of them coming into my life in my early to mid-twenties. It’s not a coincidence that I don’t have many relationships from growing up considering my lack of mental stability. It took me a long time to the develop the skills required to maintain healthy friendships. The fact I’ve maintained any friends from college is likely because those friends were never a part of a larger social group like my sorority or improv team. (My participation in both those communities imploded before graduation.)

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To this day, I have never successfully kept a group of friends. Realizing that I do better one-on-one has helped me change my expectations of what my adult friendships will look like. For all my dreams of being in group chats, I’m pretty sure I would find the reality of that kind of constant communication annoying. I’ve also realized that I do not have unlimited energy to expend on friendships. Maybe some people can have twenty people in their best-friend tier but those are probably the people who enjoy group chats.

Knowing I have to prioritize my friendships has caused me to be strategic. Do I really want to spend my energy chasing people who are impossible to make plans with? Is it worth driving across the city for someone who won’t return the favor? While conversational chemistry and being a good hang are crucial, so is reciprocity. I have pulled away from a lot of people I find delightful because they aren’t willing or able to show up in a way that makes the friendship feel worth the investment.

Another factor that is impossible to ignore, even though it’s icky, is that everyone on that list aside from one, is married with kids. This wasn’t the case when we met, but over the years we have lived somewhat parallel lives. And going through similar life events has given us the opportunity to lean on each other for support and guidance. I was able to see a friend across the city more easily the other week because I showed up at nine in the morning. A time of day that would have been unthinkable before we both had babies and nap schedules to consider. We aren’t friends because we are moms, but being moms has made it easier for us to stay friends during a season of life when free time is even more limited.

I should also note that none of these seven friendships have been consistent. Instead, I have weaved in and out of closeness with each of them. I even had a full-blown falling out with one. And another I went years without seeing or speaking to. There have been times when they have each hurt or let me down in some way and I’m sure that experience in mutual. What has made these friendships different than all the other ones I dabbled in is that we keep coming back to each other. We both keep trying.

When I met each of these people there wasn’t a bright sign flashing above their heads that read FRIEND FOR LIFE. In fact, most of the people I initially felt that way about I don’t talk to anymore. Lasting friendships can often be a slow burn. You can’t know for sure who will stick around until you look up and a few decades have passed. But you can look for smaller signs like GOOD LISTENER or WILL TEXT YOU BACK.

The other day, I joked with my best friend about when she was an hour late to brunch because of an issue installing the car seat and I’d had to pass the time pacing up and down unfamiliar city streets. It was something we hadn’t brought up since it happened, and I took a risk mentioning it—even in jest. She then lightheartedly explained to her baby in a high-pitched kid voice that Aunt Allison was very mad that day, but we got past it. We always do, she explained simply.

And I am so grateful.

xoxo,

Allison

P.S. It would mean a lot to me if you hit the like button to increase chances of engagement! Also, if you are able to upgrade to paid subscriber or share my posts with a potential reader, I would be incredibly thankful! Thank you for reading!

When the studio for my podcast, Starter Marriage, asked to have a meeting regarding the future of the show I was surprised. Over the past ten months, the podcast has been a financial flop, making us less than two thousand dollars in almost a year of weekly episodes. I had assumed our producers were just going to cut the cord through my reps and never speak to me again, which is how most of my canceled projects have gone. Once you don’t make executives money or the possibility of money, you cease to exist. But Studio 71 didn’t do that. They dutifully gathered on a Zoom call and tried to strategize a Hail Mary to help get the show new advertisers.

None of us wanted to give up. We believed in the show. We were proud of what we were making. If we could just increase the audience by a few thousand listeners, we might be able to get one or two advertisers to bite and…

It didn’t work. Starter Marriage is officially ending after 44 episodes. I will have to add it to my growing graveyard of failed dreams. Projects that had every opportunity to succeed but didn’t, leaving me to have no one to blame by myself.

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1) In kindergarten, one of my classmates called me a werewolf because of my hairy arms. This kickstarted about two decades of me being ashamed of my body hair. Getting into a daily routine of shaving my arms wasn’t enough to remedy the situation because I was paranoid that if I got cold my goosebumps would shoot fresh hair out of my skin and people would be able to see/feel it. At some point though, the fear that people would find me disgusting because I was prickly no longer consumed my thoughts, and I got over it. I still shave my arms, but now I do it for sensory reasons not social ones and that feels liberating.

2) My college boyfriend of 7 months said that when he thought about his life a year from now, he didn’t see me in it. Shortly after that confession, he dumped me, which sent me into a roughly two-year depression. I saw his rejection of me as proof that I wasn’t lovable, and I held onto that belief until my late twenties. But after a lot of therapy and medication, I realized that I like myself quite a bit. For the first time, I started to find it off-putting when guys didn’t want to be with me. This new self-confidence helped me survive an objectively worse breakup years later (the one where my fiancé walked out on me, never to be seen again).

3) My second nonfiction book was canceled by its original publisher because my editor hated it and said things like “who is this book for?” (All sorts of people, *Lisa!) I immediately lost confidence in my writing due to this shocking turn of events, and I entered a painfully long spiral of questioning my instincts--even after the book sold to another (better) imprint. I only recently clawed my way out of the hole that cancelation threw me into. But it feels great to be back on solid ground and not second guessing all my word choices. (Now I only second guess some of them, which is an important part of the process.)

4) I never got on a UCB improv team despite auditioning year after year and thinking it was the only possible path for me to have a successful career. Each round of auditions and subsequent failure was a huge blow, and I was terrified that my dreams of being a comedian would never amount to anything. I didn’t understand at the time that there were other routes to success besides a cliquey comedy theater. Like, you know, the internet. When I finally decided to stop auditioning and putting my emotional wellbeing in the hands of random comedians all I felt was relief.

5) My best friend stopped wanted to be my friend. To be fair, this has happened several times with different people, but I am referring to my most recent friendship breakup. After being extremely close during our twenties, they slowly pulled away and then snapped the cord completely without a clear explanation. I grieved the loss every single day for years. I worried I would never have that level of platonic intimacy again. Then I ran into a mutual friend and hearing her perspective on this person and what had happened shifted something in me. I slowly started to think about them less and less and now I barely think about them at all.

6) My college improv team kicked me out of the group after three years because I “wasn’t funny.” I know that this seems like too many improv-related incidents for one person, but when you want to be a comedy writer/performer, these things pack a big punch. Plus, they were also my friends, so it was a double (professional and personal) whammy. Thankfully, I somehow didn’t let this devastating insult deter me and I kept pursuing comedy. Even better, I still run into one of the guys from that group on occasion and I no longer feel compelled to scream, JUST SO YOU KNOW PEOPLE LAUGH AT MOST OF MY JOKES!

7) I didn’t have the quintessential high school experience, which caused me to carry around a sense of otherness and a near constant hum of sadness. I longed for the social life portrayed in every teen drama (minus the occasional murder and stints in rehab) and didn’t know how to properly process not having those things. It took a long time for me to realize that thriving as a teen isn’t a prerequisite for thriving as an adult. I might not have had a fun time when I was younger, but I know how to have a fun time now. Or I will again soon once my baby is older and I am not so tired.

It can be hard to see our resilience and adaptability when we are in the thick of the bad, painful thing. I never thought I would get over any of this stuff let alone all of it.

I’m going to return to this list the next time something bad happens to remind myself that, despite how life ending it feels in the moment, I tend to recover from most things.

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Short list of things I have yet to get over:

1) The medical trauma of my knee dislocating in the JKF airport bathroom. I still get scared when my legs feel unstable because having your kneecap move out of place is one of most disgusting feelings in the world and I fear I will remain haunted by the memory as long as I have human legs. (Open to the idea of robotic ones.)

2) My TV show getting canceled in my mid-20’s right before it was about to get greenlit due to the inappropriate actions of one of the actors attached to the project. I was so close to my biggest dream coming true that I think the only way I could ever get over this is if I got to make a different TV show.

3) My mom dying. (Not actually looking to “get over” this. Would prefer to carry my grief with me and stay connected to her for the rest of my life.)

Luckily this list is shorter and not as oppressive to hold.

xoxo,

Allison

*Lisa is not her real name because I am trying to be mature about this whole thing.

P.S. It would mean a lot to me if you hit the like button to increase chances of engagement! Also, if you are able to upgrade to paid subscriber or share my posts with a potential reader, I would be incredibly thankful! Thank you for reading!

The first time I was convinced my dog, Phantom, was dying was right after I lost my mom to a rare disease in the fall of 2024. He has had severe nerve pain since we adopted him, and his quality of life at that time was so terrible I thought we might have to put him down. This cruel twist of fate seemed fitting given the grief-stricken world I was now occupying. But thankfully, my thoughts don’t have magical powers, and we were able to get him on a better cocktail of medication to ease his discomfort. Since then, there have been other downturns in his health that have led me to the same conclusion only to realize later that my concern was unwarranted.

This past Saturday night, however, when I voiced a fear that my best buddy seemed like he was dying, I wasn’t letting my anxiety win. I was right. We found out the next morning that he was in Diabetic ketoacidosis, a life-threatening condition if not immediately treated. We rushed him to the hospital where they also discovered acute pancreatitis. Phantom was at death’s door, and, since he is a dog, he wasn’t even able to tell me.

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