Saturday, May 10, 2008

the wee hours

While Leigh-Ann is Away, One or More Cats Must Need Veterinary Care - That is an established rule

Leigh-Ann left to visit her family in Canada on Tuesday night.  I proceeded to collapse from severe fatigue for about 48 hours, only getting up to feed and clean up after the pets.  Carlo had chewed up a ring from a milk jug, a toy that he and Bunny looooove.  Unfortunately, Carlo can’t seem to stop himself from chewing on them and we thought he swallowed a small piece because he had a bit of diarrhea before Leigh-Ann left.  Naturally, when I’m home alone with him, you just know he’s not going to get better.  That violates “the rule”.  On Thursday afternoon, I took Carlo to the vet so he could get some bland food and to make sure he didn’t sneak anything else.  He’s been known to scavenge in the bird room and the parrots, while normally just totally messy eaters, also seem to occasionally think it’s fun to throw pellets down to the cats.  The cats love it.  However, Carlo has had terrible IBD since he was tiny.  He had constant diarrhea and horrible body rippling stomach cramps until we finally tried a raw diet of Wild Kitty cat food.  Just like that, his diarrhea cleared up and he started to thrive again.  We thought we were going to lose him because he didn’t seem to be able to keep in any nutrition.  Okay, so we’ve established that Carlo has sensitive bowels, right?  Dropping him off at the vet, while making me feel like the world’s worst mom (he was shaking, he was so scared), I knew that he would get better and all would be well in the Wee Paws animal kingdom finally.  Right?  RIGHT?!

WRONG!  After Carlo was gone, I noticed that someone else had diarrhea.  Not all that easy to diagnose when it could be any one of a number of cats.  But, right away, I saw TJ poop a little puddle.  Okay, so TJ wasn’t feeling well.  Hmmm, that’s weird, because Carlo’s diarrhea was caused by eating a piece of plastic, which clearly isn’t contagious.  Ha!  He fooled us all.  Okay, we really don’t know for sure what’s going on with Carlo because they gave him some meds to stop the diarrhea and he’s not really eating because he’s scared, so they haven’t been able to get a stool sample.  Now, back to TJ.  I was walking down the upstairs hallway, going past the litter box in the guest bathroom when I saw Derek in the box, having explosive diarrhea.  Oh man… That’s two more and neither of them eat plastic (TJ has a thing for string - he spent the night at the vet last year after eating a three foot long piece of string), so it’s probably stress because their main mom is gone.  Leigh-Ann takes on the majority of work when it comes to the cats.  I take care of the two little dogs - feeding, pilling, cleaning up after, etc.  She takes care of the two big dogs.  She also does the feedings for the cats.  I guess our deal was that if she wanted to rescue a bunch of cats, she was going to be responsible for their care.  I’m responsible for their playtime.  I’m like the weekend father who takes the kids to amusement parks and buys them video games.  I like to see them play with new toys (or, I take the orange plastic rings off the Gatorade bottles for them, which makes them just as happy as if they got an expensive toy...oh, and the Gatorade rings are safer for Carlo because they’re thicker and the inside has jagged edges that aren’t fun to chew) or cuddle in new beds.  Hmm, where was I?  Oh, maybe it’s stress and the cats will get better in a few hours, right?  RIGHT?

WRONG!  I took a sample of the diarrhea to the vet’s office when I went to go visit Carlo.  The poor little guy is still so scared.  He wouldn’t even eat with me there.  He only wanted to squirm behind my back (they have a room with a couch) and cuddle/hide.  At least he wasn’t shaking.  If we were at home, we would’ve had a lovely nap - Carlo is an excellent cuddler.  I couldn’t stay there for too long because I needed to go to the grocery store for pumpkin (it’s supposed to help firm up their poop and that would be great!) and then get home to feed everyone.  Carlo was so nervous that he was shedding like nobody’s business and it felt like I had half of his coat on me.  So, I was rooting around in the car for the roller to get the hair off me.  One of the techs saw that I was still there and came outside to give me the news.  The cats have some bacteria crud (it’s been a blur, I’ll fill in the technical details later on today - they have Clostridium perfringens) and it’s very very contagious.  The vet said that I needed to empty out all of the litter boxes, wash them with bleach, and fill them up with new litter.  That’s all fine & dandy in most households, not a big deal.  Well, not too big a deal.  However, we have 7 litter boxes, and only one of them is actually a litter box and is kind of small.  The others are big plastic containers you find at Target, so you can store your crap...but not your literal crap, like we use them.  They’re very large and they use up a lot of litter.  We have coupons for a certain kind of litter that we like, so buying the litter wasn’t the problem.  Remember that little back surgery issue I had?  Well, I try to avoid carrying 40lb bags of cat litter around the house.  I think my back surgeon would approve of that.  However, I’m home alone and there’s no one to help.  I don’t think I’ll ever forgive Matt & Amy for moving away, especially when I need Matt to be the man around the house.  I miss them for other reasons, but I admit, I liked having a strong young man living next door.

I tried to save myself a bit of work by buying a new litter box for the epicenter of the infection.  We needed one with higher sides anyway.  I bought two others because I figured I deserved a break.  Plus, I thought that replacing the three most infected boxes would be a good start to cleaning up.  I’m so tired though and I’m not sure if I’m going to be able to move for the next few days, but I still have more boxes to clean.  I hope I’m not dooming myself to a steady stream of cats getting diarrhea because I didn’t immediately zoom around the house and clean up all the boxes.  I have the worst three done (I scrubbed one of them, so I still have a new one to replace one of the others, yay!), so I’m hoping that’s most important.  Oh wait, and there’s even more to this whole episode.  They wanted to know all of the cats’ weights because I’m going to have to give them liquid meds twice a day.  So, I weighed myself (I think I’ve lost five pounds since Leigh-Ann left) and then I went around picking up cats and standing on the scale.  They looked at me like I was nuts.  Some did worse than look, they squirmed and clawed to get away.  I didn’t even attempt to pick up Chelsea (she’s not fond of that sort of behavior) or Dobby.  There’s no way I’ll be able to catch Dobby twice a day to give her meds.  Most days she won’t even let me pet her, much less scoop her up for unpleasantries.  I haven’t witnessed any diarrhea from her and I’m hoping it stays that way.  I have been able to get them all to eat some pumpkin mixed into their food and they don’t seem to mind it.  Hopefully that will help things until I get the meds tomorrow.

I’m grateful that even though this really really REALLY sucks, we have an awesome vet’s office and I have at least two volunteers who said that they would come over to help me medicate the cats.  I’ll try it for a day on my own.  I’m not sure it’ll be any easier to catch the cats to hand them off to someone else to medicate than to just try doing it myself.  I can pretty guarantee that there won’t be 100% compliance amongst the beasts, but maybe if I can keep up with the sick ones, the others won’t need as much medicine.

And what do you have planned for YOUR weekend? I’d better go finish up the other litter boxes.  Also, I taped the Penguins/Rangers game, so I’ll take a peek at that before the score is unavoidable.

By the way, I apologize for how my story bounces around in a babbling sort of way.  I’ve had an extremely long 48 hours and I’m not thinking overly clearly.

Friday, April 11, 2008

the wee hours

R.I.P., Tiny Dino

My first pet that wasn’t a whole family pet (or a hamster that lived less than two years - ChiChi, you won’t ever be forgotten, but you bit hard and you peed in your little travel ball and you escaped and pooped in my closet) died yesterday.  He wasn’t mine, he was my ex’s (adopted from a shelter - jerks abused him, then gave up that adorable year old puppy), but he loved me best for five years (he really didn’t, but I was a stay-at-home mom, a doggie au pair, for a little while when I first moved to Pacifica & San Francisco, so I could spoil him and steal his love), so I get to claim him as a child.  He had a good long life (he was 16) and he enjoyed a variety of things - barking at children on skateboards, plastic bags flapping in the wind, people in wheelchairs, bicyclists, fireworks, thunder, Conures (especially Julius & Ethel, but he was happy to expand his bird annoyance to Blackjack, Keno, and Bubbe too), eating his beloved Mighty Dog (now the dogs eat Honest Kitchen, which is so much more San Francisco-y, but he adored MD), Frosty Paws (he loved it so much, he ate the whole container...then threw it up), picking up his pee-mail, and laying on the bed.  He also really really loved his very first stuffed bear.  He carried it around lovingly for over a year, before he ripped its fluffy guts out and flung them all over the floor.  Every stuffed toy after that was destroyed within weeks - first, he killed the squeaker, then he managed to make it look like it had snowed in the apartment.  Later in his life, he would carry his stuffed toys on his walks.  I’m sorry I missed his gentle senior years, where he got to enjoy having a back yard, living with a bunch o’ Pomeranians, and being deaf, which made his life and everyone’s around him a lot more peaceful.  He got in a lot of barking in his early years.

In San Francisco, we had neighbors who had a baby girl and one of her first words was “Maxth!” She said it with such joy.  Ingrid was always happy to see Max when we met her and her British nanny (heh, we lived in Noe Valley, in San Francisco, where every house was worth over a million bucks) on their walks.  I don’t think Maxth! even barked at Ingrid, which proved that he could love at least one child.  Oh wait, I forgot how much he loved one of his mom’s nephews.  He thought Ricky was the bee’s knees...in a very embarrassing, but hilarious, way.

It’s been a really lousy couple of years, but it’s been an especially lousy last few months with the foreclosure business.  I’d really hoped that things were improving and each new bad thing seems magnified.  For some reason, I expected Max to live forever, so I was a bit shocked (but really shouldn’t have been) to hear that he’d died.  Luckily, he went quickly at home and didn’t suffer at all.  He had a good life.  It’s not often that a little dog gets to live out his dreams of being a dinosaur.  We spiked his fur to give him a tiny dino-like appearance occasionally, hence the nickname, The Tiny Dino.  Hey, we were lesbians in San Francisco, where you don’t “own” a pet, you’re their “guardian”.  So, we were Max’s guardians.  We home-schooled him because you just can’t trust public schools these days.  He socialized with the other beasts (he can hang out with Cindy again - a Yorkie who lived to be about 23, I think) on the street, so he didn’t lose out on social contact by not attending the neighborhood doggie daycare.  Bah, I’m rambling.  I’ll miss Little Max.  He was a good guy and I have lots of great memories of spending time with him.  He’s survived by his mom & siblings, and his favorite aunts & uncles that he met in San Francisco.  No one who met him ever forgot him - he had a unique charm that is difficult to put into words.  So, I shall finally stop.  Rest in peace, little barky dude.

Wednesday, March 26, 2008

the wee hours

The Death of “The Return of Jezebel James”

I missed the first episode (I figured I’d download it later and I knew it wouldn’t matter since they changed a bunch of stuff going into the second epi), but caught the second one...and just absolutely LOATHED it. I thought it was terrible. It was like AS-P only had GG in her and she was going to try to force it on two actresses who just weren’t right doing it. Every time Parker Posey said, “Coco” with that weird pronunciation of hers, I wanted to scream. It sounded pretentious and forced.  “Lorelai” would said “Coco” in that forced way only to make fun of her mother’s friends in the DAR.

I don’t know who to blame the failure on, except that Parker Posey and Lauren Ambrose have been good in everything else they’ve done. In fact, Lauren Ambrose was even okay in this, considering what she had to work with.  Do we blame the Gilmore Girls’ rapid-fire chatter that should only be done by Lauren Graham and to a lesser extent, Alexis Bledel?  The horrendous laugh track?  The farfetched storyline?  The laugh track has worked on other good shows and there have been more farfetched storylines, so it must be the GG chatter.

I was actually embarrassed for Amy Sherman Palladino, the show was that bad. I’m relieved that the show was put out of its misery, so I didn’t have to watch it out of a sense of loyalty, because I truly hated it.  Leigh-Ann hated it, too. We could both tell that we would hate it from the moment Parker Posey started talking in Gilmore-speak, which was from the first sentence out of her mouth. Since the review mentioned that the second show fixed some things that were wrong with the first, I can’t even imagine how much I would’ve hated the first. It’s hard to imagine it could’ve been worse.

So, now that you know that I hated it. How did you feel?

Wednesday, February 06, 2008

terribly early in the morning

If it’s not one thing, it’s another

My cold has finally almost completely gone away.  Now, I have gigantic water retention foot paws (what I imagine chubby bear cub paws would look like without hair), my fingertips are dried out, sore, cracked and bleeding, and hurt like hell (I’d never even contemplated such a thing, and then my mom mentions a couple of weeks ago that she has one fingertip that’s cracked...and now both thumbs have really sore cracks - ugh, the power of suggestion.  When I met Leigh-Ann, I’d never heard of reflux, and now I need a prescription strength drug for it - I’d also never heard of Fibromyalgia, and we know how that turned out too) and one of my big toes is starting to crack too.  Tonight, I’m slathering some pet groomer’s hand lotion (Leigh-Ann got it for me for Chrismukkah because I’d loved a sample of it that we got a SuperZoo) on and wearing gloves to bed.  My toe will get some Neosporin and a bandage.

I’m not even sure if the cracked & painful fingertips are the worst thing.  While I enjoy a good whine-fest, it’s now getting to be a bit much, even for me.  However, stuff keeps happening.  I’ll start with one more physical thing, then move on to a financial thing.  I’ve suddenly turn into a narcoleptic.  I’ve been taking Lyrica again for the past five weeks, and I’m now up to the dosage recommended for Fibromyalgia treatment.  I’ve fallen asleep on the couch, while watching tv, which isn’t overly unusual.  I’ve fallen asleep sitting at my desk, which is more unusual.  Today, I fell asleep on the toilet...for THREE HOURS.  Just now, I remembered that I didn’t even do anything, which I guess if you’re going to fall asleep in there, is for the best.  I’ve already had some water retention problems from the Lyrica, but falling asleep at my desk and ON THE TOILET, have given me club feet.  I no longer have any ankle bones.  But hey, looking on the bright side, it’s much easier to shave around my ankles and not miss any spots around the bones, because now everything is all smooth and my foot goes directly from foot to leg, without any sort of indentation.

Now, for the financial thing - last year I exceeded my pharmacy benefits at the end of March.  This year, at the end of January.  Yes, that’s right, I had one month of pharmacy benefits.  I’d wanted to try Fentanyl patches for pain medication that won’t have me on that up & down rollercoaster of pain/pain relief/pain/pain relief.  They’re more expensive than the Oxycodone pain meds I’ve been taking, which is why I waited until January to try them, so I wouldn’t have to pay for them.  For breakthrough pain (when you’re taking a long-term pain med, you usually get a prescription for short acting pain med for those times when you get sudden acute pain that the patch can’t handle), I was given liquid Oxycodone (OxyFast), so it would work faster.  I was able to get the generic, so it only cost me $10.  If I had paid cash, it would’ve cost $425.  I didn’t find that it worked that much better than the pills, so I went back to pills this month.  Good thing, because my pharmacy benefits are G-O-N-E.  That’s right, everything from now on, will not be covered.  I had to pay $125 for the Oxycodone, which I suppose is better than $425 for the OxyFast. Heh.  Also, I thought the Fentanyl patches worked pretty well, except for the slight skin rashes, but I thought that a slightly higher dose would work better.  I figured the higher dose would help me cut down on Oxycodone, so I went up 25 micrograms.  They had to special order the better generic (yes, it’s true, all generics are not created equally - ask any person who is in chronic pain...or any drug addict, hahaha), which will be delivered tomorrow.  Last month, I had to pay $10 for what was about $225 for the generic.  For the higher dose, it’s $285.  Um, I don’t have $285 to spend on a patch right now.  Ugh, if I want to take what I’ve been taking for the past month (We’re seeing a new doctor in the same practice because our doctor thought we’d be a better match with this doctor, as he’s willing to try newer meds and off-label uses - this doctor isn’t accepting any new patients because he’s full...he’s the head specialist guy, the owner of the practice, who we originally wanted to see, but couldn’t get an appointment for, and we like him very very much), what was $55 out of pocket, will now be $560.  If I got exactly what I had last month, it would be $915, which doesn’t even include the reflux med that works best for me.  I’ve been either using Zantac, Prilosec, or Pepcid - Protonix is the only med that really works well, and it’s another $115 a month.

I’m going to call my insurance company and see if I could get on another plan.  I just got an increase in my old rate (of only about $15 to $185), what’s a few hundred dollars more.  Actually, if I paid $300 more for my plan, I’d probably end up being way ahead, especially if I could get more co-pays.  I only get two a year, and we have to see our doctor once a month, at $95/each, because they supposedly need to keep an eye on us, and because of the meds we’re taking, we have to see him once a month to get the written prescriptions.  They don’t allow refillls for Schedule II meds.

So, if someone robs a bank on Thursday morning, and I come home with my meds on Thursday night, mum’s the word, okay?  I’d do the same for you.  Well, unless there was a big reward, then I’d turn you in, so I could buy my meds.  I’d spend the money getting you a good lawyer too.  Really, I swear.

I apologize for the rambly nature of this entry.  It’s 4:54am, and we’re just lucky that I haven’t fallen asleep while writing this, I think.  I’m going to go slather my fingers & toes with lotion now.  I hope you all are doing well.  I’m a little behind on reading blogs too, but I try to keep up with you as much as I can.  I miss visiting you regularly, every single day.  Wait, I’ll leave you with one good thing happening in my life.  The length of three football fields away, a CUPCAKE bakery is opening - Retro Bakery.  That’s right, a CUPCAKE bakery.  Not only does it have cupcakes, it has a cool retro theme and a cool owner who blogs.  So, if you’re in Las Vegas and you’re craving some cupcakes, check out Retro Bakery in Centennial Hills.  Look out for the vicious dogs three football fields away - their owners don’t like visitors, and one of them is especially cranky because her fingertips hurt.  Make sure you go directly to the bakery.

Monday, January 14, 2008

mid-morning

I Miss My Tastebuds

This cold stinks, man.  I haven’t been able to taste anything for two days now and it’s driving me crazy.  All I can discern is spicy, sweet, salty, etc.  On one hand, it’s good because I can’t taste any of the crappy cold meds I’m taking, but on the other hand, I miss tasting food.  Okay, fine, I can’t breathe and I have a horrible phlegmy cough, but it’s not fair that the joys of Gatorade and matzo ball soup have been taken from me.  I protest!