Trubs Update

Just received a phone call from the vets with Trubs blood test results.

She does have kidney disease but it is in the early stages. All her major organs are working fine and her blood work is good.  She does seem to have a gastro-intestinal issues as she is intermittently bringing up bile.

So we are going to try her on a soft food specially formulated for kidney disease. If she will eat it, it will help slow the progress of the kidney problems and be easier to digest so hopefully less vomiting.

The vet recommended an endoscopy might be useful if the vomiting becomes frequent rather than intermittent.

So things to do:

• Stop using the arthritis pain medications (summer soon)
  
• Try more soft food in her diet instead of the kibble (difficult)
• Monitor progress - if vomiting bile resumes, then endoscopy (expensive)
  
• Repeat all tests in 12 months time (can budget for with annual vaccinations)
  
• Give lots of love and cuddles
  

Another whiny rant :)

The Good
A couple of weeks ago I was asked to run a Web 2.0 course for all library staff before the end of the year. Most other States in Australia ran these courses back in 2007,  But not Western Australia. So my work has decided to go it alone and gave me eight hours to put a program together.

I looked at what other placed had done, field-stripped their courses and assembled a 10 week package of Web 2.0 Basics with the really fun stuff to follow in a subsequent course next year. With the assistance of Mark (the eservices coordinator aka web guy at my work) it went live two days later.

You can see it here at: http://swanlibraries.blogspot.com/  If you are interested feel free to play along - you just wont be eligible for the prizes :)

I also sent a report to the State-wide Public Library eServices Working Committee explaining what we're doing, why we are doing it, why we are doing it this way, when we are doing it, a link to the course itself and a explanations of our measurements for success.

The PLWA committee rang me Friday afternoon and asked if I would allow them to copy my work and send out it State-wide in two weeks time.  Some negotiations were had with my managementwitht e result that Mark will be will be opening up our course state-wide tomorrow and I will alter the content appropriately on Wednesday.  I've also been asked if I would be a consultant to a couple of state-wide committees.

Which will all look good on the resume.  Especially as all of this has been in my own part-time work hours and around my usual work.  With a migraine.

The Bad
I have named my migraine Bruce in honour of Bruce Banner, Unfortunately Bruce has been getting too agitated lately* and has turned into the Hulk for the last couple of weeks. So I've been working with the lights off at work, wearing sunglasses and wincing every time someone laughs,  I also average 5 hours a week out with the customers.

I'm back to having broken sleep because the pain wakes me after an hour or so. The other morning I fled to work within 15 mins of walking up because the next door neighbours had their bathroom exhaust fan on, and the sound was making me scream. My short-term memory is so shot I can't tell you what I had for breakfast without looking at the utensils in the sink (and its only 8:31am here). In short its as bad as it has ever been.  My doc has also been off work ill so I can't get in to see her for another fortnight to change the medications I'm on.

I know that stress is a trigger or at least an amplifier for the migraine, and I've recently established that caffeine is another trigger**. I would still have expected the medications to be countering these negative influences, not have the whole mess spiral back into what it was earlier in the year.

The Ugly
Trubs has been diagnosed with kidney disease.  I had to fight the vets every inch of the way to get them to test for it, but yes it came back positive. I'm taking her in this week for the associated blood test to see how advanced it is.  Either way kidney disease is not curable or reversible so we are talking quality of life from here on in.

When I let loose on the vets for not agreeing to perform the tests earlier, they said they didn't like to perform kidney function tests because most people, on hearing the results, put their pets down. Well geez you fuckwits, if you administered the tests earlier maybe other responsible owners would have the knowledge to help their pets before it became too advanced!  Apparently not. Apparently treatments are considered too expensive and too traumatic for the owners so 99% to opt to euthanize their pets immediately.

Treatment seems to consist of changing Trubs to a low protein, low phosphorus diet and taking a pill every day.  From what I understand this reduces pressure on the kidney and reduce the build-up of toxins int he blood, dementia, glaucoma etc.  I say "from what I understand" because I've done all of this research on my own. The Vets haven't treated any cats with kidney disease because of the afore-mentioned immediate euthanizing.  They do have a dog patient who has had kidney disease for seven years and is now dying of cancer, but no cats.

So I'm also looking for a different veterinarian clinic, one with a bit more understanding of these specialist needs ... or perhaps its another case where the locals think differently than I do.


So to sum up ... I'm frustrated!

• I'm frustrated that I live in a State where all major decisions get briefly discussed a s a good idea or passed over once every eight-week meeting and then they pounce when someone actually does something. God forbid anyone local should actually use initiative.
• I'm frustrated that my work management are finding so many ways to capitalise on the work I'm doing, but they wont pay me an extra hours to actually do it well.
• I'm frustrated that my ex-supervisor is speaking to HR about all the tiniest facets of all the other parts of my job that I'm not getting to, in an effort to get me performance-managed out of the organisation,
• I am frustrated that my health is deteriorating and I don't know how to stop it.
• I'm frustrated that Trubs is dying and I don't know what I can do to make her pain less. I don't know what to do to give her good palliative care.

I just don't know what to do and right now I am not finding any support/advice in the areas I need it.

And I swear to God, if the next-door neighbour doesn't finish whipper-snipping soon - I'm going after him with an axe!

If the Police ask, this blog post doesn't exist :)



* maybe something to do with trying to run a state-wide training course, an internal training course, setting up two other training courses for next next month, all the cataloguing, setting guidelines for good cataloguing practice, training complete novices into the art of good cataloguing and completely re-writing the 200 page work manual for all facets of work in the library pending our software change in November - all in 20 hours per week.

** I don't drink caffeine regularly so this came as a bit of a surprise. I have the rare iced coffee milk or Coke about one every couple of months, so this one was actually hard to pin down.

Julie's Round Robin

Julie's Round Robin is Alchemical Romance by Inkcircles.

As you can see she has changed the background quite considerably.  She has also asked us to use whatever floss we feel best fits each alchemical symbol. Julie asked me to work the middle to allow everyone that comes after me the widest possible choice :)

This was so much fun to work on!

The middle nine symbols are all varying symbols for gold. So I took the project to Colours Down Under where Janine, Kathy and I played floss toss with just about every gold shade of floss in the shop :)

I wanted a variety of shades of gold: yellow gold, white gold rose gold etc.  I wanted a variety of matt vs shiny threads and I wanted a variety of textures - metallics, silks, cotton and wool.

Janine and Kathy put their considerable colour-matching skills to work and selected the shades that work best together.

So the threads used (left to right, top to bottom) are:

Top Row:
Rainbow Galley Petite Braid 01 Bright Gold
Gentle Art Simply Wool 0420-W Gold Leaf
Rainbow Galley Petite Braid 37 Dark Antique Gold

Middle Row:
Madeira Silk 2208
Kreinik Cord 102C Vatican Gold
Thread Gatherer Silk 'n Colours SNC 175 Straw into Gold

Bottom Row:
Rainbow Gallery Tiara T119 Peach
Gentle Art Sampler Threads 0420 Gold Leaf
Rainbow Gallery Tiara T118 Gold

The Tiara thread was quite thick, as its used in needlepoint, not counted cross stitch. The Kreinik Cord, although I used two strands, was quite thin and may need to be re-done with three or four threads or perhaps back-stitched.

Either way, I feel I've achieved my range of colours, faceting and textures that I was aiming for.

This project is now winging its way to Sisu.

Round Robin - time to move on ...

It is September, time to send those Round Robins on (if you haven't done so already) :)

I believe we have Laura joining us now so the rotation is:

Mariann -- Rosanne -- Kay -- Julie -- Mel -- Sisu -- Laura

Is this correct?

I finished off my part of Julie's RR last weekend and posted it onto to Sisu on Friday.  Julie's ideas on Alchemical Romance are lots of fun.  I admit I spent far more time choosing floss and doing floss tosses than I did actual stitching!

I'll write more when I can get my freaking laptop and my freaking camera to freaking talk to each other {pant, pant}. And I will have some photos to share.

So how's everyone else going with their first round?

Some days it doesn't pay to bite through the restraints

After a few months of migraine-induced depression and apathy I finally decided recently to get my act together.

• I have created a budget that will see me debt free by end of October 2011.
• I am controlling my eating habits rather than cravings controlling me
• I am actively looking for ways to get fit that wont worsen the migraine
• I've decided to de-clutter physically and electronically
  

Exercise:
Anything that gets the blood pumping makes the migraine explode. For days.  So does any music with a good beat, And sunlight,

I'm walking around the property for 30-40 mins whenever I'm home around dusk on the theory that something is better than nothing. If anyone has other suggestions, please let me know. This inability to do anything physical is frustrating the hell out of me.

De-cluttering:
I work best by setting myself small goals and measuring progress. Setting down a series of steps/milestones and then focusing on achieving them.  I have no idea how to do this over the next 12 months because the de-cluttering is such a massive undertaking,

So decided to start at my desk. A while ago Stephen and I set up Evernote to keep electronic clutter at bay; and turn paper clutter into electronic files. I finally get around to setting up the docking station so very kindly supplied for my new laptop and discover it don't fit :)  My fault for not providing the model number to my kind benefactor (or attempting to use it before now).

Oh well I have found the installation/driver discs for all of my peripherals (printers, scanner, camera etc).  After four and half very frustrating hours, I discover none of them will work with a 64x machine running Windows 7.

After downloading driver updates, viewing microsoft help pages, Canon support pages and various forums I have discovered that although Canon are slowly updating the software for their older machines to run on Windows 7, they are not planning on updating them for use in a 64x machine.

So I have documents waiting to be scanned and photos of my stitching waiting to be downloaded and I have to show for 4.5 hours today is a mounting sense of frustration and a full-blown migraine,

And now its time to get dressed and head to work for the afternoon.

I wanted to send out a happy "progress is being made" post today, and pics of my stitching but instead all I feel is mounting sense of uselessness and frustration at myself.