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.

The Things we do ....

For brunch this morning I am having sardines on toast and a raspberry and lime tisane.

Why sardines? In an effort to get Trubs to eat more. She's fine, her eyes are bright, her coat is healthy, the vets can find nothing wrong with her. She's just very very skinny and doesn't eat much.  I worry about her skinniness. One thing that never fails is to give her some of what I'm eating.  So four slices of sardines on toast.  Two bits of toast* sacrificed in an effort to get Trubs to eat the sardines mashed on top of them.  She ate one topping of sardines, so that's progress.

I am also out of my favourite flavoured black teas. So its onto my stock of herbal tisanes.  Anyone know a good place in Perth to get good flavoured teas?  I need a Rose Grey and a Raspberry Black...

Now to shower, housework and then possibly even a stitching blog - because I have been stitching!  Yes for more than one day too!


* Gluten-free toast - aka slightly oversized crouton.

Merry Catmass

We went on a bit of a goose chase today hunting down non-existent plastic bags for a reorganisation of my thread filing system, but on the way home we stopped by our local pet supply store.

We love this store: it has a huge range, very friendly staff and assists local cat and dog rescue associations.

With a sale on, we decided that Christmas has come early for the cats.  They have fresh dry food, new collars, new identity tags, new squishy toys and two pieces of furniture.

One is a tall cat tree (with sisal for scratching and sleeping platforms at a range of heights) and the other is a play box for Abby.

Here is video I shot of Abby's first meeting of the play box.  It has two furry mice dangling from the ceiling inside the box.

Life, the universe etc

So what's been happening lately?

Well first Trubs.  My dear sweet grumpy old lady has had reasons for her grumpiness.  She went under anaesthetic the other day and had X-rays taken.  She has arthritis in her elbows.  Said arthritis is actually *worse* that the arthritis in her knee joints that we have been treating for the last couple of years.

While she was under they took various blood tests, cleaned her teeth and did everything they could think of that would need doing sometime in the next little while so they wouldn't have to put her under again.  Apparently this is a very risky procedure for cats of her age and they don't want to do it more times than necessary.

She is now on an oral liquid pain killer each evening.  And will be until the temperatures warm up.  After that we can administer it on an "as needs" basis.  We are also giving her Cartrophen booster injections every three months instead of just the yearly set she had been getting. 

We are also looking into heat pads for her basket such as this and adding more fish oil and possibly glucosamine into her diet.  As she is only 14 years old, the vet says the arthritis will move into her feet and toe joints as time goes on, so we are looking at long term strategies to help her cope.

Just having the oral painkillers on a daily basis is definitely helping.  She was moving more freely in the sunshine this afternoon and is much less grumpy towards us and Abby so we think she must have been in considerable pain this winter.

I'm very glad we changed vets :) This one has a much more sympathetic outlook on long term management whereas the previous vets were just, well we've given her the yearly shots, you should expect elderly cats to have aches and pains!

We spent this afternoon out in the warm sun with both Trouble and Abby playing in the overgrown backyard.  Stephen took some photos which have been uploaded to his flickr account here.

Abby is growing well and is at times a little terror and at other times is a poster kitten for adorableness.  She is at various times named Abby, Polly, Insane Attack Kitteh, Psycho Kitteh .....  See Stephen's pics, she is growing up so fast :)


In other news, I've not been looking after myself the way I should and my weight has ballooned out to nearly 100kg (216 lbs).  Before I moved to Western Australia I had dropped my weight to 83kg (183 lbs).  I've also been a bit too lax on the gluten front.  Stephen eats a lot of gluten containing products in his daily intake (as normal people do) and I've been adding in "just a bite" here and there too many times.  This culminated in a massive digestive attack while we were out a restaurant last night and may also explain the dry scaly patches and rosacea on my face and neck since moving here.

To test this out, I'm going completely and utterly strictly gluten-free for the month of August and see if it improves overall energy, happiness levels, weight management and skin health.

No other news to report. We're getting along OK here and finally slowly settling into routines so things should start looking up sometime soon.

Cat Photos by Mr S

My nearest and dearest took these photos of our lovely two cats :)

Photos taken: 7-21 June 2009.

Interesting weekend

Well Abby has now joined the family.  She is totally fearless and as you can see, Trubs is keeping her distance but there's no outright hostility.  As soon as they agree on their boundaries and personal spots I think it should all work out fine.

Personally I think Abby should have been renamed Polly.  She loves sitting on my shoulder while I type or stitch.

Speaking of which, this weekend I also finished Part 3 of Vienna Ball.  I haven't included the beads or treasures.  I learned from Mystery IX and will leave them to the very last.

And that's the update :)  Off to open Mariann's RR and start it.

Not getting much stitching done lately

I wonder why ???

And that's not including the excess of heat and the surfeit of cricket .....

IT'S DONE !!!!!

Its done Its done It"s DONE !!!!!!

I have my first finish for the year and I can't show a picture.

The very final panel of BoInk is not a difficult stitch but for some reason I had an infestation of Cane Toads!

It is however, after three discs of Farscape Season 1 episodes, finished which therefore makes the whole project DONE!!!!

{happy sigh} Now a spot of dinner and then Farscape Season 1 disc 4 while I go back to starting my RR.

Picture here is Trubs curled up on said RR with a my Chibithulu and Cricket Bear ... Yes I love my plushies, (especially my men) ....

Happy Cat

Taken about an hour ago on 2 January 2009.

One happy cat.

Awwww ......

I finally get off the computer and this is what I see when I step out onto my balcony (this is the untidy end near my bedroom and neighbours that I rarely photograph).


And the close up ......