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wSpring Tide |
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The tandem pull of the sun and the moon
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wSaturday, October 04, 2003 |
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A clanner remarked to me yesterday "so you DO still blog" or words to that effect. Yeah, I do. I replied that at least I didn't write a post apologizing for not posting. and I'm not going to do that. 'Nuff said.
I have a horrible cold right now, in the chest. Thank gaia for "wellness formula" by "Source Naturals." Its these huge horse pills of vitamins and herbs. I swear it lessens the really sick n crummy time of any cold. I left work early yesterday before I was done cuz I felt so lousy... like someone had taken a rake to my upper trachea after beating me with a 2x4 across the back and shoulders. Today I'm better and today I go back to work to finish up some things. I have to get a test set up today and prepare some things so another analyst can report my data on Monday when I'm not there. The nice thing about Saturdays, of course, is that I can go in whenever the heck I feel like it. So its been a lazy morning of a lil clanning and plenty of coffee chased by juice.
(how's that for a poorly constructed paragraph?)
Gretchen is napping in the sun. Since her cancer surgery last spring, she's really aged. She looks like an older kitty now. The vet keeps bugging me to do diagnostics to see if the cancer has spread. But I'm not going to do that. I made the decision last spring after the surgery that I wouldn't put her through radiation or any further invasive procedures. She's a 17 year old kitty and these are the things that happen to old cats. The radiation treatment was $3200 and she would have had to stay at the vets for 3 weeks. If you take them home, I'm told they can't sleep with you and you have to treat their waste as hazardous. Even if I had a door on my bedroom, keeping Gretch from sleeping with me would have stressed her out. And keeping her at the vet for 3 weeks would have depressed her. I know my cat. Plus, in spite of the hopeful tidbits the vet dropped about the efficacy of radiation in this kind of cancer (adenocarcinoma), my own research didn't show it to be that hopeful. The prognosis range I found was survival 217 to 576 days after the treatment. So I decided no more treatment.
I'm kind of unhappy with the vet... when I take her in, I always leave feeling like I'm some kind of bad kitty mom. But I remind myself that she didn't get to be 17 because I'm a bad cat mom. So I struggle with the guilt from time to time and try to keep reminding myself I'm doing the right thing.
She keeps having cystitus though... and the vet always gives me that look and says "its probably the cancer and we should do an MRI." To which I reply "then what? She's 17. I'm not going to put her through any stressful procedures at her age." Then he stutters something about radiation not being stressful.
sigh. impasse. I need to find a new vet. I'm going to wait until Gretchen passes though.
I know its going to happen this year, and that's hard.
Something that bugs me though... McKinley got tongue cancer (and died) ... she got salivary gland cancer... makes me wonder. We're all, as pet owners, told to control their fleas... because the fleas carry tapeworm and bug the hell out of the pet. So we're given these drops like frontline or advantage and told to dose the skin. These remedies work by spreading something toxic to fleas through the skin. Flea bites the pet and dies. But then I got two pets who've had cancers of the mouth region. And the vet tells me these cancers have become quite prevalent. It makes me wonder.
I only dose one of my cats now... Annie Laurie gets terrible dermititus from fleas. She never saw a flea for the 2 years my mom had her. so I go ahead and give her the drug to save her from being a scabbed up lil kitty. And hope my gut fear about the drug is wrong.
Well.. time for this bad cat mom to go to work ;)
posted by
Just Mary at 1:57 PM
2 comments
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wThursday, October 02, 2003 |
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I really hate getting home so late from work. I work "swing" at the lab, ostensibly 2-10pm. But my job seems to take 50 or more hours a week, so getting home at 1am, isn't unusual with my hour long each way commute. Tonight, for example, I got home at 1:30am.
Oof.
I can't just come home from work and go to sleep, so I hang out.. talk to friends in Clanlord, coin a bit, mebbe hunt. I read various things on the Internet such as the WELL, blogs and Clanlord related sites. But it means I'm kind of solitary, except for the people I see at work. Weekends I seem to spend catching up on stuff and recovering from work... last couple of weeks, my Fridays have been hellish, keeping me at work until 2-4am.
Things aren't so great in lab-land... money has been lost and we've had some layoffs. Yesterday they announced that the staff of all three labs in northern california were being placed on a mandatory 4 day work week (32 hours.) We can apply for a job sharing program and get unemployment for those 8 hours.. trick is, we can't work any overtime.
Yeah. Right.
What this means for me, is I'm going to have to work more 10+ hour days to get my stuff done, particularly since my test load seems to be picking up. I expect I'll see more 12 hour days. I don't know where the cost savings on my pay is going to come from, but I anticipate smaller paychecks.
Mooo.
Good news is, I have Mondays off. Hooray! Three day weekends! I'm kinda glad about that. Hopefully, I'll even use the time productively to like, get more of a life.
The old Marymobile is finally on its way out the door. In spite of all those ads I saw in the paper "donate your car to us! we'll take anything!" I've had a hell of a time finding someone to take the car. However, I finally called the Polly Klaas Foundation, and they're hauling it off tomorrow. Before I go to sleep tonight, I'm going to take off the license plate border on the old car and transfer it to the new one.
I can't handle the excitement...
posted by
Just Mary at 4:13 AM
5 comments
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