Der Feuervogel aufersteht.

So, a few weeks ago I was talking with my roommate about the downstairs neighbors who basically always yell or scream at each other. I'd come back from outside and their fighting echoed in the stairwell, which was a bit more than usual. Apparently people have called the police about them on occasion for being so loud. This is Germany, so it could have been someone grumpy about the Ruhezeit being disturbed (10 pm to 7 am, and also 1-3 pm, and all day Sunday) or it could have been legitimate concern for someone's well-being. You never know.

Anyway, she told me they have a daughter and a cat, and I mentioned that I'd seen a cat outside one time, a very sweet, soft calico and I love cats. She said if I wanted to get a cat, she'd be okay with it going in the whole apartment except her room. (Her partner is slightly allergic, so she'd like him to have a no-cat room when he's here.) Then of course my brain went on a journey of "CAT CAT CAAAAAAT" and I looked to see if I could foster for a rescue organization or anything like that. (That's not as much of a thing here as in the US.)

So I looked into adoption. I already knew that the main animal shelter in Berlin is extremely picky about who they adopt to. They basically require access to the outdoors (free roaming or balcony) and no solo cats, plus detailed questionnaire and home visits and all this. There's a rescue page on facebook run by a couple of Polish women, which also has a detailed questionnaire with questions like "what food will you feed them? State brands." I found a group that works with shelters in Spain, and they had a cat whose profile said she'd prefer to be a solo cat and she looks like my beloved Claire. But they denied me because I don't have a balcony. (The balcony is off my roommate's bedroom.)

But at the queer women+ crafting group I go to, someone mentioned she had gotten a cat via a colleague of hers (a reporter) who goes to Ukraine and works with animal rescue when she's there, and I was like, if this one with Spain doesn't work out, hook me up with the deets. Then Spain didn't work out, so I looked at their instagram page and loved them all. The crafting person put me in contact with her and she asked which cats I was interested in (Tigra reminds me of Isis (icon), Basya looks sassy, and Lala has the most face). She told me about two particular cats she really wanted to find homes for, because they'd been adopted (separately) and brought back by their adopters (assholes), and they're both so cute.

I'm an absolute SUCKER for a tragic backstory. Mucia was pregnant when she came to the shelter in February, and all her kittens were adopted. Then she was adopted and returned. She's been there so long, and that's so sad. So I told her to sign me up for Mucia, the grey tuxie. (I love Nika's little gremlin face, and I love torties, but Mucia's been there so long.)

The next transport from Kyiv is December 3. I'll meet the driver in a parking lot, hand him 250€ cash, receive cat with passport and medical records, and go home. I know this sounds Extremely Legit(TM), but the crafting person got her cat this way (in the last transport, I think)

I'm getting an order together for cat supplies (litter box, litter, food, bowls, toys, bed, brush, claw trimmer...). I've never had a medium-haired cat, only short, so I'm not sure what kind of brush I need to get. I also don't want to go too nuts on toys (because cats, amirite), so I've got a furry mouse with a feather tail and catnip refill (a Kong) in my basket. I have a shit-ton of cheap yarn, and I can crochet a swarm of little mousies while I watch Netflix. (I don't want to get rattle balls because we have laminate flooring, and those are loud enough on carpet.)

I keep remembering things, like "oh, yeah, I should get a scratching post, and probably a backpack carrier because I don't have a car..." (At some point, I'll investigate bike-mounted solutions, but not yet.) (I have a driver's license and an account with a carshare app, but that adds up quickly, even if it's the one that charges you by km, not by time. About a Euro/km doesn't sound that bad until you realize it's 15 km from IKEA to your apartment.)

I have no idea if she's a cable chewer, so I guess we'll find that out once she's here (and then I'll have to organize cord protectors if she does, but I can get those at Saturn or Media Markt easily.)

It's been such a long time since I had to think about catproofing my space. When I had cats, it was just the lifestyle. Don't buy things that you don't want to become cat toys; don't put anything you don't want broken anywhere a cat can get to. I haven't thought a lot about that in a while, but once you get into the habit of not putting things where a cat can get to, you just ... do it.

Anyway, I should get myself into the shower and start the productive part of my day. (Oh, the neighbors are shouting again.)

We lost Claire a few weeks ago. It hurt too much to write about, so I didn't. It was very sudden; she had a blood clot, and there was nothing we could do.

My GP agrees with me that I have Raynaud's and probably some form of Ehlers-Danlos (hypermobility type).

I should be hearing back about grad school soon. Russian class is going well.

We didn't get to SF as planned very late Monday night because our plane had a maintenance flag, which resulted in a 2-hour delay. We could have gone home and rebooked for a Tuesday AM flight, but going to Atlanta (and staying in a hotel on Delta's dime) meant we could get an earlier flight to SF. So we did that.

Tuesday we went to lunch with Mo & Enne, and we went shoe shopping, where I tried on the Vivs at the Fluevog shop, and now I really hope Santa brings me some shoe money. Then we BARTed over to Oakland, got dinner with Robynne & Starchy, then I tried on about a million bras at Robynne's shop (bought one). After that, we thought about going out to a tiki bar, but sitting down felt really good, so we had mixed drinks at home instead. I had a de la Louisienne, which is rye, Benedictine, vermouth, and Peychaud's. It was pretty awesome.

Wednesday I met several of my VP classmates for lunch, which was nice. I hadn't seen any of them since VP, and I missed them. I miss talking about writer stuff. After that, we went back to R's for our stuff, then took BART to a station where Ben's parents picked us up & dropped us off at our B&B. Dinner was at a Vietnamese place called Tamarine. I had a squash & sweet potato curry which was lovely.

Thursday we didn't do much until dinner, which was around 3:30 or 4. Ben's brother & his wife (and her parents--this was a packed house) made dinner. Ben's mom had Christmas, which was a bit excessive IMO. (Too many presents. Too many stocking stuffers. I don't need more Stuff! I need LESS!)

Friday we went for a walk at a nature preserve in Mountain View then had lunch. Ben and I went to Adam, Alexander, and Rachel's. We played a round of Sentinels of the Universe (where we ALMOST WON but the environment killed us a lot) then went up to Vynce's to hang out and play more games.

Our trip home was entirely uneventful.

Luna is sick and not really getting better. She doesn't have much of an appetite, and trying to convince her to eat is difficult. She's lost more weight since we were gone. She still loves Cheetos, though. IDK. CATS.

Monday Mylene was limping, and it wasn't better Tuesday morning, so I took her to the vet. They thought it was arthritis and tendinitis, gave us tramadol and Dasuquin. Tuesday evening we gave her a second dose of tramadol, and she responded poorly. Like, trip to the closest vet hospital poorly.

So we go to the vet hospital in Durham at 9 pm, get her on fluids and oxygen. They take some blood. Her hematocrit is 14%; she needs a transfusion. They keep her overnight, and the radiologist & oncologist will look at her in the morning.

This time it's definitely lymphoma. As opposed to March, when the vet school said it was IBS.

She's doing fairly well at the moment, though she doesn't want to eat much. I offer her food every couple hours, and sometimes she eats, sometimes she doesn't.

We need to decide whether to take the aggressive, most expensive 20-week treatment option that could give us another 6-9 months or the less aggressive, less expensive 15-week treatment option that would give us 4-6 months.

In the meantime, I'm considering making and selling to order laptop, tablet, e-reader, and phone sleeves to get some funding for it (so we don't have to keep digging into savings). I have a stash of Amy Butler fabrics (3x2+ yards) that are nifty (and I think out of print), which I could probably get a decent amount out of. Plus some remnants. Any of that has to wait until after Dragon Con, though. Too busy trying to finish my armor.

Friday afternoon, Mylene (our 11-year-old orange girl) started vomiting. Repeatedly. I took her to the vet, where they did blood work and found nothing wrong (except some intestinal gas on x-ray), gave her nausea meds, and sent us home with the instruction to call the on-call vet if she kept throwing up. Which she did, but the on-call vet said it was our decision to take her to the vet school, and to go if she looked bad.

In the morning, she hadn't perked up, and she refused breakfast, so we packed up for Raleigh. We spent 4+ hours at the vet school while she got blood drawn and ultrasounds. She stayed overnight, and she apparently perked up enough to love on all the techs. (She's very friendly when she remembers she likes people because they give her scritches.)

They saw a thickening of the abdominal wall on ultrasound, which they said was either IBD or lymphoma, and the lymph nodes looked enlarged.

Sunday they did aspirates on her spleen and let us take her home. The vet said that the detailed radiology report didn't show enlarged lymph nodes, so it was more likely to be IBD, and they'd let us know what the aspirates said.

Meanwhile, Luna has been losing weight and eating a ton, but her thyroid and glucose are normal. So we sent off a blood sample to Texas to get vitamin levels, since that could tell us whether it's a nutrient deficiency (ie IBD) or cancer. Those came back yesterday, and apparently it's colitis.

So we're supposed to give her antibiotic powder on her (canned) food, as well as probiotics, for 6 weeks or so. I picked them up this morning, and she refused to eat her dinner with the powders on them.

Mylene is on metronidazole suspension and a floxacin tablet. We can't get the metronidazole in her, and her dose is 1/10 of the smallest available human tablet. So tomorrow I get to call the vet about a) getting a local pharmacy to compound it for her (rather than the usual place in TX), b) seeing how to get the dewormer the vet school wanted us to give her into her (it's also a liquid, which we got all over us the only time we attempted that), and c) asking what to do about Luna's antibiotics.

Mylene's aspirates came back, and they're "cytologically uninteresting," which means no lymphoma. Yay. Just a novel protein diet and a month of antibiotics.

Also, every time I think "OK, this month won't be too bad; maybe I can buy a new pair of shoes for summer because my Tevas are 8 or 9 years old and dying," we get hammered with $2k of vet bills. *sigh*

http://feuervogel.tumblr.com/post/25591672130/isis-spring-1997-21-june-2012

Comments are on, but email notifications are off.

Ben & I drove down Friday, picked his family up at the airport, and checked in to the Lion and Rose, the B&B we stayed at when we went there for our anniversary a couple years ago. The breakfast is still awesome. Saturday we had eggs scrambled with veggies in a wheat shell, Sunday was blueberry pancakes with bourbon-pecan syrup, and Monday was a variant of eggs Benedict (with foccacia, spinach, ham for the meat-eaters, a poached egg, and a Hollandaise-like sauce made with goat cheese). Yeah, it was awesome. If you go to Asheville, look it up.

After we got settled in, we went to Nine Mile for dinner, which is just up the street from the B&B. It's Jamaican-pasta fusion. I had a tuna dish with perfectly-seared tuna and a coconut curry sauce; Ben got a dish called Soon Come, which was cheese tortellini with pineapple, apples, bananas, and currants in a cinnamon syrup. It was awesome. We split a piece of their Chocolate Spliff Cake, which included black pepper in the cake and had a lemon-thyme cream filling. It was awesome, and I wonder if it got the name because they were high when they thought of it. After that, we went back and Ben opened his birthday presents from his family, and we drank port and talked. (They have port and sherry you can drink.)

Before I talk about Saturday, I need to mention the cold front that just came through the state. Thursday it was 80 degrees. Friday's high was 60, and it was windy as hell.

So, Saturday morning we went hiking in the Blue Ridge. We walked up Craggy Gardens. When we parked, the car's thermometer told us it was 32 degrees, and it snowed a little bit. The trail was in a cloud, except a brief moment at the end when it cleared just enough to see the view for a few minutes. There was hoarfrost on the ground, and the grasses looked like they'd been covered in ice. It was pretty miserable. I packed for cold, but not for wind. We went back to the B&B, changed, and went downtown to see the sights (and eat food). We planned to go to the French Broad Chocolate Lounge, but we got sidetracked by a crepes shop. Then we walked up Haywood, stopped in Malaprop's, and eventually made it to the chocolate lounge, after which we went to the Grove Arcade, then back into town a bit. Ben's parents went to Sante (a wine bar and used book shop) while we went to the Chocolate Fetish (and where Beth dropped off our free Biltmore tickets). We were heading to meet them and got sidetracked by a game shop which had just reopened after renovation. We picked up Trans Europa (a game about building railroads) for half price: $15. Dinner was at Laughing Seed. Their vegan sloppy joe is amazing, and the red cabbage sauerkraut is pretty good, too.

Sunday was the Biltmore. We toured the house, walked through the gardens, saw the smithy and woodworking shop, and this time we went to the winery. Ben & I aren't wine drinkers, but his parents are. Then we went to dinner with Beth at Tupelo Honey (and didn't get seated until after 8 because the 6-person tables were filled with people who just kept hanging out after they finished eating; so they sat us at two neighboring 3-person tables instead). Peach-ginger cornbread ftw. I ordered a side veggie combo with sweet potato fries, tofu, and the cornbread, all of which was awesome. (I was tempted by a tuna dish, but I had my monthly-ish tuna on Friday.)

Monday we drove back, and ranyart and picklish went out to the Wooden Nickel with me, Ben, and his brother. His brother can't come into our house because he's highly allergic to cats, so he stayed at a nearby hotel. The other 4 of us hung out and talked. It didn't feel like I hadn't seen them in a year since they moved to California; it felt like any of the dozens of nights we all just hung out at our house and talked (sometimes with alcohol, sometimes not). They'd planned to stay here Saturday after the beer festival as well, and they're probably coming Friday night because their other plans may be falling through. So we get to see them a lot, which is awesome.

Now I'm trying to get back into my usual routine, and it's hard. I finished building the 00 Raiser yesterday afternoon, so I don't have that distraction. I need to schedule a couple appointments today and call in Claire's refill. I need to finish revisions on The Novel, though I haven't figured out how to change the things I need to fix yet. Joy.

Back around Christmas, Claire was diagnosed with chronic renal failure, after we got her hyperthyroidism under control and around the time we got her teeth cleaned. When she was diagnosed with hyperthyroidism, her serum creatinine (SCr) was 2.4, then at her cleaning it was 3.3. On Friday, it was 2.4 again. Stable is good. They also said her thyroid values looked good, so that's good, too.

We've been feeding her Weruva Asian Fusion and Mediterranean Harvest (I think, purple and light green labels). They have the lowest protein and phosphate of the brands. The chicken ones have less than the fish, but Claire won't eat them. So she gets the fish, which is still only 12% protein (vs 8-10 for the chicken). There's one seafood with 10% (outback grill), and I don't know if she's tried that one.

I'm concerned that the vets will push the nasty, byproduct-laden Prescription Diet kidney diet to get the protein as low as possible. One of the vets has generally been cool with our preferred food choices; the other I don't interact with as much, but I also don't like him very much. Beside that, there's evidence that high-quality, better-digestible protein is better than getting the protein as low as possible.

Weruva's big schtick is that they use human-grade ingredients for their pet food. (Honestly, that we feed our pets byproducts and waste is pretty disgusting.) The first time Ben opened a can of one of their tuna flavors, I was half tempted to take a forkful. It smelled that good.

Señora Crankypants and her diabeetus are doing well. She's getting 3 units of Lantus twice a day.

So, I love my vets, but this is the second time this year they've given us a major scare about cancer. Now, I understand, being a medical professional myself, wanting to be absolutely sure and rule out cancer, but if they could say something like "these signs are suspicious for cancer, but it could also be XYZ, and these are the risk factors and it's possible/likely/probable/just want to rule it out," that would go a long way in keeping from freaking your patients out.

What they found on ultrasound was renal fibrosis consistent with chronic kidney disease and a fluid-filled cyst on one kidney. The bowel findings weren't suspicious for cancer. The vet thinks her coughing and the bowel distension is related to her swallowing her food whole, because she can't chew. She's got some pretty significant plaque buildup, and one of her fangs has a bit of gingivitis, so we're taking her back in tomorrow for the dental we'd planned on Monday.

So, hopefully, she'll be able to eat normally again, rather than taking forever to eat and running away while the other cats try to steal her food.

(Yes, I am aware that my pessimistic outlook on life leads to a lot of needless worry, but it also means I'm pleasantly surprised or relieved much of the time.)

Claire has kidney disease. We get to switch her to canned kidney diet. She's definitely interested in food, but she's had trouble eating because she needs her teeth cleaned. The vet's OK with her getting her teeth done next week, and it's better to do it before the kidney failure progresses.

Poor sweet piglet :(

So, we braved the roads and took Isis to the vet school for her oncology appointment. (40 was clear, but getting there wasn't fun; the parking lot was half clear.) The vet student on rotation came in, talked to us and took some notes, then she went out and came back a little later with the intern.

Who started off by saying, "Yeah, I don't think it's lymphoma."

... That's probably the best thing we could hear.

Apparently, the PARR isn't sensitive for B-cell lymphoma. When it's in T cells, PARR is highly sensitive, but B cells not so much. (It had something to do with the test itself, and how you get cells from the spleen. I'm a pharmacist, not a histologist, Jim.)

Additionally, if she *did* have lymphoma, she would have gotten worse in the month we've been waiting on the test results, not better. And apparently there's usually vomiting even without a massive tumor, and she hasn't been doing that.

So they kept her for the afternoon, to repeat the ultrasound and spleen aspirates (and get repeat bloodwork to see how her liver is doing). I got a text from Ben around 2:30, saying that the ultrasound was IMPROVED from a month ago. Which means it probably isn't cancer, but they want us to come back in 6-8 weeks to repeat u/s and aspirates. Unless she gets worse, of course, in which case we go in RIGHT AWAY.

She also said that, if it *were* lymphoma, it's highly treatable with oral medications, and cats often live "for years" on maintenance therapy. I asked if we should cancel our travel plans, and she said no.

It's an emotional rollercoaster, y'all. If there weren't crappy road conditions for the foreseeable future, I'd have a celebratory party thing. My birthday's too far away...

Talked to Ben, who's up at Newport News for work. Have pretty much been crying the last 45 minutes, sometimes hard enough to make me want to puke.

A quick google tells me the prognosis isn't good: 70% of cats get 4-6 months with therapy. 30% get up to 2 years.

I have no idea how this is going to affect our travel plans, which are in ... 3-4 months from now. I haven't paid for the class yet, but we've got our plane tickets. I'd be gone May 2-June 13. And I'd regret it forever if she died while I was gallivanting in Europe and I couldn't see her one last time before she's (crying again) gone forever.

She seems so happy! Diabetes I could live with; treatment is annoying but manageable. Since we got her sugars down, she's been frisky and lovey and PLAYING like she hasn't in months. How can she be dying? (crying more)

I wish I could talk to the vet now, because not knowing makes it so much harder. I also wish Ben hadn't had to go to Virginia for work today, and I know he does, too. Even if we'd just be sitting together and bawling; we'd have each other. The cats have no idea why Mommy's making that weird sound and holding onto Isis for dear life.

Carolinas Writers Conference. GMaps tells me it's close to Charlotte, so only a couple hours' drive. And it's $35! It's April 17. I should totally go!

There's even a session on writing science fiction, though it overlaps the synopsis session (2 hours), which also overlaps plotting. None of the afternoon sessions sound interesting. Figures that's how it works: three things I want to attend at the same time, then a dearth.

In unrelated news, I slept in CAT PEE last night because I didn't want to wash my sheets at 10 pm. It was mostly on the outermost blanket, but the smell wafted up every time I moved. Or Ben moved. Ick. Left a question for the vet today about Claire and valium. Or possibly Luna. I suppose it's possible her clomipramine is off this month, because she's just been evil for a few weeks.

So, we picked her up Tuesday night, as I mentioned. We're giving her insulin, which she seems to tolerate, and Clavamox tablets, which she doesn't. (If we could Pill Pocket her, trust me, we would. However, they're made with wheat, which she absolutely cannot has. She's allergic to it, pretty severely.)

We're trying to get her to eat, because they found evidence of fatty liver, which happens when cats mobilize their glycogen stores when they're not eating. If she continues not to eat, it could become fatal. But she is interested in her food, and she'll eat all of it with encouragement, so it's good. She's catching on to us, though, because this morning she ate some food, then slinked off upstairs. I brought her back downstairs, and she ate more. Then after a while, we poked her and shoved a pill down her throat. We're bribing her with salmon treats, and she goes for those after we pill her. I got her to finish her breakfast after the treats.

The spleen aspirate showed some leukogenesis, which isn't too surprising, because they gave her iron IM and she was a bit anemic, but the cytologist said, "if you have any question of lymphoma, do this other test." So they're running another test that involves staining the slides and looking at them again, to find out if she's got lymphoma. (The differential diagnosis is irritable bowel disease, which, with her history of food allergies, seems slightly more likely, but I'd rather definitively rule out cancer (or rule in) than keep fretting over it. Definitive yes or no is better than inconclusiveness.)

We need to get her back to our vet for a blood draw tomorrow morning, to check her liver function and see if it's getting better. She won't like that at all, and she'll be pretty cranky about being stuck for insulin, pilled, *and* shoved into a box, then poked some more. Hopefully she'll forgive us quickly.

I suddenly have a contract, so I'm working 1-7. Which means I'm foisting my writing into the morning. In about 45 minutes, I wrote 648 words, most of which were rewriting an entire scene (because this way makes so much more sense.) They want me to do 40 hours, but I hesitate, because I'd be gone from 9:15 until 7:45, and that cuts heavily into my doing anything other than work time. I'm contemplating asking if I can bring my laptop and write during the 1-hr lunch break, but ... I'm still undecided.

On that topic, I need to go eat lunch and put some real clothes on before heading out. Isis is squawking on the stairs. Last I checked, she was sleeping in a sunbeam. She's so cute :)

So, this morning, we were supposed to go in for a simple urinalysis and some how-to on the insulin shots, then go home.

Best laid schemes, as they say.

There were ketones in Isis' urine, so they ran a serum sample (separated blood) and found moderate to high ketones. What does that mean, you ask? It means she's spending the next 24-48 hours at the NCSU vet hospital, getting hydration and IV insulin.

So, in diabetes, the body doesn't process sugar properly, usually because there isn't enough insulin available. Insulin acts as a key to open the door that lets sugars into the cells. When insulin isn't doing its job, either because there isn't any (type 1) or because the cells aren't as sensitive to it (type 2), the cells aren't getting the sugar they need to do their jobs, and the body looks for other ways to get energy. (Sugar is the basic fuel source for every cell in your body.)

Ketones are a breakdown product of fat and fatty acids, which the body can also use for fuel. However, this is not a good state of affairs for the body in general. Ketosis and diabetic ketoacidosis can occur.

Isis is being treated for ketosis, as opposed to DKA, I believe. Neither of the vets said she had a low blood pH, which is the distinction between ketosis (presence of ketones) and ketoacidosis (ketones + acid). DKA has a third component: elevated blood sugar.

So I'm waiting for the vets to call with an update on her blood chemistries and her condition in general. She was feisty and surly this morning, but sick enough that she had to go to the hospital.

Also, a local friend had some syringes and a glucometer from her late diabetic cat, and now we have them. It'll save us a bit of the initial outlay, which is nice, considering I paid $300 at the vet, then a deposit of $1500 at the vet school, and we haven't even bought the Lantus yet.