Monica

Tonight I took the gang in for scheduled maintenance. ( Read more... )

My vet thought that Baldur looks much younger than he is, so when one of the techs came in to help with vaccines and blood draws, the vet asked her to estimate his age. The tech used to work at an animal shelter, so she said she's done this a lot. She then said "6 or 7", and was boggled when we said 15. These are my first cats so I don't really have expectations about what an old cat looks like; Erik does look older than Baldur to me, but I think that's due to being underweight and moving a little slowly.

Erik had a check-up tonight. His weight is (drum roll, please)... 8 pounds 8.5 ounces! This is a gain of three-quarters of a pound since April and the highest he's been in over four years, according to my vet. (My own records are not good enough, but that sounds about right.) If we can get another pound on we'll call it good. :-) (His all-time high was about 10.5 pounds, but that was when he was two years old.)

Heart rate was 160 (down from 180 last time and 220 the time before, which was when we started treating for hyper-thyroid). No arrhythmia, either.

It's time for blood tests, but other than whatever that reveals, he seems to be doing great! I think we finally have the right combination of meds for his various conditions.

My vet was thrilled, and she snuggled him and made a fuss over him.

My vet recently told me she wanted to see Embla tonight if possible (for a calibration check on the new drug). They normally close at 7:30, which is before Yom Tov would be over tonight. I explained the problem and asked if next week would be ok; she said "call anyway; we might still be here". So I did and they were, and she asked me to bring Erik along if I was coming anyway. (Erik, too, has been on some new medicines.)

Embla has been on medicine for hyperthyroidism for about 3.5 weeks. (You may recall that she pegged the meter on this test, producing the highest level my vet has ever seen.) This condition was described to me as "the engine is constantly revving"; among things, appetite is normal but the cat loses weight due to the high metabolism. Heart rate is also usually high.

Embla has gained 4 ounces in the last month, and tonight her heart rate was 200 (high-normal, but she was stressed so normal). Last time it was 240. This seems to be working.

Erik started the hyperthyroid medicine three weeks ago. He has gained 7 ounces in the last 3-4 weeks. He is now at his highest weight in quite some time -- 7 pounds, 12.5 ounces. Yay! I don't know if it scales, but if half a year of treatment for this condition can get him up to 10 pounds, I won't complain. :-) His heart rate tonight was 180 (down from 220 last time), and the arrhythmia was gone.

Yay! Finally, something seems to be producing results better than "well, he's not any worse than last time".

My vet (after consulting a specialist) wanted Erik to have another ultrasound, looking for an explanation for some of the anomolous readings in recent blood tests. To the best of my knowledge ultrasounds never produce good explanations for things like that.

He had it today, and my vet was actually there when I picked him up so she showed me the results and talked me through them. There's nothing bad going on in there (though they didn't look at his heart, so that's still a possible worry). The specialist thinks the liver numbers are completely explained by hyperthyroidism and we need to treat that. My vet noted that high white-cell counts are not explained that way, so she's going to talk with the specialist about that. But hey, no tumors -- a common explanation! Yay!

She wants to treat the hyperthyroidism with drugs for a while before doing the radiation treatment (just to make sure there are no complications), but she thinks we'll be able to do that some months down the road.

I just got a message from my vet with results from Erik's latest tests. (Alas, I was in a meeting at the time, so we have not yet interacted.) I'm not sure what this means.

Two weeks ago his white-blood-cell count was high and his thyroid number was (for the first time ever) high. He just finished a course of antibiotics, and he was not quite a week into taking Methimizole (for the thyroid condition) on Monday when she drew the blood.

Results: WBC is even higher (antibiotics did squat), liver enzymes (SALT and, err, AST?) are higher than usual... and thyroid is absolutely, perfectly normal. She thinks the thyroid drugs couldn't have caused the liver results in that little time, though she was silent on whether they could lower the thyroid number in the same amount of time. She speculated that we should switch to a different antibiotic, and suggested that there might be an ultrasound in the near future to see what's going on with the liver. (Meanwhile, I should stop the thyroid medicine until we talk.)

Sigh. Happy 14th birthday, Erik.

Erik had his check-up tonight. His weight hasn't changed much since July; I thought for sure he was up to 8 pounds, but their scale says 7 pounds 6 ounces. But the vet is satisfied with how much he's eating, so I'm not going to worry about that.

She was going to do a fairly complete blood test anyway (to check on his other problems), and then during the exam she heard an arrhythmia in his heart. This is new. She said she doesn't expect to find an answer in the bloodwork (though we could get lucky); this usually means a muscular problem. Oh goodie. She's going to talk to an expert while we wait for the tests to come back.

I'm no expert, but Google took me to this fairly-informative article about one common (?) cause of this. (I haven't been able to back-track to other causes yet -- obviously don't have the right mix of query terms yet.)

Baldur and Embla have their check-ups tomorrow, assuming I succeed in capturing both of them. I have a new catnip toy in pursuit of this goal. :-) When I came home from the store yesterday and set the bags down, all the cats came running and they made a beeline for one bag. I thought they'd found the fish, but they'd found the toy sealed in plastic. I couldn't smell the catnip holding it right up to my nose; they detected it from rather far away. So it's safely put away until tomorrow, when I hope to use it as a magnet.

This morning a coworker sent mail saying she brought in home-baked cookies and put them next to the cookies that were already on the kitchen table. Then a few minutes later another coworker walked past me, kitchenward, with a box. Then this afternoon the landlord sent up cupcakes. Baked goods are normative for December, but the temporal distribution needs some work. :-) (That said, also this afternoon QA sent out a message announcing their second annual "bite me" spread for the whole company on Friday. At least it wasn't today.)

Unrelated short takes:

Class tonight was very good. The ranty student has dropped out (good) and so has his wife (ungood). The new instructor did an excellent job, as I suspected he would.

A friend's vet suggested to her that for an under-eating cat, a few drops of olive oil on the food would entice the cat, add a little weight, and do no harm. Erik has had a couple fussy moments lately, so I tried this out. He loved it. Who knew?

Pachelbel Rant (video), from ian_gunn.

Erik had his ultrasound today, looking for the cause of his liver problems. Or, more specifically, looking for a bad sign (blockage or tumor). The clinic told me that they would give the results to my vet who would, probably, call me Monday; they said the technician who would call to tell me he's ready for pick-up would not be able to give me any information.

I don't know if I got lucky or if having a family of long-term clients helps, but I got a call from the head vet. He said there's no evidence of blockage in the bile ducts (which there shouldn't be after the surgery he had, but you've got to check), and there is no evidence of tumors (yay!). Also no evidence of gallstones, just to be complete. The flow of bile out from the liver is impacted, but he thinks that's due to the infection and the routine rounds of antibiotics should keep that in check. He also told me that with the surgery Erik had, there can be, err, backflow of bad stuff back into the liver sometimes, and that might be what happened here. No way to tell and no way to fix it anyway.

He said that if bouts of serious illness occur become more frequent they can flush his system, but that's surgery and he doesn't think it's necessary. He thinks we should be doing the antibiotics monthly, which is a little more frequently than we've been doing, and my regular vet will call me to talk about it. He also recommended a dosage change in a maintenance drug; again, my vet will talk with me about it.

Significant numbers from Monday's blood test:
bilirubin 0.9 (normal 0.3)
SALT (liver enzyme) 1494 (normal 118, Erik's previous high 400) (!)
white blood count 33,000 (normal 15,000, Erik's last 20,000)

The last two together suggest lymphoma, which is why he had the ultrasound. I'm so glad he got a clean bill of health on that front!

Edit: weight on Monday: 7 pounds, 4 ounces -- which is up a few ounces from last time (yay!). And he basically didn't eat on Monday (was sick and disinterested), so maybe that means his normal weight is up another ounce or two.

A couple of weeks ago an electrician we hired pointed a finger at Duquesne Light. They said they didn't think it was their problem but they replaced the line from the pole to the house anyway. We've had no further problems; I hope that continues.

I ordered a memory card for my printer, which had become cranky about printing full pages. It came in yesterday's mail, so this afternoon I popped it in and things are now printing normally. I'm glad that it turned out to be an inexpensive solution. The pictures in the HP documentation didn't match the physical card, but fortunately there were enough similarities to work out the correct orientation.

Erik's appetite was back to normal as of a couple days ago. Today it's above normal; he's eaten two whole cans of food so far today (and I'll bet he'll want a bedtime snack). The vet suggested I water him daily for a few days (starting last Monday) and then drop down to every other day; I think given what he's been eating I can make tonight the transition into "every other day". The fluids do help a lot, though I really hate having to stick him with a needle to administer them. I can tell he's uncomfortable; I would be too!

I wonder how subcutaneous fluids are processed. If my cat isn't eating/drinking enough I can give him fluids, which don't enter through the mouth, but they exit the normal way -- which means somewhere inside the cat they enter the GI tract. My vet probably already thinks I'm weird, so I may as well ask her. :-) (What actually prompted this is the observation that, it appears, a dose of fluids can stimulate his appetite, almost as if the fluids were clearing out some blockage or something -- but how could they? And anyway, there shouldn't be any blockages; he had a blocked bile duct a few months ago and they both cleared it out and installed a much-larger bypass.)

We have an invitation for seder for the first night, from a fellow congregant. This is good; Dani knows the family, so he won't be among strangers, and they like to sing, and they're the sort of people who don't race through the haggadah to get to the meal. So everyone's happy -- yay! Second night is odd: as a Reform Jew I don't see the need for two-day yomim tovim, and Dani is secular, but he's used to two nights from his family (necessity of parental divorce) and I don't mind, so I may yet try to find us something. (I said "well, there's always Chabad" and he said "let me know how that goes for you", so I guess not that since the point would be to do something for him.) He's still opposed to just holding one ourselves.

My rabbi will be leading a trip to Israel at the end of this year. I'm thinking seriously of going. I'd like to see some of the place, and I'd love to do it with my rabbi -- so there'll be, y'know, some religious content, as opposed to just being a tourist. I'll have enough vacation time to do it, since most of the fall holidays have the decency to land on weekends this year, and a bonus I'll be getting at work removes any doubt about being able to afford it. It sounds like this will be a family-friendly but not family-obsessed trip; i.e., I won't feel like e fifth wheel. So I don't see a down-side here, and I think it would be an exciting experience.

Short takes:

This comic reminded me of some cats I've known...

Hold my beer, a look at washroom multitasking (not safe for work), from brokengoose.

New vocabulary seen today: "clienticide". Thanks, steven. :-)

My virus scanner spontaneously turned itself off today. I wonder what that means. (I turned it back on and ran a scan, which was clean.)

I give Erik his canned food on a certain counter that Baldur is too heavy to jump onto. Since his surgery Erik has been reluctant to make the jump himself (I usually pick him up when I feed him); I assume that will get better. A few days ago I saw him attempting to do feline chin-ups; he had his front paws on the (horizontal) handle for the cabinet and his back feet were not in contact with the floor. Alas, cats don't have sufficient arm strength to do that, but it was a valiant effort.

The last season of Blake's 7 is coming out on DVD soon, so I went to Amazon (UK) to order it. They offered a pre-order price of L34.99, which is a little steep but I decided to order. When they processed the order, it was L29.99, and that's what the confirmation email said. Weird! I think something like this happened with a past order from them too; I don't know what it means but so long as the change goes in the right direction, I'm not complaining.

"The Defendant's motion is accordingly denied for being incomprehensible". Check out the footnote. (Thanks to osewalrus and rjmccall.)

Sunday and this morning Erik wasn't interested in food and was a little less active than usual, so I took him to the vet tonight. I did see him drink water this morning, at least, but he had to think about it. He stood and stared at the bowl for a while before drinking; I imagine an inner dialogue along the lines of "c'mon, you know you should" / "but I don't wanna" / "do it anyway".

The vet said he was a little dehydrated (and showed me how to refine my interpretation of the skin-on-the-back-of-the-neck test). She thought a bile blockage unlikely given the surgery and detected no signs of an intestinal blockage. (I gather the major sign would have been complaints when she did those things to the cat...) She said sometimes this just happens with hepatitis (oh goodie), and she sent me home with a bag of water (well, there's other stuff in it too) and instructions to give him some, subcutaneously, every two or three days until his appetite picks up. I should also give him any food he might possibly eat, but I'm not sure what would be more interesting than the canned food and baby food he's already rejecting. Maybe canned tuna. Oh, and there's an anti-nausea drug; that's been a bit of a problem for him and maybe that's why he's not eating.

Though, that said, he did lick a little baby food from the fingers of the technician who showed me how to give him fluids. The little brat -- he wouldn't take food from my finger this morning! (Or tonight after we got home.) Same brand of food, different flavor, so that's the next thing to try.

He was 7 pounds (even) tonight, same as at his last vet visit at the end of January. If we assume that the last couple days have probably cost him a little, that suggests that he had managed to gain a little before this started. So that's good, at least.

I wonder when we'll get to the point where the vet just gives me fluids, anti-nausea drugs, and antibiotics and says "use as necessary". She's already thinking in terms of a regular cycle of antibiotics (every month and a half or so) just on spec.

Edit 8:45PM: Canned tuna is interesting to him (in small doses). Yay!

Sometimes I am too optimistic when it comes to other drivers. I left work at 6 tonight, expecting to go home (not quite four miles away), feed the cats, take care of a few other things, and then drive over to my synagogue (a mile away) for a 7:00 meeting. Heh. Right. It took more than half an hour to go the first mile. The roads in question weren't icy, just wet. I should have known better, I guess.

My bathroom scale isn't accurate enough to weigh Erik, but it feels like his ribs are getting less prominent. He's still bony and underweight, but I think he's gaining. I hope so. We have an appointment with the vet on Monday where I'll find out. (On average he's been eating 7-8oz of canned food per day. More on the weekends and sometimes less on weekdays, because it works better in small doses every few hours.)

I've been at my synagogue for something every day for the last week. We just interviewed a candidate for a rabbinical position, which is a big part of that. That's been an educational process for me.

In a few weeks our comapny's network configuration will change in major ways. One change is that we'll be using an Exchange server for mail instead of our current IMAP server. (No, we don't get a vote on this.) So all of us who have been using other mailers have to move to Outlook, and we're being smart and doing that part of it before the server change. It'll be fine in the end, but I keep feeling like I've just moved five years' worth of mail and now I can't find anything. (I had to move all of my saved mail onto the server so I could then download it into Outlook, as no direct translation path existed.) On the bright side, the tech-support person the company sent to get everyone configured was one of the most fun I've worked with. I'm pretty sure she's a Unix user when her employer isn't looking; she definitely groks geeks.

Seen in a locked entry: "You know you're living in 2006 when... you pull into your own driveway and use your cell phone to see if anyone is home to help you carry in your groceries." Guilty. :-) Hey, calls between our phones are free...

A lab report that's more honest than most (link from ian_gunn).

The Slow Crash argues that civilization will fall not with a bang but with a whisper (link from brokengoose). I'm reminded of one episode of the short-lived Dilbert TV show where there was some sort of economic crash and the very next day everything looked like a scene out of the middle ages. It was a nice spoof.