Lucy Cat & Other Island Life
Aug. 21st, 2021 08:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shannon_aLucy. So Tuesday Lucy was acting weirdly agitated and throwing up, then on Wednesday she was throwing up again and wandering around squatting in every box and on every piece of paper she could find as if she was trying to go to the bathroom. We talked to the vet on the emergency number at our local practice, and he seemed confident she'd be OK overnight, so he told us to bring her in at 8am the next morning.
We did. I was displeased when I got there to see they're still not letting humans into the vet office, which was understandable over a year ago when everyone was massively overreacting to COVID, to the point where almost every business on the island was closed down. Less so now. I was even more displeased when they whisked Lucy off and told us they'd call us at some indefinite time in the future because they were doing surgery all morning and then would squeeze her in between appointments in the afternoon. (Asked Kimberly: why didn't we just keep her until the afternoon?)
We chose this vet practice, I should note, because it's super close to our house, something we found very useful in a similar situation back in Berkeley. But, that closeness starts to become less relevant if we can't actually expect to see anyone anytime soon if we need to bring a cat in suddenly.
Anyway so we went home and I was very encouraged when the vet called me within an hour, apparently between surgeries, and told me that she was not constipated, which was definitely one of my concerns with the weird behavior the night before. But then he dropped a bomb shell: she'd lost a pound since we'd brought her in the previous year. Now Lucy is a petite cat. I assume this means she dropped from 5ish pounds to 4ish, but of course I don't know because I'm not in the office.
He suspected hyperthyroidism, which Kimberly and I looked up and matched a lot of Lucy's symptoms over the last year or more, including weight loss, agitation, increased appetite, and more. I could have told him this, but we of course weren't in the office, and by the time Kimberly and I looked it up, I wasn't on the phone with him any more. In any case, he asked for the OK to do blood tests, and I gave it.
A long day followed, and I wasn't super productive, because my cat was in jail at the vet. I actually haven't been super productive on my own projects all month due to various stressors. Eventually it got to the point where I was getting ready to call to see if they were going to give me back my cat before they closed, and the vet called.
All her blood tests came back normal. Normal thyroid levels. Normal kidney levels. Nothing to explain the loss of a pound.
Here's the part that really upset me.
The vet told me he was calling in a prescription for a constipation medicine. I puzzled over that for a bit and finally came up with the right question to ask: "Oh, so you did see some evidence of constipation?" Because he hadn't hours before. He said, "Well, you said you saw hard, dry stools." Which I never had. But this is the stupid phone game that we're playing when they're refusing to let us into the office with our cat. I explained no, that wasn't the case. I repeated my description of the previous evening. I told him if anything, the opposite was often the case (which as it happens is another symptom we saw that matched hyperthyroidism).
He thought over that and said, "Well maybe I shouldn't call that in then." (You think??) He then immediately bounced to his next idea, which was "Well maybe her colon is inflamed, so I'll prescribe her some prednisone." I said sure, because one of our beloved cats no longer with us, Cobweb, had that exact problem, and it presented as weight loss. So it seemed reasonable to me, but then after I'd hung up, I realized that the vet was just pulling things out of his ass. Yes, this totally could be right, but I'm sure not hearing any scientific process, other than process of elimination.
We got the prednisone at Walmart yesterday. It's a weird, weird world where we get our cat prescriptions from the human pharmacy. It's an oral formula so we've traumatized ourselves and Lucy twice by giving it to her. She got most or all of it yesterday, less today. We're going to see if mixing with food tomorrow helps or puts her off the food, because giving it with a syringe isn't working for anyone. (I don't know if it's Lucy or me who is most traumatized, I'm suspecting me.)
For Cobweb we got her prednisone compounded into treats, and that worked great. We gave them to her for the rest of her life, and she gained back her weight, and all was well until she started having kidney problems a couple of years down the road. Obviously, that's what we should do for Lucy, except we're just giving her this prednisone based on a wild guess. It's crazy.
Kimberly is asking for recommendations on Facebook for a vet who might be better, but the top recommendations so far have been for the vet we're using. Maybe we just caught them on a bad day, due to our emergency drop off? But they seemed largely unconcerned about finding the cause of the weight loss, and the fact they're just guessing and that we're all playing stupid telephone games is putting me off.
I've also got the phone number of the relative of a friend that the friend was kind enough to give me, who works at a vet on island. Maybe that friend-of-a-friend is really the way to go in this environment that we're still learning about ...
So, this is all an ongoing problem but not a crisis, but it's happening when we just have too much going on ... .
Projects. My Blockchain Commons work continues fine, but that's because it (and my other tech writing clients) gets top work/energy priority. From there, I've had trouble keeping up this month.
I've been doing bits of my more creative writing, but it's been hard writing a relatively small history for Designers & Dragons and my other big projects, my elf book and my TSR Codices, have been going by in just little bits at a time.
But the work that's really suffering is my home-improvement projects. I think I've done two very small things in August. I'm clearly old, because I'm very excited that I got a good-quality pressure washer. I got a lot of mold and mildew off the lanai, which was great, and had somewhat less success cleaning the upstairs windows, which I'd hoped I could do because it's been an ongoing issue. But I haven't dragged it out to wash the car (which was the other main goal, since our low water pressure atop the hill just wasn't doing it) or clean the downstairs windows or the front steps ... I've also gotten one set of curtains up in our bedroom, after some work filling and painting holes left by the previous curtain rods.
But there are more curtains to go up, more walls to touch up, boards on our lanai to replace, steps out front to repaint ... and most importantly I need to finish painting the doors for Kimberly's closet and finish reflooring my office as part of our big downstairs-improvement project. I got to the hard part of my office, where I need to start scribing around closet doors and such and sputtered out, not just because it's hard, but because everything else got too busy.
(I'm hoping to put in some work in the morning; we'll see. I've also planned to do it a number of days after work, and was always too tuckered out.)
Taxes. Speaking of stressors, though this one is less bad because it has a clearly defined, albeit very expensive, worst case scenario. But our accountant talking with an inside person at Hawaii's tax agency thinks they've figured out the problem as to why Hawaii is demanding a large sum of additional payment instead of giving us a big refund.
They all think that their computer is unable to understand us simultaneously moving here on January 1st, filing as partial-year residents, and having large deductions due to taxes paid in another state (for the sale of our house in California, which obviously occurred after we became residents of Hawaii). So the Hawaii tax insider has instructed our accountant to refile for us as full-year residents.
(Said I to him, "One of the factors in moving her on January 1st was I thought it would make taxes easier." Which was true, though there was also a nice symbolic feeling to starting the year with that huge change. Said him, laughing, "You made it a lot harder." Hopefully he's correct, and that's what's going on.)
(What I get out of this: 1 in 365 residents who move to the state have problems because their computer system can't understand partial-year residents who moved on January 1, in our case arriving at 9am or so that day.)
So he had his people redo our taxes with the different form for full year residents and he sent me every single form including ones that Hawaii might not even want because apparently they insist on having everything in an amended return even if it hasn't changed. So my printer is now working hard to print out 92 pages. Hopefully I get time to mail it out on Monday.
Walking. I think one of the reasons I've been feeling overworked is that it's been three weeks since I got out and had a quiet day on my own. Two weeks ago, Kimberly and I were in Oahu for a mini-vacation, which was great, but is a different sort of R&R, and one week ago I ended up feeling too overwhelmed by writing that needed to get done, so combined with the fact that it already was going to be a short day, I just sat around and wrote (and did a little bike ride, which was nice).
Today I finally got back out, just doing my quiet walk from Poipu to Mahaulepu and back. It was good. That's twice I've been to Mahaulepu since the scumbag ATV company did their Disneyland walking tour there. I dunno if my complaints had any effect, but I'm hoping they're not doing it on weekends or not bringing them to the picnic area or something as a result. I dunno. At the least, I now know they're not going to be out there ruining the quiet every weekend.
Next. So in three days we're heading back to Oahu. Hopefully. Kimberly hasn't actually gotten her required COVID test back, as she was supposed to today, and an asymptomatic case of COVID is something that could totally ruin our plans. And we have been off-island twice in the last two weeks. So, fingers crossed that we're headed back to Oahu, because we booked a nice two-bedroom place with a no-refund policy and have first-class tickets back, all to make sure that Kimberly has the best experience possible post-surgery.
For once, for once, I've been smart enough to not try and fit going to Oahu around my Blockchain Commons work. I'll probably being doing little bits of my own work, but hopefully mostly relaxing so that I can take care of Kimberly without already being stressed out.
Hopefully by the time we get back we'll have a vet we can take Lucy to for another opinion, and hopefully Kimberly can get us the blood tests we've already had done so that we can start from a knowledgeable place, and not have to get hundreds of dollars of tests done again.
As my dad says, we can be thankful that we can afford this, whether it be yet another trip to Oahu or yet another visit for Lucy, and we can. So, very thankful for that.
We did. I was displeased when I got there to see they're still not letting humans into the vet office, which was understandable over a year ago when everyone was massively overreacting to COVID, to the point where almost every business on the island was closed down. Less so now. I was even more displeased when they whisked Lucy off and told us they'd call us at some indefinite time in the future because they were doing surgery all morning and then would squeeze her in between appointments in the afternoon. (Asked Kimberly: why didn't we just keep her until the afternoon?)
We chose this vet practice, I should note, because it's super close to our house, something we found very useful in a similar situation back in Berkeley. But, that closeness starts to become less relevant if we can't actually expect to see anyone anytime soon if we need to bring a cat in suddenly.
Anyway so we went home and I was very encouraged when the vet called me within an hour, apparently between surgeries, and told me that she was not constipated, which was definitely one of my concerns with the weird behavior the night before. But then he dropped a bomb shell: she'd lost a pound since we'd brought her in the previous year. Now Lucy is a petite cat. I assume this means she dropped from 5ish pounds to 4ish, but of course I don't know because I'm not in the office.
He suspected hyperthyroidism, which Kimberly and I looked up and matched a lot of Lucy's symptoms over the last year or more, including weight loss, agitation, increased appetite, and more. I could have told him this, but we of course weren't in the office, and by the time Kimberly and I looked it up, I wasn't on the phone with him any more. In any case, he asked for the OK to do blood tests, and I gave it.
A long day followed, and I wasn't super productive, because my cat was in jail at the vet. I actually haven't been super productive on my own projects all month due to various stressors. Eventually it got to the point where I was getting ready to call to see if they were going to give me back my cat before they closed, and the vet called.
All her blood tests came back normal. Normal thyroid levels. Normal kidney levels. Nothing to explain the loss of a pound.
Here's the part that really upset me.
The vet told me he was calling in a prescription for a constipation medicine. I puzzled over that for a bit and finally came up with the right question to ask: "Oh, so you did see some evidence of constipation?" Because he hadn't hours before. He said, "Well, you said you saw hard, dry stools." Which I never had. But this is the stupid phone game that we're playing when they're refusing to let us into the office with our cat. I explained no, that wasn't the case. I repeated my description of the previous evening. I told him if anything, the opposite was often the case (which as it happens is another symptom we saw that matched hyperthyroidism).
He thought over that and said, "Well maybe I shouldn't call that in then." (You think??) He then immediately bounced to his next idea, which was "Well maybe her colon is inflamed, so I'll prescribe her some prednisone." I said sure, because one of our beloved cats no longer with us, Cobweb, had that exact problem, and it presented as weight loss. So it seemed reasonable to me, but then after I'd hung up, I realized that the vet was just pulling things out of his ass. Yes, this totally could be right, but I'm sure not hearing any scientific process, other than process of elimination.
We got the prednisone at Walmart yesterday. It's a weird, weird world where we get our cat prescriptions from the human pharmacy. It's an oral formula so we've traumatized ourselves and Lucy twice by giving it to her. She got most or all of it yesterday, less today. We're going to see if mixing with food tomorrow helps or puts her off the food, because giving it with a syringe isn't working for anyone. (I don't know if it's Lucy or me who is most traumatized, I'm suspecting me.)
For Cobweb we got her prednisone compounded into treats, and that worked great. We gave them to her for the rest of her life, and she gained back her weight, and all was well until she started having kidney problems a couple of years down the road. Obviously, that's what we should do for Lucy, except we're just giving her this prednisone based on a wild guess. It's crazy.
Kimberly is asking for recommendations on Facebook for a vet who might be better, but the top recommendations so far have been for the vet we're using. Maybe we just caught them on a bad day, due to our emergency drop off? But they seemed largely unconcerned about finding the cause of the weight loss, and the fact they're just guessing and that we're all playing stupid telephone games is putting me off.
I've also got the phone number of the relative of a friend that the friend was kind enough to give me, who works at a vet on island. Maybe that friend-of-a-friend is really the way to go in this environment that we're still learning about ...
So, this is all an ongoing problem but not a crisis, but it's happening when we just have too much going on ... .
Projects. My Blockchain Commons work continues fine, but that's because it (and my other tech writing clients) gets top work/energy priority. From there, I've had trouble keeping up this month.
I've been doing bits of my more creative writing, but it's been hard writing a relatively small history for Designers & Dragons and my other big projects, my elf book and my TSR Codices, have been going by in just little bits at a time.
But the work that's really suffering is my home-improvement projects. I think I've done two very small things in August. I'm clearly old, because I'm very excited that I got a good-quality pressure washer. I got a lot of mold and mildew off the lanai, which was great, and had somewhat less success cleaning the upstairs windows, which I'd hoped I could do because it's been an ongoing issue. But I haven't dragged it out to wash the car (which was the other main goal, since our low water pressure atop the hill just wasn't doing it) or clean the downstairs windows or the front steps ... I've also gotten one set of curtains up in our bedroom, after some work filling and painting holes left by the previous curtain rods.
But there are more curtains to go up, more walls to touch up, boards on our lanai to replace, steps out front to repaint ... and most importantly I need to finish painting the doors for Kimberly's closet and finish reflooring my office as part of our big downstairs-improvement project. I got to the hard part of my office, where I need to start scribing around closet doors and such and sputtered out, not just because it's hard, but because everything else got too busy.
(I'm hoping to put in some work in the morning; we'll see. I've also planned to do it a number of days after work, and was always too tuckered out.)
Taxes. Speaking of stressors, though this one is less bad because it has a clearly defined, albeit very expensive, worst case scenario. But our accountant talking with an inside person at Hawaii's tax agency thinks they've figured out the problem as to why Hawaii is demanding a large sum of additional payment instead of giving us a big refund.
They all think that their computer is unable to understand us simultaneously moving here on January 1st, filing as partial-year residents, and having large deductions due to taxes paid in another state (for the sale of our house in California, which obviously occurred after we became residents of Hawaii). So the Hawaii tax insider has instructed our accountant to refile for us as full-year residents.
(Said I to him, "One of the factors in moving her on January 1st was I thought it would make taxes easier." Which was true, though there was also a nice symbolic feeling to starting the year with that huge change. Said him, laughing, "You made it a lot harder." Hopefully he's correct, and that's what's going on.)
(What I get out of this: 1 in 365 residents who move to the state have problems because their computer system can't understand partial-year residents who moved on January 1, in our case arriving at 9am or so that day.)
So he had his people redo our taxes with the different form for full year residents and he sent me every single form including ones that Hawaii might not even want because apparently they insist on having everything in an amended return even if it hasn't changed. So my printer is now working hard to print out 92 pages. Hopefully I get time to mail it out on Monday.
Walking. I think one of the reasons I've been feeling overworked is that it's been three weeks since I got out and had a quiet day on my own. Two weeks ago, Kimberly and I were in Oahu for a mini-vacation, which was great, but is a different sort of R&R, and one week ago I ended up feeling too overwhelmed by writing that needed to get done, so combined with the fact that it already was going to be a short day, I just sat around and wrote (and did a little bike ride, which was nice).
Today I finally got back out, just doing my quiet walk from Poipu to Mahaulepu and back. It was good. That's twice I've been to Mahaulepu since the scumbag ATV company did their Disneyland walking tour there. I dunno if my complaints had any effect, but I'm hoping they're not doing it on weekends or not bringing them to the picnic area or something as a result. I dunno. At the least, I now know they're not going to be out there ruining the quiet every weekend.
Next. So in three days we're heading back to Oahu. Hopefully. Kimberly hasn't actually gotten her required COVID test back, as she was supposed to today, and an asymptomatic case of COVID is something that could totally ruin our plans. And we have been off-island twice in the last two weeks. So, fingers crossed that we're headed back to Oahu, because we booked a nice two-bedroom place with a no-refund policy and have first-class tickets back, all to make sure that Kimberly has the best experience possible post-surgery.
For once, for once, I've been smart enough to not try and fit going to Oahu around my Blockchain Commons work. I'll probably being doing little bits of my own work, but hopefully mostly relaxing so that I can take care of Kimberly without already being stressed out.
Hopefully by the time we get back we'll have a vet we can take Lucy to for another opinion, and hopefully Kimberly can get us the blood tests we've already had done so that we can start from a knowledgeable place, and not have to get hundreds of dollars of tests done again.
As my dad says, we can be thankful that we can afford this, whether it be yet another trip to Oahu or yet another visit for Lucy, and we can. So, very thankful for that.