9/27/06

very annoying self-important neighbor)”,” I suggested. Fred laughed appreciatively. “That would be the ultimate in passive aggressive,” he said. Hey, we’ll only be living here for another six months or so. Let’s BURN THOSE BRIDGES!

* * * Several of you have asked whether the weight loss surgery could have caused the Primary Sclerosing Cholangitis. I’m pretty sure Fred asked Dr. GI that very same question, and Dr. GI danced around the question a little, but in the end said he didn’t think so. They don’t know what causes PSC, but it’s widely believed that it’s an autoimmune thing. In fact, it’s possible that a few years ago, when I first saw Dr. GI, when he tentatively diagnosed (is it just me, or is it scary how the older you get, the more you realize just how uncertain doctors can be? I want a FIRM diagnosis, a “I have no doubt that you have this, and this is how we’ll cure you, and you WILL live forever!”, but that doesn’t seem to happen all that often, at least not with ME.) me with a fatty liver and told me to come back in six months so he could monitor my numbers and perhaps get a liver biopsy if things hadn’t improved AND I FORGOT AND NEVER WENT BACK, that could have been the beginning of my PSC symptoms, only the symptoms of the onset of PSC are so subtle that it never occurred to me that there was a problem ’til I turned all Marge Simpson. So no, we can’t blame weight loss surgery for the PSC. We CAN blame it for the gallbladder, though. Stupid weight loss surgery! (Yeah. At this point, I’d still do it again without even hesitating.) And on a side note, both Fred and reader Cristin sent me the link to this article. It certainly gives me even more hope that I might not be facing a liver transplant one day! * * * Saturday, I dropped off my prescription for Urs0 Forte, the medicine Dr. GI prescribed for me. The pharmacist told me they didn’t have that in stock, but she’d order it and it should be in on Monday. “Do you want me to see how much it’ll cost?” she asked. “Yeah,” I said, then remembered that Fred was waiting for me. “No, never mind. I need it no matter how much it costs, so just go ahead and fill it.” “Okay, see you Monday!” said the pharmacist. Saturday afternoon, as I was sitting in the kitten room feeding Maddy, Fred came to the door. “You need to call Pharmacist Chick,” he said. “She said the Urs0 Forte is very expensive, and with the generic version it could save you about a hundred bucks a month, so I can only imagine what the cost of it is!” I handed Maddy off to him and went to call the pharmacy. “Yeah, your prescription is going to run you about two hundred and thirty dollars a month,” she said. I made some sort of horrified sound that went a lot like “Yeek!” “But there’s a generic version,” she went on. “It only comes in 300 mg pills, though, so you’d have to take it three times a day instead of two, but it’ll save you about a hundred dollars. Would you like me to call your doctor and see if he’ll write a new prescription for the generic?” “Yes, please,” I squeaked, doing the math and figuring out that even the generic was going to cost $130ish a month. Good god. At least our insurance company covers 80% of generic drugs. Yesterday morning the pharmacist called to let me know that Dr. GI had okayed the generic, and I could pick up the prescription anytime after 2. With that $100 a month I’m SAVING by getting the generic (I call that Robynomics – Fredonomics would be where I’d point out that I could just not take the medication, put the money in a savings account every month, and my funeral would be paid for by the time my liver exploded) I think I should be allowed to go on a book-buying spree, don’t you? * * * I went to physical therapy yesterday to report to my physical therapist that I was having no back pain at all, and she – well, she and I together – decided it was time to discharge me. We spent most of the hour filling out the discharge report, and at one point she said “How long can you sit without back pain?”, and I said “I sat at my computer for three hours the other day and had no back pain at all.” Then I couldn’t just leave it at that, noooooooo. I had to open up my big fat mouth. “Well, if I sit in the recliner with the laptop on my lap, my tailbone starts to hurt after about an hour and a half, but that’s just because of all the cushioning I’ve lost back there!” And I laughed gaily. The physical therapist, on the other hand, did not. “Your tailbone shouldn’t ever be hurting,” she said sternly. “But it’s just when I sit in the recliner in the same position for a long time,” I said weakly. “It still shouldn’t hurt, no matter how much cushioning you’ve lost.” I sighed. “If we have time, I’ll take a look at it before you go,” she said. “But… it’s really not normal?” I said sadly. “No, not at all.” I immediately remembered something she’d told me the first time she was working on my back. Apparently a lot of people come in with hip problems that end up being tailbone issues, and if the tailbone is flexed outward (you don’t really think of your tailbone as being a flexible thing, do you?) they have to fix it by coming in from behind it. It involves gloves and lube. I didn’t want to do anything that involved gloves and lube with my physical therapist, thank you. I berated myself for opening my BIG FAT MOUTH, and hoped she’d forget about it. But of COURSE she didn’t, and I had to climb up on the Table of Doom so she could see (feel) what was going on with my tailbone. To my IMMENSE relief, it wasn’t flexed outward, it was just rotated to the left, and she worked on it for a while and swore it was back where it was supposed to be. I thought I could feel the difference for a while, but last night it pretty much felt like it always did. As far as I knew, anyway. I got a free t-shirt and a hug from the physical therapist, and I was out of there lickety-split, before she could change her mind about the gloves and the lube. I’m going to miss the hell out of those back massages, though. I might even have to suck it up and start going to a masseuse. Probably not, though. I still don’t much like being touched by strangers. * * * I am way way WAY too pleased to announce that last night a little after 9, while we were watching TV, Maddy (who had been alternately sleeping and playing all evening) started howling like she was starving to death. Never mind that I’d shoved three syringes of cat food down her throat not two hours earlier, AND about a tablespoon of formula to top it off, she was starving. STARVING. PEOPLE I AM STARVING, HOW CAN YOU STARVE SOMEONE THIS CUTE? HOW? So I got all determined that if she was hungry, by god, she was going to eat some soft food on her own, and I was NOT going to give her formula TOO. I went and put some cat food on a plate and warmed it up, then went into the living room and sat on the floor and called to her. And she climbed up on me, all whining and sad about how hungry she was – STARVING, I SAY! – and I pushed some food in her mouth, and she got even sadder like, “Why you hate me, lady? Why you not just give me food in my mouth that I only have to swallow? A LOT OF FOOD.” And Fred said “You’re not going to give her some through the syringe?”, like I was a BAD MOTHER, and I said “All right, go get me a syringe!” He did, and I filled it with food and put it in her mouth and squirted food into her mouth, and then she swallowed it, and I squirted more, and she swallowed it, and I was once again resolute. “If you’re hungry, Maddy, EAT!” I commanded. I held a finger with cat food on it up to her mouth, and she wailed and squirmed away. And so I grabbed a syringe and dabbed the end of it in the cat food and held it up to her mouth, and she licked the food off. “WHY won’t she eat off my finger, or off the plate if she’s so hungry?” I appealed to Fred. “I don’t know,” he said helpfully. Maddy squirmed and wailed some more, and so I held her in her favorite feeding position, where she stands with her back feet on the floor and her front paws wrapped around my hand, and put some cat food on the end of my fingers and held it up to her. She started eating it off my fingers, so I got more for her, and more, then showed her where the plate of food was. But she wailed and squirmed. “Whyyyyyyyyyyyyyy?” I wailed along with her. “Whyyyyyyyyy, Maddy?” “Wait,” Fred said. “Stand her back up and feed her like you were doing before.” I did, and Fred came over to us and crouched down. He grabbed the dish of cat food and held it up right under my fingers. “Now put your fingers on the dish,” he instructed. I did, and I’ll be darned if that cat didn’t start eating off the plate. Slowly, as she ate, we moved the plate to the floor, and I took my hands away from her, and she kept eating. She ate all the cat food on the plate, and then Fred went and got some more, and with a little help from me (I had to push the cat food up in little piles so it was easier for her to eat), she ate almost all the food he’d gotten for her. So Fred, he’s not only a handyman, he’s also a cat-feeding genius, that’s right. Now my next question, those of you who’ve dealt with kittens this small – when will she start drinking water? I keep a small bowl of water near her cage, but she shows no interest at all in it. Is there something I should be doing? I wouldn’t want her to get dehydrated. I adore this picture. She looks like a little cartoon! More pictures hither.     * * * Reader yawny pet pics! Mary says, I know you love cats, but here is a picture of Nieko and Gracie. They have the same parents but were born a few years apart. Nieko really preferred being an only child! Gracie worships the ground he walks on, follows him everywhere and basically annoys him to no end! I LOVE this picture. It’s like, “I’m bad! I’m bad! I’m the baddest badass ever!” “Yeah, darlin’, sure you are. Whatever.” Stephanie says Okay, so Ace isn’t yawning in these pics, but he would be if he didn’t have his face stuck in a glass and a canteloupe! I’m only amazed that I don’t have pictures of Sugarbutt with HIS face stuck in a glass. I better be careful – if he sees that picture of Ace, he might get ideas… This sweet little fluffy cat is Kizmet, and she belongs to Shelly. She’s got some attitude going on, doesn’t she? And Shelly says, here is Baxter, our dog. In one of the pics, he is actually singing (he howls along when you blow a harmonica). That reminds me of when I was a kid and my brother Randy would get our dog Taffy to “sing” with him. I love cats, but they’ll rarely sing with you. Well, Miz Poo will try, but she just ends up whining annoyingly instead. This is my sister’s feisty little monkey, Punki. I LOVE pictures of cats with their tongues sticking out. They crack me up. Thanks for sharing your pictures, Mary, Stephanie, Shelly, and Debbie (though Debbie didn’t probably intend to share that picture of Punki with y’all – but I’m sure she doesn’t mind!)! * * * “That screamy little kitten scares me.” * * * Previously 2005: Did I bring “a book” with me? HELL NO I didn’t bring “a book” with me – I brought FIVE books with me. 2004: No offense to you stoners out there, but the Warrens totally look stereotypical stoners. 2003: No entry. 2002: I think I’m going to start calling him The Todd. 2001: Does that kid’s face just scream “dilemmanated”, or what? 2000: No entry. ]]>