Wendy DeCora.com

Just got off the phone with the vet at the clinic and he wants to keep her longer, until this evening at the earliest. I called in last night around 11pm and this morning around 8am and both the technicians I talked to had some amusing things to say about her demeanor. One woman said she gives the “perfect evil eye.” That sounds about right. The vet was concerned that she was still rather unhappy this morning, but I told him I’d actually be more worried if she had given in and stopped trying to kill everyone. The bad news is that there was blood in her urine again (this happened in August) which points to some kind of bladder/urinary tract infection. And she still has the weird stool, so he was going to try and treat that along with antibiotics for the infection.

So she’s still at the vet and they’re trying to make her better or at least ease her pain. I’m trying to stay optimistic, but I am disappointed that I couldn’t go bring her home this morning. I keep looking for her every ten minutes out of habit. I’m going to spend the day cleaning my apartment, possibly decorating my tree to get my mind off of it.

MacGyver is spending the night in the animal hospital getting fluids and antibiotics and having some other tests done. She was still not well this afternoon and had a few more issues, so I took her to the emergency room. They did blood tests, X-rays, and checked her blood pressure. Everything is a bit messed up right now so they thought it would be best to keep her for the night. I’m trying to breathe and calm down but its hard. I’m so exhausted. I know she won’t live forever, I just don’t want her to suffer.

I’m going to attempt to watch some football and get some sleep before I go back to the clinic in the morning.

Disclaimer: this post is rather gross (but probably amusing), read at your own risk.

I wake up this morning around 8:30am after a lovely night of sleep that included fragments of a dream where Jerry and I were singing the Star-Spangled Banner with BoyzIIMen. I get out of bed and smell the lingering bits of fresh pine from my Christmas tree. Then I walk outside my bedroom and smell something else. Something definitely not fresh. Then I see it. On the floor all over my hallway and living room. Cat poop. But not a small amount of it. No, this was apparently my cat had diarreah and freaked out and ran around attempting to get it off herself by any means necessary. So. Gross.

Bleary-eyed and even before I got to brush my teeth, I’m armed with rubber gloves, paper towels, washcloths, sponges, and various cleaners. Ew. Ew. Ew. I get the carpet dealt with as much as it can be and then look to check on Mac. She did this once before several months back, but I was right there when it happened so I was able to wipe off the “excess” fairly easily with only a minor bit of fur pulling. Unfortunately, I don’t know how many hours ago this had taken place. She was sleeping in the office which she has taken up residence in of late. I got close and oh the smell. Poor thing. She has such long fur and her backside and tail were rather in a state of nasty. I got out the gloves and some wet washcloths and attempted to wipe things off, but she wasn’t having it and it was more than I could handle. So I called my vet and asked what I should do and they said to just bring her in.

So off we went to the vet, her all a mess, and me in my pajamas, fleece socks, sandals, and a sweatshirt. I had at least brushed my teeth. The vet saw took one look at her and was like “oh, that’s going to take a bit to clean.” The clinic had other patients and said they’d be able to give her a good scrub in about an hour, that I could just leave her there and then come back. Since I was already out and about, went to the other vet clinic I go to that has all the prescription food she should be eating, and since she was out of cat food anyway, I thought I better get her back on something that I know won’t wreck her system. From there I went to Paul’s, our local “we sell everything” store and got some Nature’s Miracle pet stain cleaner to try and get out the smell. Then I headed back to the vet’s to see the state of my cat.

I walk in the door to hear the melodious sounds of her “I’m going to kill you all” song coming from the back of the clinic. The vet tech comes out to greet me wearing rubber gloves. She had scrubbed Mac down and wanted to shave off a bit of her back fur, but she needed my help to hold her down. I know this is what she does for a living, but she was a trooper. Apparently (and here’s the really gross part), while she was scrubbing her, Mac pooped more, in her hand. EW! A lot more apparently. It was the consistency of clay and greenish-grey. So disgusting! The vet looked at it and didn’t think it was symptomatic of anything more than some digestive upset. But to watch her, etc. I went to the back room to help hold her for the shaving. She scratched my hand right off, so the lady gave me a pair of raptor gloves (the ones you wear when you want to hold a large, taloned bird on your arm) and I squished her into submission while the vet tech did what she could so shave the haunches of my wet, pissed off cat. Its definitely not a glamor cut. Poor baby cat. She looks so odd.

I brought her home and she was hungry. I’ve since spent the last hour or so scrubbing carpets, washing linens, taking out trash, and bleaching clean her litter box. Awesome good times. I’ve shut the doors to my office and bedroom until she’s properly dry so she’s not on the beds. Right now she’s sitting next to me on the couch looking forlorn and slightly confused. Sorry Mac.

Good grief, its noon and I’m still in my pajamas, I’m starving, and I’m kind of exhausted. Pets!

Forty three minutes left in today and I’m just getting time to sit down with an internet connection.

It was a lovely day after Thanksgiving day. This morning my mom and I went and got my Christmas tree. It was a spur-of-the-moment change of plans before she left town. The tree was procured at my local Earl May garden center. Which was handy since it was a mile from my place, if that, so we could just have the tree wrapped up and semi-shoved into the back of my car for the trip home. It may not have resulted in the crazy tales from past tree getting expeditions, [note to self: good blog topic for December] but for once, easy was fine. My apartment is now home to a lovely 7′ premium fraser fir. Its been drinking all its warm water today and tomorrow it will be properly decked out.

After the tree was standing and stable, Mom and I went to lunch at Takanami in downtown Iowa City. Their bento boxes are awesome. I had the salmon and mom was daring and had the tofu. The eel was tasty as always. After lunch, we walked around the block to The Prairie Table where my big Black Friday purchases were a new scraping spatula and a new turning/flipping spatula. (Did I mention yesterday that there were people lined up at Best Buy on Thursday night at 5:30PM? When the store wasn’t even going to acknowledge their presence until 3AM on Friday? Insanity. I’d only get up that early to shop if Steve Jobs himself was going to be giving me 50% off a MacBook and ringing it up himself.)

After the big shopping, my mom headed home and I took a shower and then intended to blog, but my internet was down. Annoying. So I watched five minutes of ‘Survivor’ before I realized it was a clip show and deleted that and then watched last night’s ‘Ugly Betty.’ After that, I went to the movies and saw The Mist the latest movie based on a short story by Stephen King. I’d read the short story, so I knew the basic plot, but I knew the movie had a different, more conclusive, ending than the story. But word is that Stephen King loved the change and said he would’ve used it himself if he’d thought of it at the time. Its totally disturbing, even though I kind of thought I knew what was coming. Like a train wreck where you just can’t look away. Overall, the movie was a bit uneven, where some of the special effects/monsters didn’t really measure up to the much more real psychological drama/trama the characters were experiencing. The thrills and chills are there; if you like Stephen King or you like thrillers, I’d say give it a look. If not in the theater, then on DVD.

Immediately following the movie, I went over to Jerry & Sara’s to have some dinner and conversation with Frosty, Margaret, and Brian Moon, who I hadn’t seen in forever. Good times with good friends. Taly was cute as always and Heather & Taylin dropped by for a few minutes to drop off Taylin’s latest Build-A-Bear creation for Taly (a terribly cute Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer). We played cards and chatted and I just got home, fed the cat, and watered the tree.

I’m getting ready to head to bed after a lovely Thanksgiving day.

My mom and I spent most of the day with the Steele/Vaughn/Reinertson clan in North Liberty. We enjoyed a great Thanksgiving meal and then the Cowboys won.

This evening Mom and I watched The Blues Brothers as she’d never seen it all the way through before. Then we watched some Good Eats and now we’re heading to bed.

Its 106 miles to Chicago…

From my apartment of the first snowfall of the season:

In my kitchen as I work on a cake for Thanksgiving. I love my KitchenAid mixer!

I went to the doctor this afternoon for my weird pain and he said it was not heartburn, but he didn’t know what it was. He could make it hurt if he pushed on it, so he said that wouldn’t be heartburn. That if it was actually anything it was muscular skeletal in someway, but that generally people only complain of pain in the sternum if they’ve had some trauma, like a car accident. He told me to take ibuprofen if it keeps hurting and come back if it keeps bothering me.

Honestly, the guy seemed nice enough, but after I described my symptoms he looked at me in much the same way my vet looked at me after I described Mac’s recent bout of licking the carpet: like I was nuts.

So that’s what I know. Little of nothing. I have another, previously scheduled doctor’s apt. with a different doctor (I’m trying to find a regular doctor again), in three weeks, so I’ll bring it up again if it continues to bother me. Or just to see if everyone in the medical community things I’m crazy.

Again, thanks for all the concern and suggestions. I’m going to keep track of what I eat for the next few weeks and see if there is anything that might be causing it. Though part of me wonders if it has to do with my posture and how I sit hunched over at my desk for hours on end since that’s the part of my body that is kind of getting the most squished together because of how I sit. I try to sit up, but my chair and keyboard just aren’t at the right spots for me. Everyone has the same desk and chair, so obviously its going to work better for people who are more average in height than me. I might have to drag the ergonomic guy back in for an evaluation, though I have to have a doctor’s note to get that done. Fun fun.

Thanks for all the comments, emails and concern for my person. I took some pepcid (I had it for my cat) and drank some milk last night. This morning the pain is finally no longer sharp and stabbing. Now it is just discomfort. I got a doctor’s appointment for this afternoon and I’m just going to take the day off, as sitting hunched over at a desk seems to be the most uncomfortable position. Hopefully its just one of the common things that have been suggested and the doctor will tell me what’s best for me to take or avoid to prevent it going forward. I’d rather just know it was something obvious than wonder any longer if its something worse. This is probably the third time I’ve had that type of pain over the last few months.

Saturday was ripe with blogging fodder and I need to share this before I forget it.

After the final rec show of the season, the members of the Hawkeye Marching Band were taking photos with their friends, their sections, their families, ect, before heading out to their last pre-game. It brought back memories of my not-so-long ago final year in band. Except this would’ve never been overheard when I was in band:

Mom to son: Honey, do you want your picture with Mr. Kastens?

My mom and I recoiled in horror. I remember when I had my 4th and 5th years in band, and LKK looked physically pained to have to shake my hand and fake a smile in my general direction.

I was in the band.
Back when the director didn’t like me or my friends because we threatened his grip on mediocrity.

I have a sharp pain in the middle of myself. I’ve had it once or twice in the last few months and when I describe it to co-workers they tell me I have gas or I have heartburn, but I never have had anything offensive to eat that would seemingly cause that. All I’ve had to eat so far this morning is a bowl of Cheerios, a glass of orange juice, a handful of cashews, and a lot of water. The pain is basically from below my sternum, at my bra strap, to about two inches below. It doesn’t feel like a digestive problem, it doesn’t feel that internal. Whatever it is, it hurts a lot and I don’t like it. I have a doctor’s appointment next month, so I guess I’ll add it to the list of things to have her check out on me. But for the moment, I’m not sure what to do about it.