for this I got a phd...

My mother used to say "For this I got a PhD" as she was changing diapers. My recent post about the cat's adventures in veterinary land prompted a friend to express his gratitude for a job that does not include shaving cats' butts.

I mentioned this to another friend the other night, someone who works as a veterinary technician and thus does shave cats' butts for a living. She said it's not so bad. One of her least favorite tasks, though, is cutting the heads off animals whose brains need to be tested for rabies. Some of her "clients" are large, once aggressive dogs with big heads. Other "clients" are, as she put it, "not so fresh," scooped up from the side of the road.

She says that it's a great comfort during this process to think about another job, one that she's glad she doesn't have -- unpacking the heads once they arrive at the state laboratory. She wonders if it's a full-time job or just part of someone else's list of duties.

Which all makes me wonder what the unpacker thinks about while on-duty -- what job is he grateful not to have?

setting new fashion trends

Ever see a cat get its blood pressure taken?

Apparently, it used to be a process that nearly killed the animal and sometimes did. In the olden days, they'd stick a catheter into a vein, then snake it into the heart, and, if the animal didn't die of infection (which sometimes set in) or fright, you could get a reading, but most likely on the high end.

Nowadays, they take blood pressure from animals the way they take it from humans, almost. But first, they need a non-furry area. Yesterday, we started the process by shaving the backside of the base of Juliet's tail. I shouldn't say "we" because the vet-tech did it. I teased him that he has a new job description -- shaving cat butts -- and fortunately, he thought it was funny too. But the result is a cat that looks like it's setting new trends in tail fur, kind of like all those trends in mens' facial hair: http://www.askmen.com/fashion/trends/16_fashion_men.html

Next, you take a blood pressure cuff. They come in tiny tiny sizes, and my vet's collection has goofy little pictures of dragons and ducks on them. You wrap the cuff around the tail, hook it up to a machine, and inflate. There are some pictures here: http://www.vmedtech.com/Vet-Dop.htm

At one point, the machine started to beep madly. The vet tech calmly explained that usually, there are three machines hooked up together, and the single machine we were using was looking for its companions. Finding no signal, it started to flat line. But fortunately, that was a mechanical failure, not a cat failure.

The vet had warned me that animals get "white coat syndrome," understandable, given the process. So I brought along Juliet's favorite brush and actually got her to purr at the vet's, a first.

Good news -- her blood pressure is a little high, but it's still within the normal range. Apparently, kidney failure raises blood pressure, and if it goes too high, the cat can go blind. So I now know what to look for and I know that the process can be reversed if caught soon enough.

Oh, and she's gained more weight, which is also good. She still feels fairly bony, but I think she has a little reserve weight for now.

aiming at normalcy

Sometimes, my earlier, more feral self comes out. Usually, I keep it under control. Like last night, when at least I just stared when yet another person said "Gee, it seems to me that we *all* grew up in dysfunctional families." This seems like a popular thing to say these days, and I'm never sure how to respond. I never know whether this means "this is too painful to think about, so let's stop talking about it now" or "My mother yelled at me once, so I know how it is" or "I have deep dark secrets too."

I recently read about an autistic person who comes across as normal because he's learned that people without his disease make direct eye contact with each other, so he's trained himself to do the same. I feel that I am navigating the same shoals of normalcy, usually striking rock and hoping no one else hears the scraping sounds. Or that maybe I can make up someday for yet another transgression by being kind.

Perhaps I shouldn't have bookended my week with a visit from my mother, about whom I have such mixed emotions, one weekend, followed by consuming another Augusten Burroughs book the next. Things are bound to get stirred up.

But for the record, I really wanted to respond "well, until you see your step-father pick up your little sister over his head and throw her down the stairs (well, only a couple, really, but those stairs were uncarpeted), until your mother, who's been staring at the proceedings says that she didn't see anything, YOU try telling me that we all came from a dysfunctional family. Until you see gallons of alcohol consumed in the course of a week, week after week, and you know you're not witnessing all the consumption that's happening, until you hear screaming, survival screaming every night, until you feel that the streets of the inner city are safer than your own house, until you have to struggle to train yourself to sit in your own living room and feel comfortable and safe, until your husband expresses amazement that you can function in the world, just try telling me that we're all coming from dysfunctional families. Somehow, I'm not buying it."

But that kind of response would be shocking, a conversation stopper, insensitive to others' pain. See what I mean about scraping on rocks? Right now, the sound echoes through my head but at least last night, I was the only one who heard.

get fat don't die

Years ago, when there was very little help besides hope for people with HIV, I subscribed to a short-lived 'zine called Diseased Pariah News. It was short-lived because the editors kept dying. But while it was around, it was irreverant and outrageous, and somehow helped me cope as I sat with friends who were getting sick.

One fun feature was a recipe column called "get fat don't die," featuring sinful-sounding recipes that would make a cardiologist roll her eyes in despair.

This all brings us to the present where the kitty has been slowly slipping away, losing an ounce here and an ounce there, starving to death quite literally. A few weeks ago, I had a long talk with a vet tech about how to get her to eat. The problem is that keeping the cat on a healthy diet is crucial to maintaining her small reserve of kidney function, but her special kidney food isn't always fully attractive -- it doesn't totally suck, but it's just not always that interesting. On the other hand, the vet pointed out that we could start thinking like the Italians and say that now that she's elderly, she should eat whatever she wants.

We've started a funny dance around the food dish, petting the cat to get her juices going, warming her food, adding just a little bit of water but not too much, making sure the food is fresh, feeding her times a day when we're home, carrying her over to the food dish and petting her some more, hanging out in the kitchen so she has company while she eats.

And a few weeks ago, we started occasionally putting a few treats on top of her food. And then... we went out and bought tuna (for humans) and started giving her some. I think Juliet's view of heaven is bowls of fresh tuna as far as the eye can see, interspersed with flannel-covered down pillows in the sun. Sleep, eat, sleep, eat, sleep, eat.

... and... it's working. At this week's weigh-in, she was up a quarter pound -- the first time she's gained weight in months, and certainly the biggest leap she's made. It's worth it. (But let me tell you -- the next cat will get a bowl of grub and that's it -- no more hovering or cooing.)

Get Fat Don't Die!!

bits and pieces

This weekend, we had house guests whom we had never met before. There's a huge New England folk festival every spring (oddly enough, called NEFFA -- I think the A stands for Association). I signed up with the housing authority, and we ended up with three guests. (There were originally six guests scheduled, and half of them dropped out.)

We weren't really sure how to manage the whole thing, so we decided to supply breakfast and leave them on their own for lunch and dinner, which they could get at the festival. We had two very pleasant mornings with our guests, and they seemed to have a great time at the festival. It always feels good to perform a good deed like this.

And of course, this being a very small world, we had tons of friends in common. In fact, the guests we had are on a dance team with a favorite friend -- I saw him briefly, and we laughed that his buddies were staying at my house.

We ended up at the festival for a short while, but not to dance -- Robert hates crowds, and there were hordes of people there. Our dance group ran a food booth, and we worked a short shift there. It was fun. Most people were fine, and some were over the top weird, as always. I was cashier, and I did fine, mostly, except when I was in the middle of a calculation and someone would interrupt. Then I felt like Sequential Man -- I'd have to start all over again from the beginning. But people were fairly tolerant of my slowness and stumbles, and I think the booth's food was fairly popular.

___________________________
At work, we've been interviewing a few people for a job opening we have. I'm one of the rare people who loves interviewing, and I love being on either side of the desk. That is, I'm equally happy to interview people or to be interviewed, myself. We've had really nice people come through. I haven't felt like anyone was terribly desperate -- just looking, which gave the whole process a happier flavor.

One guy, though, who was really sweet, just didn't seem able to get it together to be interested in our work or in the job. It was kind of sad that after 45 minutes of talking, he had run out of his two stock questions (apparently, he asked the next person exactly the same questions) and had nothing more to say to me. I'm sure he was capable of doing the job, but he somehow just hadn't done his homework or didn't care. These types of candidates make the choosing process much easier, alas.

I'll look forward to seeing who we end up with -- this is always a fun process.

___________________________
I'm having trouble getting back into the swing of swimming. I have been swimming, but I don't always go early in the morning, and I haven't been swimming as much every week as I would like. So I need to work on that.

On the other hand, I've been having great fun with cooking. My class has inspired me to try some of the recipes I've learned and just to be creative with other cooking endeavors. I'm trying to cook a couple of times a week, and the other nights, we typically eat leftovers or something we put together that's fairly quick. (And out of long habit, we typically go out two nights over the course of the weekend. It's kind of our date night.)

I especially appreciate the opportunity to cook for someone else I care about, and I'm lucky that Robert's tastes and mine overlap nicely. So I even have an enthusiastic, if somewhat captive, audience.

___________________________
Yesterday I received news that a friend's mother died recently. Unfortunately, this same person lost her husband a year and a half ago and her daughter is about to go off to college next fall. That's a lot of loss to contend with; I hope to see her when she returns from her "funeral and closing up the house" trip. Ouch.

___________________________
Spring is here; in fact, a friend reports that winter is officially over, and I assume he is a reliable source. We often get one last "hah" snowstorm, but we seem to be in full gear here. Some of the early bushes and trees have turned yellow in anticipation of blooming, and our crocuses are now up. On warmer nights, the peepers have started gathering in their singles bar, and a few evenings, I've fallen asleep to their trilling. Birds have come back, and I've spotted our local cardinal a few times. This is a happy and hopeful time.

difficult but important conversations

Now that the death-without-dignity demise of Terri Schiavo has been eclipsed by the death-with-enormous dignity of the Pope, it's time to sit down with loved ones and have that all-important conversation. Actually, if you haven't done so already, it's also time to get some legal paperwork in place.

Do you have a health proxy -- a person responsible for making health decisions for you, should you become incapable of making those decisions yourself? If not, find someone, or better yet, find two people, a primary person and an emergency backup should the primary person not be available. What if you can't think of the perfect person? (You're single, you don't want to burden people, etc etc). Pick someone anyways -- pick the best person you can. This designation is revocable, so you can change it if someone better comes along. You need an advocate. And you need someone who can carry out your wishes, regardless of what they'd want for themself.

Don't forget to ask the designated people before designating! Some people might feel uncomfortable in this role. And don't forget to reveal the identity of your health proxy to others -- it can be a convenient thing to know.

Are you done? No. Read on.

Do you have a living will -- a set of instructions about what should happen to you at the end of your life? There are no right answers, of course -- each person has different desires. But consider some of these situations:

• You are in an irretrievably hopeless, persistent vegetative state, and some amount of time has passed (Three? Six? Twelve? Months? Longer?) Several doctors have all reported that there is no chance of recovery. What measures would you want taken? Some level of artificial support (breathing, feeding, water)? All levels? None?
• You are in this state, your life support is removed, and someone wants to put it back. Is that ok? Desirable? Undesirable?
• You are in miserable, constant pain, and will be for the rest of your life.
• You can no longer distinguish between your loved ones and strangers.
• You cannot enjoy the company of others -- you have no connection to any living being in the world.
• Are there any situations under which you want to be resuscitated? Are there situations under which you'd be mad if you were resuscitated?

If you have not written these instructions and given them at least to your health proxies, please do so soon. This is a legal document. You can do it yourself or get a lawyer involved. But the document does no good if no one knows of its existence.

Have you talked to your loved ones about what you want? This is also an important step. The more that your loved ones hear from you about your wishes, the less likely they are to wonder what you want. And the less likely they are to argue about it when you are no longer able to tell them. Find a time to talk about it and start talking. And while you're at it, ask your loved ones what they would like.

Please -- get talking and get writing. It's the best way to insure that your wishes, and your wishes alone, are carried out.

further adventures with the Dove Foundation

Yesterday, the phone rang.
Me: Hello?
Voice: May I speak to the lady of the house?
Me: (to self) Not again! Let's get him off script.
Me: Is this the Dove Foundation? I've tried to get to your web site, but can't.
Voice: Try www.familytv.org or www.dove.org. (except he really stumbled over the web addresses, poor guy -- maybe he doesn't ordinarily use the internet)
Me: Ah, dove.org -- that's the one I couldn't get to. But the other one -- (tap tap tap) "We offer solutions to parental concerns about Television. "
Voice: Yes, we're calling people to see if they feel the same way we do about these issues.
Me: Well, we don't have children, so I probably don't share the same concerns with you.
Voice: Well, we're looking for younger families. Thank you so much for your time.
Me: (to self) and probably heterosexual and Christian. puhleeze.

And with that, he was gone. I'd be quite pleased if they didn't call again.