Stabbing my Cat (a.k.a.: The Traumatic Ordeal)

So Ms. Pukesalot’s kidneys are slowly failing. This has been confirmed with continuous blood tests after the settling of multiple health problems which arose at the beginning of the year. Most particularly, her potassium levels are alarmingly low. Now, my family has lost two cats to kidney failure in the past. It wasn’t pretty, but at least I know what to expect. I just don’t know when. The major difference is that I know enough ahead of time to try to give her as much of a quality life as possible in the meantime.

Which, the vet tells me, partially entails giving her IV fluids with potassium every two weeks (at the very least). Ie: stabbing her with an IV needle and holding her still for 5-10 minutes while 100 cc’s of the stuff puff up her neck like a balloon. At least theoretically.

Last night was my first time since the vet walked me through the procedure two weeks ago. I figure I can take her in for the vet to do it at $25 a whack, and put the cat through the ordeal of a hated trip to the vet… or I can suck up my squeamishness and learn how to do it myself. So I gave it a shot… no pun intended. Fortunately, my folks came over to help… with moral support, and to hold the IV bag up high (so it would drip faster) and hold the cat still, while I stuck her and tried to hold her head steady. Of course, I had to psyche myself up for at least 5 minutes to actually stab her, and there’s that panic when the skin resists, and I’m terrified of hurting her by forcing it. Which part she had a whole less problem with than after the needle was in her for far longer than it should have been.

Upon reflection, I think I know what I did wrong… when I checked the flow of fluids through the line before I injected her, I forgot it should have been a strong stream, rather than a drip. So the first… oh, about 80 cc’s went in at an extremely slow drip… when not stopped altogether. And I can’t remember if I put it in with the bevel facing the right direction… which I’m not even sure has anything to do with how fast the fluid goes in, but who knows. This was my first effort without the vet, and, for a relatively simple procedure, I’m sure I’ll find every way possible to screw it up. And the cat was getting antsy and moving around, and the needle could NOT have been comfortable moving around under her skin like that. By the end, she was crying in distress, and I was a basket case.

After Pop pronounced the fluid in the bag down to the appropriate line, and I removed the needle and let her go, the cat promptly ran to a corner and emptied the contents of her stomach… which panicked me even further. I didn’t remember THAT big of a lump was supposed to be in her neck, and I was sure I’d done something wrong to make her physically react like that. But the folks assured me it was just an emotional reaction (which is hardly unusual for her), and they even thought she may have been responding to MY distress.

Fortunately, Ms. Pukeaslot quickly responded to lots of loves and pets, and she didn’t hide from us. I’m just worried now that she’s gonna have a very bad experience associated with the procedure, and it’s just gonna get more difficult in the future… no matter how proficient I get at it. MY immediate reaction to the experience was that I wanted to try it one more time with the vet. The lady was kind enough to offer a freebee moral-support visit if I needed help the first few times. I dunno… I’ll have a few weeks to think on it til next time. Now that I think I know what I did wrong, I’d like to give it another shot on my own before I inconvenience the vet out of her time, and put the cat through the ordeal of a vet visit. I just have to figure which experience will be a BIGGER ordeal for the poor cat until I can get my act together. *sigh*

Oh well. So that was my fun last night.

Call From the Past

So I received an extremely surprising phone call on Easter Sunday. Evidently my old 8th grade History teacher (and 7th grade Geography teacher, and he was also a gym teacher in there, too, somewhere… taught me how to actually hit a ball with a bat) was traveling cross-country with his wife, visiting family and tracking down their genealogy.

Now, let me back up a bit. I keep in touch with exactly two teachers from my school years. Okay, three, but I’m not counting my piano teacher in this particular story… he and I go back way back, to about age 7 or 8 when I first started my lessons. I’m talking about my school teachers. The first is my aforementioned Jr. High History teacher, and the second is my 9th-12th grades Music teacher in High School. Both of these men (or all three, if we’re getting technical) made a very memorable and important impact on my life, hence why I still share Christmas cards with them every year.

I’ll call my Jr. High teacher Mr. Crazy Tie, cuz he adored wearing the most outrageous ties you could imagine. He was one of those unique teachers that made learning fun. My strongest memories were of our virtual crossing of the prairie in our covered wagons… we had to prepare for our trips with a set budget, and choose which belongings to take and what to leave behind, based on the load capacity of our wagons. A different person each day got to choose a disaster out of the hat, which they then had to figure out how to deal with. (More than one person lost their wagon and all their belongings over the side of a cliff). Then, once we reached our destination, we combined in groups to create little city/states, where we elected officials and created laws to govern. We even had a trial when it looked like one of the treasurers had been embezzling money. We had a class each of 7th graders and 9th graders as the jury, and Mr. Crazy Tie was the judge. It was a blast.

And in 7th grade Geography, I remember he brought in a guest speaker who was an absolute expert on the world being flat. Not a single one of us could convince the man with solid proof that the world was, indeed round. But it was a great exercise in the use of our analytical skills. Mr. Crazy Tie was all about quirking the view on everything.

Then, of course, he was my gym teacher. As mentioned above, he somehow managed to successfully teach me how to hit a ball with a bat. But a more enduring memory is during the annual Thanksgiving Turkey Trot, though I never even realized exactly what he was doing until years later, he helped pace me through the entire mile, and I managed to come in first place for girls. I still have that trophy.

So yeah, Mr. Crazy Tie has a special place in my memories… a good memory during the usual heart-aches of adolescence. And in the years since, he has long since retired and visited every part of the world imaginable. I’d send my usual Christmas card, and he’d send a postcard from some exotic place. So imagine my surprise when he called out of the blue to tell me they were passing through Columbia for the night.

To be completely honest, I wasn’t horribly sure about calling him back… since I originally let the answering machine grab any calls I don’t immediately recognize. I mean, I’m not the most sociable person in the world, and what does one small-talk about to a person who was once an authority figure in one’s life? But I knew I’d kick myself if I didn’t at least say hi. And Mom happened to call about something else that night, and after I told her about it, she helped encourage me to call him back.

Which I did, and I’m glad for it. I think he sensed my awkwardness, cuz he pretty much did most of the talking. It was good to talk to him, though. One new interesting fact I learned about him was that, soon after I left my Jr. High, he found out a whole bunch about his family history… mostly in the New England area. I guess his family has all kinds of connections to US history. Including the fact that some great-great-great of his was married to Paul Revere’s sister. I mean, how great is that for a History teacher? I can just imagine how even MORE interesting his classes would have been.

Anyway, the phone call was not long, and it was too late for anybody to suggest getting together for dinner or anything… which was quite likely a relief for both of us. I mean, we’re both adults, of course, and we’ve kept in touch all these years… but he’s still Mr. Crazy Tie, and I’m still an old student, albeit one he remembers fondly. It’s hard to transcend originally established relationships.

And what the hey… I won’t have any exciting trips or visits to talk about in this year’s Christmas letter, so at least I can have one person to “shout-out” to. :)

The Should-be-Warming-Up-But-Gonna-Snow-This-Weekend Spring Blues

So I dunno if it’s the time of year, or if it’s just a personal cycle, or if it’s the weather, or staring 34 in the eye or what, but I’ve suddenly found myself engulfed in self-doubt lately. Not that I have a problem with turning 34 next month, at least not consciously. But I guess I just start second guessing my choices in life.

And I’ve been seriously fussing about my impending position reclassification at work. Sometimes I’m cool with it, and am confident I have what it takes to be that next level up. And sometimes I feel like a fraud who couldn’t ever possibly be a good supervisor. The New Office Manager struggles with the same thing, only her worries of her inadequacies are opposite from mine… she’s a big sweetie, and doesn’t feel like she wields as much authority as she should. And I have what she calls a “hard edge”, which I don’t control as much as I feel I should. There’s not that big a barrier between my brain and my mouth, and though I may come back 5 minutes later in a much more rational mood and apologize, my original irritation is felt by all with very little buffer. And what kind of supervisor is that?

But the New Office Manager has confidence in me… and more importantly, she’s told me that the new Associate Director for my department (he was essentially Senior Project Manager who had HIS position reclassified as well), whom I will be working with directly as his assistant, has faith in me as well. And that’s the important part. I can see how the dynamic between boss and assistant could have a lot of weight in the matter, and we’ve developed a very good one over the last three years.

Amway, I’m hoping this self-doubt will pass. It smacks just a tad of the depression of olden days, and I just can’t go there again. I know I’ll be okay. I guess life just wouldn’t be any fun without the roller coasters.

And Speaking of Roller Coasters…

So Mom and Pop are off to their first-ever vacation this weekend. In almost 40 years of marriage, they never even had a honeymoon, so they’re makin up for it with a bang at DisneyWorld. I wish them lots of fun.

Of course, it means much of the same for me: splitting my time between their house and mine to spend time with their cat and mine. But the crucial difference here is that I will NOT be covering her job as well as mine at work, too. Woo-hoo!

And speaking of work, I need to get back to it. Until next time…