Raven plans, and God laughs

Originally, June was going to look very different. I had wanted to go to Evolution 2008, and today is a workshop on ontologies and evolutionary biology that I was especially interested in attending, as it ties tightly into the work I'm doing to continue my dissertation research.

Instead, I'm playing intensive-care cat nurse x 2: Isadora's amputated ear wound site is healing nicely, and Cleo is having surgery today. She has stopped eating on her own, so I've been hand- and syringe-feeding her. She's not so sick, though, that she can't fight back against the syringe-feeding; we both hate it.

It's not quite clear what's going on with her, but there's something wrong with her mouth--whether or not that's the whole story, we don't know at this point. We do know that she has bad teeth, and a lesion in her mouth. But she's so compromised at this point--and she went downhill so quickly from being fine at the end of May--that we've been putting off anesthetising her because of the risk.

Best-case scenario: the lesion in her mouth is just inflammation from bad teeth and gums, and the dental work will alleviate it, and she'll go back to eating on her own, once the dental surgery's in her rear-view mirror.

Worst-case scenario #1: the biopsy comes back malignant from pathology. In that case, we'll euthanize her--keeping her around while a facial tumor takes its toll is not doing her any favors. We lost our cat Momo to a facial tumor in 2002, and to this day, I am not quite sure that we didn't keep her around just a little too long for Momo's quality of life because we were reluctant to let her go. We won't do that to Cleo.

Worst-case scenario #2: the biopsy comes back benign, but Cleo continues to decline after the surgery, and we never figure out what the problem is.

Sad, but not worst-case, scenario: Cleo is a very poor anesthetic risk at this point, but it's clear that this is her only chance, and we're going to take it. She may well die under the anesthesia. If she does, we'll be sad, and we'll miss her, but we won't regret going forward with the surgery. If she has a chance for any future life with any degree of quality of life, this is it. But she's DNR (do not resuscitate) if she dies in surgery.

In her favor, we've temporarily gained a little ground with steroids and antibiotics--it's not a permanent gain, but we're hoping it's enough to get her safely through dental surgery this morning. She's alert, her eyes are clear, and she's looking around for the food I normally give her by hand in the morning (she's been NPO, or nothing by mouth, since midnight).

Carpe diem. I'll let you know how it turns out.

UPDATE, Friday AM: Leaving for the vet now. Cleo is awake, alert, and the talkiest I've seen her in weeks. I love you, Cleo, and we're hoping for the best. Whatever happens in surgery, I'll remember how your old self showed itself this morning.

UPDATE, Friday night: Cleo came through the surgery fine, much better than we were expecting. Yay, Cleo! I brought her home, and she headed right for the food bowl. I think we've found and fixed the problem! I didn't let her stuff herself, because she's had quite the shock to her system today, but clearly she wants to eat.

She had about half her teeth extracted, and the biopsy is sent out, but the vet thinks it's stomatitis, or inflammation of the mouth, rather than cancer. Her canines were abcessed, and their proximity to her sinuses may account for her chronic respiratory issues--so we just may have solved another problem in addition.

Good Cleo! I'm glad you came through so well.

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Izzy's home!

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Izzy's big day

Today is the day Isadora's finally going to have her ear amputated. The chronic infections have gotten to be so bad that her quality of life is severely impacted, and continuing along the same path has become untenable.

The vets are going to begin by amputating her pinna (outer ear), and performing a lateral resection, or cutting away that portion around the ear canal on the outside. Once they get the deformed pinna out of the way, they will actually be able to see down inside and get a better idea of what is going on, something that's been impossible until now because of the extent of deformity of the cauliflower ear.

The vet expects that once she gets in, she is going to find damage all the way down into the inner ear. She expects that the eardrum is ruptured, and that evaluation at that point will indicate that the best course is to make the surgery even more radical, proceeding from the vertical canal into the horizontal canal, and removing the entire middle and inner ear as well.

I'm worried about Izzy--she's currently at a local maximum healthwise, which is why we've decided to go ahead and seize the day surgically--but even with the anemia and elevated white blood count under control at the moment, no one thinks she's an outstanding surgical candidate. They're going to take extra precautions, like putting a catheter in in advance, so if there's an emergency and they need to give her drugs to get her heart rate up, they don't lose minutes looking for a vein. But she's an old cat, with chronic health problems, and she's got the pug nose of a Maine coon cat, so there are just some realities we can't do anything about. I'm worried about the anesthetic risk, and I'm going to be on pins and needles all day until I get the word that she came through surgery ok.

I'm worried that she's going to die on the table, and I so do not want that to happen. I'm really nervous about putting her through surgery. But Mr. thalarctos and I have discussed this at length with both vets, and everyone sees it this way: the only chance for Izzy to have any quality of life at all in her remaining years is to get rid of the source of chronic infection that is causing her such distress. Her ear is so bad, and causing her so many problems, that--as drastic as this surgery is--it is the right thing to do.

I love you, Isadora, and I hope this is going to be all right.

UPDATE, Tuesday evening. It was a long day, with running errands, work, and a project management class at the end. I got the news right before going into class that Isadora had done well in surgery and is recovering. They're keeping her sedated because of the pain from the amputated ear. Once the vet got in, she found that, past the pinna, things were better than she expected, so rather than fully ablating the ear, she just took off the pinna, then cleaned up the ear inside. Izzy considerately spared them the trouble of having to take out her IV by removing it herself. After that long day, I came home and fell asleep. More later about the anatomical details, but it looks like Izzy has set out on a long road to recovery.

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The big one

Today's Vappu, Beltane, Labor Day (in the rest of the world at least), and my 50th birthday. I spent it doing neuroanatomy. I can't think of any way to go into my next half-century that I'd prefer.

It is, however, gratifying to see the looks on people's faces who didn't know exactly how old I was. I always say, if I can't be young, immature's the next best thing, and it seems to be working so far!

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Adieu

I just learned of the death of one of my old mentors, the one who gave me my first professional chance. It's shocking to have been out of touch so long that it took the news several years to reach me; ever since hearing it, I've felt like I've been punched in the stomach, although we haven't seen each other in many years.

I've been seeing this overnight walk event advertised a lot on buses lately; I'm seriously considering whether I could get ready in time for it or not.

UPDATE, 22 April: I can't get ready for the event in the time remaining, and meet all the commitments I have in the meantime as well. A better plan is to commit to doing this event next year instead, and to prepare properly for it between now and then.

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Double dumbass on me

(my friend Lisa says all the answers to life's questions are found in Star Trek, after all...)

So I'm making progress with getting over my phobia about biking, but it's still hard to get started on any particular day. Once I get going, I'm fine, but convincing myself to go is the hurdle.

Today was a glorious spring day around Seattle (too bad it isn't going to last), and the perfect day for biking. Mr thalarctos and I biked all the way down to Redmond, and for once, I took the lead on the trail downhill. I'm sure I broke my land speed record, but I can't prove it, since I managed to hit the button on my speedometer that turned off the speed display.

Anyway, I was booking down the trail, and, it being the first nice day in a while, there was traffic for a change on the trail. One guy was struggling up the steep hill I was sailing down, and right before we passed each other, he swerved into my lane. I was sure I was going to hit him, and it scared the liver out of me. I screamed at him, but that didn't get all the adrenaline out of my system; I was still shaking for quite a while afterwards.

But I have to admit that, despite his sucky biking, I'm madder at myself than at him. When I don't have health insurance is not the right time to take chances for no reason, for one thing. And for another, by trying to push through my developing phobia, I actually scared myself worse. I won't let this get me off the bike again, like the time I was hit, but I think the bravado of trying to face down the fear by pushing the limit down the hill is a tactic that is no longer serving me well.

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Pushing through the fear

1. Getting back on the bicycle again, and biking down to Redmond on wet roads. Mr. thalarctos managed to break his humerus and rotate it half out of the shoulder joint crashing on a wet road once, and I've been a little phobic ever since getting hit at a nearby intersection. So I made myself ride in the rain today, even though it was a little scary. Normally, I hit 25 mph going down the trail; today, I kept it to 15. I learned something today--once you're cold enough, you forget about scared. But I have to admit it was nice when I got down to the trail by Marymoor/Bear Creek, and saw the rain falling on the slough. It made up for all the phobia, and then some.

2. Making the sale--talking to potential donors, lenders, and purchasers about money. I was raised not to talk about money, nor to know very much about it at all. But in order to have the life I want, I am going to have to be independent and entrepreneurial, which means getting past those anxieties, and talking to people about money: donating to support my research, lending to get my continuing education business started, and buying products and services. I did a lot of that today, and it wasn't easy at all. But I hope/think that tomorrow, it may not be quite so hard as it was today.

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Hooding ceremony

Our department held its first ever hooding ceremony, and Jill, Nick, and I were the three doctoral graduates to receive our hood from our professors--a very symbolic gesture of being welcomed into the academy as a peer.



I'll try to get some pictures of the ceremony itself from people who were in the audience. In the meantime, this is Mr. Raven and me before the ceremony, so I have the cap and gown, but am not yet wearing the hood.

Mr. Raven is wearing a stole of gratitude--it's something the academic garment people offer that represents a tangible token of appreciation from the graduate to someone who has provided special help to the graduate.

Since I wouldn't have been able to do this without his support, I wanted to acknowledge that publicly; hence, the stole of gratitude.

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Is it mid-May already?

Good lord, but time flies. And some of it's even been fun.

In a way, I'm surprised to find I haven't posted since late last year. But really, with all that went on, I can see it, too--we were out of the house twice due to weather/electrical outages, Mr. Raven became unemployed twice through no fault of his own, we had a kitty melamine emergency (with a happy outcome, unlike one of our friend's poor cat :( ... ), and some other stressful things happened that are all a blur now.

On the other hand, I got a job I love; I received a pilot grant for a translational knowledge capture initiative; and I went to Vegas for the first time for a workshop and saw a pair of fossas (fossae?)! I went to Berkeley for the first time ever, although it's not what Bob and Dorothy remember. I went to Chicago twice and saw the sun bears and other animals both times. I'm in negotiations with a publisher besides myself on possibly publishing my research methods book. I translated quite a bit of pedagogical, scientific, and statistical material into French for my friend's non-profit for Haitian teachers, and the result looks very nice! And I finished another stained glass piece. So there is definitely a lot of good among the intensity of the last six months, too.

I'm not sure why it got so long since I wrote--I had so much to write about, too. But I've noticed that some other bloggers I really like have taken a hiatus, some temporary, some maybe permanent. I am not sure why--maybe it really does take more out of us than it seems to. In any case, rather than once again making some big promises that I can't/don't keep about how often I'll write, this time, I'll just see what happens.

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