renegadeRICEcracker

aww...

goodbye, tess.

this morning the doctor called -- a different doctor than the weekend doctor -- and told us that she wanted us to know that this is a very serious disease that tess has, that she is going through a lot with the treatment, and that she is really unhappy. she said that tess has a very small chance of pulling through, and that if she did, she would be undergoing a lot of treatment and then it would just come back. i told her that i didn't want to put my cat through a lot of horrible treatments to only live for a short and painful time, and she said that she was sorry to have to tell me, but that all the doctors there agree with our decision.

she said she was really sorry that we were given the impression that she would be okay, and that she didn't agree with it at all and is going to talk to the director about cutting our bill (which i don't really care about, but i am pretty angry at that first doctor, who probably also accelerated tess's death by over-medicating her as if she were a much younger cat). i asked if we could wait until visiting hours so my mom and i could go there and be with her at 7pm, and she said that, if it were her cat, she wouldn't wait that long, and that tess was really unhappy, and she asked if there was any way we could come sooner. i was almost to work, so i just turned around, called my mom, and met her at the hospital.

they brought tess in wrapped in a blanket. she looked so out of it, her eyes were moving slowly and she didn't really seem to register much around her. my mom held her for a little bit and said goodbye, and then i held her. the doctor said we could hold her as long as we wanted with her, but she looked so unhappy and weak that it broke my heart and i said we should get it over with sooner than later.

i held her as the doctor injected her paw through the catheter that was attached (only her head, paw, and tail showed through the blanket), and cried while i felt her body twitch against mine. i held her close until she stopped moving and went limp in my arms.

so now she's gone. my little buddy who slept with me (usually right where my head should be so that i woke up with an awful crick in my neck or on my chest so she could rest her head on my chin and make it hard for me to breathe), played with me, climbed into all my drawers, jumped onto my keyboard when i was trying to type, slept on my books and laid on my chest while i was watching tv. eighteen years. longer than any friendship that i have.

goodbye, tess. i love you.

sigh.

i went home. tess was alert, but generally just looked confused and unhappy. when i showed up, she looked up and mewed loudly at me. other than that, she was quiet except when she would move around like she wanted to get up -- at those points, if she made eye contact with us she would meow with this heartwrenchingly unhappy expression. she kept her eyes open the whole time, and would kind of look at her hind legs once in a while. her eyes were hugely dilated.

we took her in, and the woman said that it was probably a clot that traveled and got stuck around her legs, cutting off circulation to her legs. she said that these clots are associated with hyperthyroidism and heart disease/heart problems (which, apparently, she has), and told us to leave her there so they could take some x-rays and run some tests.

we went back in 3 hours later, and they told us she has:
a blood clot -- some kind of strombolis or something
fluid in her lungs
heart problems
that anal sac thing
low temperature

but, the doctor told us that they wanted to treat her for these various things and keep her on a heat treatment (hot water bottles, a heat lamp), and that she had a 75% chance of pulling through this treatment, to survive for between 6 months and a year. she asked if we wanted to treat, euthanize, or take her home. of course we decided to treat. 75% chance of being able to use her legs again!

so i'm driving home, and my mom calls. the doctor called back, apologized, and said she made a mistake. "oh, i'm sorry, when i said she had a 75% chance WHAT I MEANT WAS THAT SHE HAS A 25% CHANCE OF PULLING THROUGH. DID YOU WANT TO CHANGE YOUR MIND ABOUT THE TREATMENT?"

wtf????? anyway. we have decided to treat because: 25% is not such a bad probability that i am not able to say, hey, let's kill her; while i would love to bring her home and hold her i think she is probably actually more comfortable wrapped in a towel and under heat; and while i hate that she is getting more pills (she hates the pills and when my mom would hold her mouth closed to make her take her medication she would stop struggling and hold still for a while as if she had swallowed it and when my mom let her go she would spit it out), she is on an iv that should give her more nutrition and hopefully make her a little more comfortable. and, while if i knew for sure she was dying i'd rather be there to hold her, realistically when she was unhappy she just wanted to hide, so it's probably better to keep her comfortable than hover around her holding her all the time. especially what with the litter box and all. my mom said this morning she did drag herself into the litter box, but isn't really sure how she did it and we don't want to subject her to that (or diapers, which the doctor also suggested but which i'm pretty sure my cat would be unhappy with).

anyway. it looks like very soon i will be out one tiger-striped kitty.

i don't want to go home.

my mom just called. a couple weeks ago my cat, tess, was not doing so well, so we took her into the doctor. they took care of what it was (anal sac gland impaction), but then noted that she was dehydrated, which caused them to diagnose that my mom give her 50mL subcutaneous fluids a day (my mom had to inject her with a drip tube 5 minutes a day, but shockingly, tess didn't mind at all), and said she has hyperthyroidism, and put her on another medication, plus some antibiotics and anti inflamatories.

tess was doing well, though my mom was worried about the hyperthyroidism medication because she thought that tess wasn't as energetic.

my mom just called. she woke up last night because something sounded kind of weird and she found tess in the bathroom, and her hind legs can't move. we were going to take her in this morning for a checkup, so we're now just going to go into the cat hospital earlier than we were. i have to go home to pick them up and go.

tess is 18. i have had her since 4th grade and love her to death. she is the sweetest, mellowist, most affectionate, smartest cat i have ever seen. i have no friends whom i have known longer than i have had this cat. i love her an insane amount, and all my friends who have ever played with her or gotten to know her know why.

i don't want to go home. i want to see her, but i don't know what the doctor can do for her. i have a nasty little feeling inside me that says that once we take her in, they are going to recommend putting her down, explaining all the reasons why this is best for her and will cause her the most pain.

i cannot do this right now. i can't. i can't. i am twenty-seven years old and have never had to deal with the death of a pet (the other two cats i've had in my lifetime my dad got fed up with and on separate occasions and drove across town and let them go when i was really little, and the dog we gave to a farm because we felt he would be happier outside).

oh god. i have to go home. wish me luck.

no TiVo love

so, last week my TiVo stopped working. i came home, i turned on my tv, and... nothing. black screen. TiVo showed a little yellow light under the green light to show that it knew i was hitting a button, but did nothing. it's like it was saying, sorry dude, i know you're there, but i can't do anything for you.

this is not such a big deal. i was worried that i had lost last week's six feet under, since i still haven't had time to watch it, but i came home, turned it off, turned it on, and it was fine. it didn't lose anything, and i can watch tv now.

when it came on, it was taping punk'd. or, rather, it said it was, but instead was taping some very different such show, like MASH or something. anyway. i decided to try to get to the bottom of this, because ever since i've gotten this TiVo there are weird problems. like, i don't get lifetime. a little while later, i found out i don't get cnn. and, apparently, i don't get the mtv channel that has punk'd.

these are channels i pay for, dammit.

so, it turns out, that my tivo remote and my cable box have some sort of misunderstanding when a 6 is pressed. my tivo registers it, says it has changed to whatever channel (16, 26, 65, 76), but it can't get the cable box to register the 6.

wtf? the cable box's 6 was just fine before i got the tivo. i really should have checked into this, say 7 months ago. anyway. now i have to figure out who to call about this.

no 6. it's very sad.

a friendlier terror alert

this way if the world goes awry we can still be comforted by a cute little elmo.

on another note, california is having a garage sale this weekend.

as with most ideas or interesting things in my life, these are stolen. respectively, from www.dryope.org and www.captainbunny.com.

week of mixed emotions.

i took a couple days off and went to boston for my cousin's wedding. of the forty-odd first cousins i have on my dad's side (i am the youngest), this cousin is the second youngest. he is totally cool, and it was a beautiful and amazingly sincere wedding.

while in boston we went to cheers, where no one knew our names and they overly advertised their bloody marys, prompting me to order one and then regret it, and walked part of the freedom trail, stopping off at mike's pastries, one of clinton's favorite pastry & dessert places, i'm told. then we drove down to plymouth for the rehearsal dinner, at which my uncle played the accordian, and subsequent wedding and reception, where the bride led the crowd in the electric slide. the next day, we went to see plymouth rock, which was astonishingly anti-climactic after all the we-are-proud-of-our-history propaganda that is everywhere (it's broken and you can see where it has been patched together, even), and then had lunch at the lobster hut.

after this fun and very relaxing weekend, i returned to the office to find that one of our ex-coworkers passed away unexpectedly in an accident over the weekend. he was a really, really great guy, and i am still in an utter state of shock and confusion.

last night i went to see some short films by an asian theater ensemble. i thought this would cheer me up. instead, the main short film, harlequin, was really eerie, violent and scary. to make matters worse, it took place late at night in an office. so now i have that to scare me when i work late. it was well-made and all, but i left totally freaked out and had to go to mimi's because i didn't want to go home alone.

blech. anyway, back to work.

DEER TICK ALERT! PLEASE READ!

i just received this important notice from a friend:

I hate people that forward too many warnings as much as anyone, but this one is important!

Send this warning to everyone on your e-mail list!

If someone comes to your front door saying they are conducting a survey on deer ticks and asks you to take your clothes off and dance around, do not do it!

IT IS A SCAM; they only want to see you naked!

I wish I'd gotten this yesterday!

harold and kumar

last night i saw harold and kumar ("that asian guy from american pie and that indian guy from van wilder, from that white guy who made dude, where's my car?"). it was funny.

you should go see it, and then get stoned and eat white castle. i was very upset about the lack of white castle in socal when i walked out of the theatre.

ah, oci.

it's a little jarring when you go to a recruiting training seminar and realize that the pitch has changed so very, very much since you were interviewing. i mean, i am happy where i am working. and whatever bitches i have about things i think are probably endemic to big law firms in general, and my impression is that i would have more bitches if i went anywhere else. i love my job. and i love (most of) the people here. i really do. and i recognize that places always change when they grow. but this is not the place i was recruited to.

um. go california.

"This morning, the California Supreme Court issued its opinion, finding the Mayor of California had no authority to issue marriage licenses to gay and lesbian couples and, unfortunately, extending themselves to invalidate the marriage licenses issued."

ugh.

i know i have not blogged for a long time. i wrote a really long thing on ibiza a while ago but have been too busy to finish it or edit it down. shortly.