Tag Archives: medicine

The blocked cat…

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Because I’m both inquisitive by nature and also a glutton for punishment, recrimination, and self-doubt, over the last few days I’ve been reading a lot about feline urinary blockage. I had a cat for the better part of seven years and never heard the issue mentioned at all my various visits to veterinary offices.

I wish someone along the way had warned me that this was a common occurrence and that there were some key indicators to watch out for. The early warning signs are subtle and there’s no guarantee that even if I had been home, I’d have noticed them right out of the gate, but forewarned is forearmed and all that.

One particular article that doesn’t go too deeply into veterinary jargon or advanced biology is: The Nightmare That is Blocked Cats. I found it a helpful place to start that didn’t lead off by trying to give me a degree in veterinary medicine. The number of comments left on this article feels like a telling indicator of just how common this issue may be for our pets.

So, having said that, if there’s a cat in your life – particularly one that’s male and in middle age – I’d encourage you to take a few minutes and do your reading. The sooner you recognize something might be off kilter, the better for you and the fuzzy little critter living in your house. I hope it’s information you’ll never need to have at your fingertips, but if you do, I promise you’ll be glad you made the effort.

I’ve been referred…

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I went into the doctor’s office this morning expecting the normal checkup and regular drubbing for being too fat, too in love with salt, and hating all forms of exercise that aren’t yard work.

I got those things, of course, but I also got three unexpected referrals. The first involves an as yet undetermined amount of physical therapy for a back that never entirely quits hurting. The second is for a dermatologist to take a look at a stubborn bit or rash on my arms that the doc now thinks could be an acquired allergy to one of my medications. The last, well, that’s the one that just adds insult to injury.

The final referral is for a consultation with a nutritionist. Apparently, the idea of most of my collected recipes being directly from the 1950s and 60s is abhorrent and “not at all” recommended.

Yeah, well, they all taste good. Which is inevitably more than I’ll be able to say about whatever diet cardboard with lite vinegar sauce I’m about to have recommended for me. I’ll try to go in with an open mind, but the first time someone tells me cauliflower is an acceptable substitute for bread, pizza crust, or rice, you’ll be able to hear my eyes rolling from wherever you happen to be in the world.

I’m not convinced healthy people really live longer so much as it just feels longer because they’ve sucked every ounce of joy out of living. Anyway, it looks like I’ll be burning off shit tons of sick leave in the near future, so at least I have that to look forward to.

Chonky…

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Hershel had his annual checkup and got his rabies booster today. He wasn’t thrilled with the experience. He doesn’t like to leave the house. I guess despite the difference in species, the apple hasn’t fallen far from the tree.

Still, the techs all made over him. Thanks to the thin walls, I could hear everyone in the procedure room fawning over “the good looking chonky boy.” I know I’m biased, but he is a good looking cat.

Other than needing to cut a little weight and a bit of dry skin, he seems to be in fine shape. He won’t love it when I start cutting back at mealtime. God knows I’d think it was a terrible idea if someone did it to me.

It was actually kind of nice to go to a vet appointment for “normal” issues for a change. Given my track record with animals I won’t let myself get used to it, but it was an appreciated change of pace.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. “Research.” The internet is crawling with people who think they have “done research” or “studied” all manner of troubles that have lain undiagnosed by any of the other eight billion or so people on the planet. I mean if there really was a legitimate thread by which vaccinations lead to all developmental problems in human, I have to suppose it would have been uncovered at some point by serious medicos who would be happy to make a name for themselves. We’ve been inoculating people against disease since the early 18th century… and yes there have always been adverse reactions, but since tens of thousands of people aren’t falling down dead from smallpox anymore I’m willing to take my chances because people smarter than me who are credentialed in medicine, biology, and chemistry tell me it’s a good idea. The same is true when the internet lights up with warnings that dinner plates made before 2005 contains toxic levels of lead that sap and impurify our precious bodily fluids – all turning on the “research” conducted by someone using their kitchen counter as a laboratory and going out of their way to avoid presenting actual data, methods, or independent verification. But hey, feel free to go ahead and base your “research” on the rantings of some uncredentialed, ill-informed, and mentally questionable rando on the internet. I’m sure their information is better than the sum total of the knowledge acquired by western medicine over the last thousand years.

2. Questions. I’ve heard it sad that there’s no such thing as a stupid question. If you really believe that I’ll just have to assume you’ve never actually met people. Ever. Take, for instance, one of the most popular questions I’ve seen swirling around the office this last week. It basically asks “I’m worried that COVID-19 can be transmitted by toilets. We can’t expect people to hold it all day so what’s being done to protect people from the potty?” I can only presume this was an actual question and not, in some way, sent as an effort to find the funny since it was asked at least twice almost verbatim in two different forums. The answer, in case you’re curious, is that restrooms will be cleaned and sanitized on a regular basis (as they have been before and during the initial phases of the Great Plague). If you’re wearing your mask, washing your hands, and not touching every surface in the bathroom and then jamming your hands in your mouth, eyes, or nose, your chances of a toilet-related disaster are probably pretty low… although that feels like a pretty big ask for a lot of people.

3. The Great Plague. After three months we’re finally hitting a moment when I’m personally being inconvenienced by the Great Plague. You see, my favorite cut-rate discount used book warehouse is open again, the truly massive barn sale in southern Pennsylvania where I always seem to find some treasure or another is scheduled for this weekend, and I find myself about to be desperately in need of more shelving in the non-fiction section here at Fortress Jeff. Being the proud possessor of “underlying health conditions” and now seeing the ongoing increase in cases and hospitalizations being reported around the country heading out on the search for old and unusual or more books and places to put them is something of a roll of the dice. My local area currently has a respectably low positivity rate despite the increased number of tests being administered. Part of me wants to use the moment to get a few long-delayed items off the to do list before we cycle back towards another spike… while of course the other part wants to just stay comfortably home, avoid any unnecessary exposure, and watch the world burn itself down. 

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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Reading for comprehension. Before you ask if I can provide the dial in number, perhaps you should read all the way to the bottom of the 4 bullet point email I just sent you. I’m not saying I always include every scrap of information someone might need in an email. Sometimes things get left out. But when I know the information you seek is one of the items I purposely put in a prominent place for all to see, it’s like you’re trying to get on my last nerve. I’m increasingly convinced the only reason meetings ever really need to happen is because people can’t be relied on to read for comprehension.

False surprise. You’re well into your 50s. You’ve spent 30+ years in Uncle’s service. Don’t feign surprise when things you want to try to get done two weeks before the end of the year can’t be done because 75% of the people who do the work, myself included, have no intention of being around between Christmas and New Years. It happens every year like clockwork. It’s regular as the tide. Please, for the love of little newborn baby Jesus, don’t suddenly pretend concern that a thing can’t be delivered a mere handful of hours before everyone but a skeleton crew goes away for a couple of weeks. This is especially true when you were given the opportunity to work the fix four months ago but opted to drive ahead anyway. It just embarrassed both of us.

Medical science. The good news is that my A1C is now actually too low and as a result the doc is taking me off one of the meds I’ve been on for the last two years. That, of course, was accompanied by the bad news that my cholesterol has finally snuck into the “troublesome” range so I’ll be starting on a new pill for that… along with regular blood work to make sure the combination of it all isn’t ripping my liver to shreds in the process of keeping the rest of me alive.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Listening to US news outlets talk about UK elections. This past Monday Boris Johnson was elected leader of the Conservative Party. He was not, as every cable news program I watched was want to tell me, elected the next Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Now in every likelihood as the newly installed leader of the majority, he will become the next PM, but that won’t happen until he’s formally invited by Her Majesty to form a government in the Queen’s name. Pedantic? Yes. A technicality? Yes. But details matter when your stated aim is to inform the public about the news of the day… or at least they should.

2. The common cold. It’s the 13th day of dealing with the immediate or after effects of having my latest round of summer crud. I’m fortunate that whatever bug it is usually only catches up with me every couple of years. Even so, I’m left to wonder how the hell, fifty years after we landed men on the moon, we don’t have a better curative for the common cold than rest and drink plenty of water. If I’m paying $15 for ten days worth of decongestants and $9 for cough syrup, it feels like someone could reasonably charge five times as much for a product that actually made you feel better… although at this point, I’d cheerfully pay ten times as much.

3. Hydration. This bit is really a corollary to this week’s second annoyance, but one that feels like it deserves it’s own space. Since “drink plenty of fluids” is part of the generically accepted treatment for the common cold, I’ve been doing my best to follow that guidance. I’ve been drinking easily two or three times my usual daily amount of water (and substituting with something like Gatorade when one more glass of water sounds like the most disgusting and repulsive idea ever). The problem is that drinking plenty of fluids is only the input. For every extra ounce of liquid taken onboard, there is a corresponding increase in the amount of “output” once the body has processed it… which creates a need to get up two or three times through the night to take a damned leak. My position is that the guidance to drink lots of fluids directly contravenes the commonly accompanying requirement to get plenty of rest. Doing the former guarantees that I will not be able to do the latter.

A case against modernizing…

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It’s Wednesday. There would usually be a well prepared post showing up here. The time I had allocated for that today was supposed to be immediately after my 12:30 appointment with the dentist. That would have been fine except for the part where what should have been about an hour or 75 minutes getting a crown replaced turned into a three hour and thirty minute marathon in the chair. All because the magic computer that’s supposed to scan your teeth and order up a perfectly sized crown refused to work. They couldn’t give me a temporary crown until the base for the permanent one was scanned, measured, and sent off to the manufacturer.

Twenty years ago they had a pretty efficient way of taking those measurements. They’d take a mold of the base of the tooth and then send the mold off to be processed. It might have taken a few days longer to process, but you could be in and out of the chair without killing half a damned day. All things considered, I’m not sure digitizing what use to be a straightforward and quick process has really gained us anything in this case.

As it is, I’m disgusted by the whole process. Rather than writing a whole diatribe, though, I think I’ll just stick my nose in a book and nurse this sore as hell lower jaw for a bit.

Stoned…

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One of the great perks of hoarding sick leave early in my career is now having a giant stack of it available to use when I’m not feeling up to snuff. Today is one of those days – when the better part of valor was parking myself on the couch and flooding the system with medication instead of dragging myself to the office as if I thought I still had anything to prove to anyone.

Instead, after breakfast, and a few odds and ends, I sat here muttering at the dogs, facing a few hours where I’m nearly stoned into inaction. I’m not sure I could operate heavy equipment even if I wanted to. They may be on to something with that warning.

What they’re not on to, apparently, is the definition of the phrase “non-drowsy.” Hey, I like being as blitzed as the next guy, really, but damned if it wouldn’t be nice to have a option that could dry out my sinuses without sending me face down on the kitchen table. Yeah. That would be great.

Something of a novelty…

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After six days of waiting impatiently, I got a call back from the emergency vet Maggie visited last week. The good news is that the tests they ran confirmed the preliminary diagnosis of a urinary tract infection. After the long and growing list of canine ailments I’ve dealt with over the years, a run of the mill UTI was just about as good an outcome as I could hope to have.

Because in this household we can’t do anything entirely basic, Mag’s urine culture showed that the E. coli bacteria causing the infection wasn’t likely to be fully treated by the particular antibiotic originally given. It did, fortunately, help alleviate the worst of it. Since I’m looking for knock-down, drag-out eradication, though, I’m more than happy to spring for the second 10-day course of targeted antibiotics. It’ll be a small price to pay to get my girl to a place where she’s a) more comfortable, b) not as likely to pee all over the house in the dead of night, and c) can resume her duties as my 70 pound live action foot warmer.

A few weeks ago I laughingly posted on Facebook about a meme showing the average dog owner spends $1000 a year on care and feeding. That sounds awfully low to me, even for a bare minimum of food and medical care. As the science of human medicine marches forward, veterinary medicine marches along a few steps away… with the a corresponding increases in price for the kind of services that owners can now expect and demand.

I’m very thankful that this time around, we didn’t have to chase down anything too dramatic or crash into an aggressive treatment plan. You’ll forgive me, I hope. “Normal” illnesses are still something of novelty here.

Old dogs…

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People will spend a lot of time telling you about the trials and tribulations of life with a new puppy. Poke around Google and the internet is littered with Twitter and Instagram accounts dedicated to the foibles of puppy ownership.

You’ve got to dig a little deeper to find the blogs and message boards that talk about what it’s like to live with an elderly or ailing dog. It’s not the wide-eyed adorableness and puppy breath side of having pets. It’s the astronomical vet bills, fists full of medications, and a body slowly wearing out even when the spirit is still more than willing.

Old pets are heartbreaking not just because we can sense that our time together is growing short, but also because their compressed life cycle points us inexorably towards our own fate at some point in the future. It’s one of the reasons I’m always a little bit perplexed by people who give up and give away their old pets. They have no sense of the broader context of life.

My dear sweet Maggie had a bad morning today. After years of perfect behavior, I knew she was embarrassed and upset. I could read it all over her face – and especially in her eyes. Climbing out of bed to scrub the bedroom carpet wasn’t exactly on my list of things to do today, but looking at those cloudy brown eyes I couldn’t even bring myself to scold her. Going on 11 years together she’s earned the benefit of a few hundred doubts.

Maybe this morning was a one off. Maybe it’s a warning sign of things to come. I’m trying not to let the first thoughts of my sleep addled brain read too much into it. I hope beyond measure this isn’t something that will become the new normal… but if it does, we’ll cope. Maggie is the grand dame of the family I got to pick for myself. She’s entitled to expect that level of effort in her golden years.

I wrote most of this before seeing the bloody urine this evening that set my alarm bells clanging – and before I took off to the local emergency vet to have my girl checked over. Maybe I’m paranoid or at least a bit too cautious. I’ve also seen how fast things can go bad and when warning signs start stacking up, it’s not the moment to prioritize time or money.