a rambly sort of update
Aug. 8th, 2013 04:06 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_siobhanI'm still reading here, but not updating so much lately. I don't really have much to say. There was a funeral. Tons of people showed up. I'm back to work now. Occasionally I go to the condo and help pick through things to move out. I keep seeing things that I think would make her laugh, and then I remember. Things are gradually getting back to normal, whatever that is.
I never did find Feargal's old vet, so we took him to a local clinic. His kidneys and thyroid are fine. He does test positive for mild diabetes - minor enough not to treat in their opinion, but it does probably account for the heavy water intake - and an elevated white cell count. They did some more tests that ruled out a viral infection and said, "Well, it's probably a tumor, but we would need to do x-rays to see what we're dealing with."
So Axe and I talked about it and agreed that if it's a tumor we're not going to treat it. The vet thinks he's about 15 years old, and I would rather make sure he's comfortable and happy for a short while than put him through a bunch of invasive and possibly painful procedures to extend his life. We did decide to go ahead with the x-rays though, because I figured with more information they'd be able to tell us how long he has and what to look out for when he starts to get too sick.
So the vet did the x-rays. And then came back and said, "Well, he has a mass against the inside of his chest wall, but we would have to do an ultrasound and a biopsy to see what we're dealing with". Which makes me wonder if we go for the ultrasound and the biopsy whether or not the response will be, "Well, he has X but we will have to do Y and Z tests to see what we're dealing with". Anyway, the pointlessness of the x-ray makes me kind of disinclined to put him through the stress of stuffing him into the cat carrier yet again and dragging him off for more tests that won't actually answer my questions.
The x-rays did tell us, however, that he has an enlarged liver and severe arthritis in his hips. So we're switching him to a special food and buying a heated cat bed. We found some fish oil in a bag of my sister's stuff so we've already been adding it to his food.
Right now our living room is full of boxes of stuff from the basement. Axel's records all got swamped and the covers water-damaged so I think he's decided to just rip the ones that we don't already have on mp3 and get rid of the whole collection. He's not happy about it - he's been collecting them for decades - but with the water damage their only value now is the music itself and we can have that without the physical albums. It's still pretty sad-making to go through them all and see how badly they fared.
While Axel is in charge of dealing with the music, I've been taking care of the photos. On top of the two milk crates full of photographs at our place, I also retrieved six boxes of photos from Fiona's condo and I've been gradually going through them. A lot of them are just scenery shots from her various travels but there are also a lot of family members. She has quite a few she must have gotten from our parents that are old shots of family in Ireland, so they are pretty cool to have. I'm planning to put together an online photo album so the whole family can access them.
And somewhere, in the middle of hospitals and funerals and floods and animals, our mortgage came up for renewal. So I guess we're going to keep on living here for a while.
Life is a very strange place.
I never did find Feargal's old vet, so we took him to a local clinic. His kidneys and thyroid are fine. He does test positive for mild diabetes - minor enough not to treat in their opinion, but it does probably account for the heavy water intake - and an elevated white cell count. They did some more tests that ruled out a viral infection and said, "Well, it's probably a tumor, but we would need to do x-rays to see what we're dealing with."
So Axe and I talked about it and agreed that if it's a tumor we're not going to treat it. The vet thinks he's about 15 years old, and I would rather make sure he's comfortable and happy for a short while than put him through a bunch of invasive and possibly painful procedures to extend his life. We did decide to go ahead with the x-rays though, because I figured with more information they'd be able to tell us how long he has and what to look out for when he starts to get too sick.
So the vet did the x-rays. And then came back and said, "Well, he has a mass against the inside of his chest wall, but we would have to do an ultrasound and a biopsy to see what we're dealing with". Which makes me wonder if we go for the ultrasound and the biopsy whether or not the response will be, "Well, he has X but we will have to do Y and Z tests to see what we're dealing with". Anyway, the pointlessness of the x-ray makes me kind of disinclined to put him through the stress of stuffing him into the cat carrier yet again and dragging him off for more tests that won't actually answer my questions.
The x-rays did tell us, however, that he has an enlarged liver and severe arthritis in his hips. So we're switching him to a special food and buying a heated cat bed. We found some fish oil in a bag of my sister's stuff so we've already been adding it to his food.
Right now our living room is full of boxes of stuff from the basement. Axel's records all got swamped and the covers water-damaged so I think he's decided to just rip the ones that we don't already have on mp3 and get rid of the whole collection. He's not happy about it - he's been collecting them for decades - but with the water damage their only value now is the music itself and we can have that without the physical albums. It's still pretty sad-making to go through them all and see how badly they fared.
While Axel is in charge of dealing with the music, I've been taking care of the photos. On top of the two milk crates full of photographs at our place, I also retrieved six boxes of photos from Fiona's condo and I've been gradually going through them. A lot of them are just scenery shots from her various travels but there are also a lot of family members. She has quite a few she must have gotten from our parents that are old shots of family in Ireland, so they are pretty cool to have. I'm planning to put together an online photo album so the whole family can access them.
And somewhere, in the middle of hospitals and funerals and floods and animals, our mortgage came up for renewal. So I guess we're going to keep on living here for a while.
Life is a very strange place.
(no subject)
Date: 2013-08-09 03:16 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2013-08-09 03:39 am (UTC)