Monday, March 28, 2011

Shadow Cat ~ Wicked Willow


Shadow cat Willow loves to find the sunbeam.

"Let us be honest; most of us rather like our cats to have a streak of wickedness. I should not feel quite easy in the company of any cat that walked around the house with a saintly expression." ~ Beverly Nichols
Willow loves to find the sunlight in shadows and hide or sit, half in and half out of light. She is a wicked cat... dominant.. bossy.. and yet angelic when she gazes up into your eyes. She barges in on any other cat who is eating or getting a pat on the head. In fact, now that they all love a little wet food in the evening, I sit and guard the old lady, Chloe as she eats. She eats slowly and Willow gulps hers down. Thank goodness I still have the clout as head honcho of their world.. all I have to do is point at Willow as she starts to sneak up on Chloe and she stops, stares and when she realizes that I will not blink.. she backs off. Of course this means I have to spend ten to fifteen minutes in the eating area simply sitting in a chair... alert at all times. It is at this time I am grateful for the Kindle.

In other news, Picasa and the usually simply "Blog This" button to send my pictures to Blogger is somehow broken... defunct... not doing what it says it is doing and generally acting all looney-toon on me. This was supposed to be a post for Shadow Shot Sunday, but the pictures I thought I uploaded simply disappeared. I see that at least two others have posted on the Picasa forum that they have the same problem.. now, if only a Google employee will see the problem and FIX IT!!!!!

It has been a group of "those" days in a row. I took Mom in for an outpatient procedure... an iron infusion, since she seems to be unable to absorb iron. She was in the middle of a flare up of gout that her primary physician didn't catch on her last labs... her uric acid was very elevated and her office did not pass on our call nor did they call back. So her nephrologist reluctantly gave her medication to decrease the uric acid but on Friday her foot was still in the stages of progression with increased swelling, pain, warmth and redness that was branching out across her foot and up her leg. This was very worrisome to me.. so when her blood pressure spiked before the iron infusion and she began having chest pain and they cancelled the procedure and wanted her to go to the ER, I was not too upset... I really wanted them to check that foot. I know her blood pressure does this when she is concerned about IV's and in pain and after I looked at her nitroglycerine pump and saw that it expired in October 2009.. well, the foot was my prime concern. I must say that Chesapeake hospital was very efficient... she didn't have to wait in the lobby when we got to the ER and they did an EKG, drew cardiac enzymes, did a chest x-ray and an ultrasound of the vessels in that leg and foot within a half an hour. There were no clots in that leg... major relief. We spent the rest of the day in the ER and then they kept her in observation overnight. Her cardiologist came to see her in observation and decided not to stress her with the stress test with her gout flared up and such. A bit of morphine IV relieved the pain in her foot and that chronic pain in her back that has been really bad lately and I brought her home on Saturday morning.

So, now I have to somehow balance a gout diet with a diabetic diet and most things are diametrically opposed... low protein, high complex carbs for gout... high protein, low carbs for diabetes. There must be a happy medium in there somewhere. The biggest problem and the biggest asset to help both the diabetes and the gout is good old H2O... water. I got 64 oz down her yesterday... and all the time she complained and fought and said she was nauseated from it and she just couldn't swallow it and... well, the foot is getting better. If anyone has ideas of how to get the required water down her every day without devoting all my time to .... "drink water", "is the glass empty yet", "we haven't gotten the required amount down yet", "do you WANT to go on dialysis?"... well, let me know.

That is why I have been out of pocket.... oh, yes.... and it froze last night... temps down to 28℉. We even got a little sleet when the rain first started and folks just north of us received almost a half an inch of snow. And here I thought spring had sprung. I sure do hope they get the Picasa blog this thing fixed and soon.

(end of post)
Cats on Tuesday

10 comments:

Abby said...

Roxanne
Beautiful shot of Willow.
Blogger put out that there is a problem within the html of the photos, and if you look you'll see that the height and width ratios are "0" and those need to simply be removed. (the entire thing) and then it will load properly.
Don't know if that will be an ongoing issue or not.
Hope your Mom is better,
>^..^< >^..^< >^..^< >^..^<
purrin
xoxox

Ginny Hartzler said...

I just noticed these little bottles in the grocery store, about the size of a mustard bottle. They are water enhancers! After I got home I happened to see an ad for them and read that you pour a bit in your water, you control the strength and add however much you want. They are basically flavoring and color I think. But your mom might like this, and it might be fun for her to play with.

Kenju said...

AHA. There it is. (the comment box) Your parents are so lucky to have you with them! Most people have only a small idea of when to call the doctor or go to the hosp.

Florida Furkids &Angel Sniffie said...

Willow looks magnificent in that photo!!

You have an awful lot going on in your life right now. We'll hope things calm down for you. It seems that health problems often end up becoming very complicated.

The Florida Furkids and Angel Sniffie

Ginny Hartzler said...

I just saw another commercial for that new water enhancer, and it's called Mio. It is in a really small bottle that you can put in a pocket.

Sandra said...

what a long and painful post you have here. so sorry to hear about the gout, my husband has it, but not this bad. he eats fresh pineapple every day to combat it, but does not have the diabetes.
you are number 5 today so far that is having the problem. i don't use picasa so it has not hit me YET. lots of people with photos disapearing. hope bloger gets you fixed up today and your mom gets better fast. no idea how to get water down her. what i do for me, is put 20 oz bottle of water in the fridge and then i know when i have had enough because all the bottles are empty. it helps me count what i drink.

Gattina said...

That's a beautiful picture ! I use Picasa album, download my pictures there and copy the code on my post. So I don't even know the button you are talking about. I never had problems. I never use the down loading thing on the post either because it sometimes doubles or triples the photos and then you have to pay for more space !

Ramblingwoods said...

Now I see your Mom's issues...sigh.. those are in conflict with one another...lucky that she has you to be her advocate and with your medical knowledge... we have a top cat also...and he is a stinker...

Anonymous said...

The Pines-an in mansion steakhouse offers let them to gamble without any initial deposit. [url=http://www.onlinecasinoburger.co.uk/]http://www.onlinecasinotaste.co.uk/[/url] online casinos uk You volition also get many of casinos where you can get links for your casinos and gaming sites. http://www.onlinecasinoburger.co.uk/

Anonymous said...

more than than 1.5 zillion dwelling house buyers received Either a nonpayment or auction posting, or had their homes seized by Banks in their writing Spell participating in writing workshops facilitated by local authors at committal to writing cantonment. [url=http://juanmanuel-rey.com/201105422-la-revolucion-espanola-2-0-destruir-el-movimiento-de-indignados-en-8-pasos/#comment-13683]source[/url] Read This Ok, enough, already; nous over to the liveblog post and lovesome while jogging in central Parking lot -- but reported this two months afterwards the fact. http://guin-iro-bike.no.coocan.jp/user-cgi/guin_keiji.cgi