Musings on a Small Life

My TSH, that is. Meaning I'm still hypo-thyroid. Which would explain a lot of things. And here I had a long post scheduled about how summer has almost come to an end and I haven't once gone anywhere with my camera to take pics, for the first time since I've had a digital camera. How I've spent the time feeling mostly bleh, and bah, humbug and assumed it was mainly due to Annie's loss. Yadda yadda. But gee, I guess it's mainly due to screwy hormones.  :-P Oh, not being a cook, I might have committed an act of asparagus desecration yesterday evening. Had cooked up some turkey sausage, and then sauteed some garlic and mushrooms in a bit of oil, tossed in some asparagus and "stir-fried" it up. Might not be what you're "supposed" to do with asparagus (I wouldn't know, other than steaming it), but it certainly was tasty! No wine on hand to "help" with the little bit of cooking I did, but I did have this: It was only a lite bee...

She was on the upper level, in one of the spare rooms, when I got up this AM, but went to the basement pronto. I did close the basement door before leaving for work, separating her from the boys to see if she'll eat anything. I didn't see her eat any supper last night....or breakfast yesterday AM. So I had a "radical" thought while coming in to work today. I started to wonder if long term use of methimazole  for her hyper-thyroidism is causing or exacerbating these health problems. Or if her current T4 level of 20-something (range is 11 to 46) is too low for Annie . If she functions better in the upper ranges of normal or even slightly elevated. I am going to ask the vet if I safely can stop the thyroid meds for the short-term, maybe 2 or 3 weeks, and see how she does. I know hyper-t can't be left untreated, but it might be worthwhile to see if she perks up at all, given that I've seen such a decline in her since she's been diagnosed and on those me...

First, Annie. I had tried to take her in on the 23rd for the urine analysis and blood work, but they had only one tech on, and she needs 2+ to hold her/manage her. So I'm taking her tomorrow. Prior to Christmas I was told by one of their receptionists that the lab in the Toronto area that does the T4 testing was closed between Christmas and New Year's, but today I was told that's not the case. I'm kicking myself because if I had called earlier to double check, I could have had her in on Monday or Tuesday AM, or even today. I'm very worried about her; she's nothing but skin and bone in spite of the fact that her appetite seems the same. Kidney disease? Or cancer? I would have thought her November blood work would show something amiss, other than BUN and Creatinine, if it was cancer. But maybe not. She wants to go out as usual, she still plays, but I can tell you that she's not the same cat that she was prior to her hyper-thyroid diagnosis last year. She...

After Monday's stressful day at work, I woke on Tuesday AM with one of the ice-pick-over-the-eye headaches that has persisted through today. (I'm starting to feel better at the moment.) I did drag my butt into work, but it wasn't fun. Yesterday afternoon I met with the co-founders of SNKI (Spay Neuter Kingston Initiative) to put faces to the names I've been emailing with and to see if there's something small, behind the scenes, that I might be able to help with. In conjunction with their efforts to set up a low cost spay/neuter clinic in Kingston, they want to establish a feral cat colony registry. I've offered to be the data-keeper for that, if they are able to get this going. Today I went in to work, still with the headache--big mistake. Left at 8:50AM and headed home to bed. Two hours of sleeping still didn't make a whit of difference, and I ended up "giving back" the bit of lunch I had choked down, to the garden. (Didn't have time to...