Cat Illness Symptoms

125/365: 2006-2007


Image by bloody marty mix
Sunday, 28 September 2008.

40 Years in 40 Days [ view the entire set ]
An examination and remembrance of a life at 40.

For the 40 days leading up to my 40th birthday, I intend to use my 365 Days project to document and bear in mind my life and lay bare what defines me. 40 years, 40 qualities, 40 days.

Year 39: 2006-2007

At the starting of October, 2006, Kurt and I were beside ourselves with excitement. Kurt’s team, the Cardinals, and my team, the Tigers, would meet in the Planet Series. We joked about how romantic and ideal it was, and we trash-talked every single other’s teams, gently ribbing and teasing when an individual created an error or struck out.

I would miss component of that series, nonetheless, due to the fact I was in the hospital. I’d had an episode of heart palpitations whilst driving to work. I’d constantly had occasional palpitations, even as a teenager, but they were constantly over just as soon as they’d begun. This time, they did not quit. I felt my field of vision closing in front of me, so I pulled over to the side of the road, certain I was going to pass out. I believed, you have got to be kidding me. This is how I’m going to go? Sitting by the side of the highway throughout the morning commute to my soulless corporate cubicle? And then it stopped. I sat there for a minute, just breathing and producing certain that it really was over, then got back on the road and drove to my office. When I got there, I told my boss what had occurred, and that I necessary to go to the hospital to get checked out.

When I walked into the emergency space and told them that I thought I was obtaining heart difficulty, they didn’t even bother writing my name down just before whisking me back into the remedy area. They hooked me up to each and every conceivable machine, did a CT scan, and took vials of blood to test. Nothing at all turned up. They suspected it was a combination of anxiety, lack of sleep, and having just finished a course of prescription decongestants, but they kept me overnight for observations anyway. They set me up in a space in the cardiac wing with wires hanging from my chest and abdomen. Nurses down the hall monitored my heart rate and blood pressure. The next morning, they did an echocardiogram (heart ultrasound). Nevertheless nothing. It was time to face details, the medical doctor said. I was too stressed. I needed to chill out. I rolled my eyes. There was no way that was going to take place. In addition to the stressful job, I had also begun taking style and metalworking classes to indulge my interest in jewelry design. My schedule wasn’t going to be getting any less difficult for months. Then, as if to mock his personal admonition to unwind, he informed me that the CT scan had turned up a mysterious mass on my liver. And hence began my weird wellbeing odyssey.

The doctors suspected that the mass on my liver was a giant hemangioma (basically a massive, blood-filled, internal birthmark), but they essential to do an MRI to be certain. The MRI confirmed the diagnosis. I had a quite large blood-filled sac on my liver, and if it broke open, I could die. However, the surgery to eliminate it would be just as probably to kill me, so my finest choice was to simply make confident I in no way got hit genuinely challenging in the liver. Properly, OK.

The MRI, in turn, had turned up a thing hunting suspiciously like gall stones. I was right away scheduled for a consultation with a gastrointestinal surgeon. The surgeon was iffy on no matter whether or not to get rid of the gall bladder. If I did not want youngsters, he mentioned, it was a no brainer: leave it in. If I had any plans to get pregnant in the future, then it was a bit much more complicated. If I had a gallstone attack although pregnant, it could be both excruciating and dangerous, but, he noted, also extremely unlikely. I was acquiring some symptoms that were somewhat constant with gall stones, but he felt they were probably something much more pedestrian, like IBS. He shoved me along to a gastroenterologist.

The gastroenterologist (who for all the planet looked exactly like a guy I when had a large crush on) decided he’d far better do a colonoscopy and endoscopy. I reported for &quotduty&quot and just as the medical doctor (who, did I mention, looked specifically like a guy I the moment had a enormous crush on?) sat down to go to work, I gratefully slipped below the anesthesia. When I awoke, I had a vague memory of choking on some thing, and practically nothing else. Kurt stayed at my bedside whilst I gradually came out of the fog, breaking wind like a frat boy at a Mexican rodeo. Now that is adore, I believed. The -oscopies did not turn up something, either, and so I walked away from my medical odyssey with nothing but a smaller bank account and a paranoid desire that no one ever punch me in the liver.

That was not to be the end of my trials and tribulations, even though. In late July, shortly prior to my brother was to come to Chicago for a pay a visit to, my apartment was invaded by bird mites. The closet in my bedroom featured a mysterious portal to the outside. It had been boarded up loosely and, other than some idle speculation as to what its original purpose was, I did not think a lot about it. That spring, some pigeons had begun nesting there, and when the babies hatched it set up such a ruckus that I couldn’t sleep whenever they were awake. I anxiously awaited the day the babies would leave the nest. Regrettably, when they did, the mites that had been feeding on them, poured into the house through the portal in search of other food. They located me.

The next month was hell. Pest control could do absolutely nothing to stop them. Despite them obtaining told me that they wouldn’t be interested in biting me since I was not a bird, my body was covered, head to toe, with painful welts. I began to analysis the issue on the internet, and what I uncovered filled me with horror and hopelessness. Bird mites are notoriously challenging to get rid of, appear almost random in their alternative of target (typically leaving other folks in the very same property untouched), and impervious to most pest manage chemical compounds. Their life cycle can be rapid, reproducing and multiplying after just days, or they can adjust to sub-optimal environments by slowing their life cycle. I felt trapped and doomed, and I essential to get out, so I just walked away. I took myself and the cats and some clothing (dryer heat is one particular of the handful of things that kills the mites outright) and left the apartment and practically anything I owned. I got the cats cleaned up at the vet, and then moved in with Don W., an old roommate and buddy of mine from college. I got in the shower with my clothes on, stripped down in the hot water, place my clothes in a garbage bag, and enjoyed the feeling of being safe when once more. I lived with Don W. for the subsequent three months, until I was able to get a short-term lease on a furnished apartment near work. I was preparing to move to Kentucky to be with Kurt in January.

Kurt, meanwhile, had plans of his very own. My birthday occurred to fall on Homecoming weekend that year, and he had some thing particular in mind for a birthday gift. On Friday evening (the night just before my birthday), as we had been getting into our sleeping bags in the tent, Kurt asked me to wait a moment ahead of going to sleep. He had a thing he desired to show me. He turned about and fumbled about in his bag in the corner of the tent. When he turned back to me, he was holding out a tiny white box, opened to reveal a ring. He put it in my hands and said, &quotI do not want to live yet another day acquiring to introduce you as just my girlfriend.&quot We cried and laughed and hugged until our eyes grew too droopy to see clearly, then snuggled back down into our sleeping bags and fell asleep.

Who am I?

I am moderately healthful, really.

By all rights, I really should be a full wreck. The genetic odds are stacked against me: diabetes, heart illness, cancer, mental illness. The way of life odds are stacked against me. I’m body fat and have spent many years abusing the hell out of physique. And however, I seem to have remained mainly untouched by the worst of what ought to have come to me by now. I’m most likely living on borrowed time, but for now, it seems to be operating.

I credit the generous application of bacon.

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