Grit, Kit, Spit and Q

The title is an example of shorthand for the pissed off and that's who I am today.

My beautiful Blu goes back to the vet tomorrow teatime to check progress since draining 500cc or more fluid from his lungs two weeks ago.  He has Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy.  It is no consolation to know that 1 in 3 Maine Coon have it; it's a genetic disease of the heart muscle. The effects of that are not good at all.  Tomorrow we'll be discussing referral to a cat heart specialist and may get some clue if he is likely to survive for 3 months or 5 years, still less than half the average life-span of a non-HCM Maine Coon.  There IS an outside chance he can live a normal lifespan with constant meds.  He's being such a darling about taking them twice-daily - it helps that they are liquid and not tablets.  Please gods, let me find out tomorrow the meds are working well and if continuing with them, even if it's for the rest of his life, will make that life longer.

I am devastated.  I love him so much and so don't want to lose him.  MD is no help, no FC.  He thinks I should have told Di already, that I was worried enough to take him to the vet and should be giving her constant updates.  For me,  in her position, having said someone could keep the cat I fostered with them, I would be frantic not being able to do anything from a different country and would prefer to be told when it was properly identified and everything possible known.  Still, I must be wrong.

The E seems to be under control for now at least and I loved being able to spend quality time with my sister (though I missed Blu something rotten)  My beloved son is a saint, he was here looking after BLU, medicating him, feeding him up and giving me near-daily reports: all of which were he's OK, eating OK, taking his meds, breathing better and being himself, though quiet.  That's all true but: I still think he's too thin, and too quiet even though he is just a loving and just as addicted to being fussed over.

See you around

Yesterday, my belovéd grandson managed to accidentally knock Mark's glass of wine over his laptop keyboard.  They'd been having a good time playing chess after we'd fetched the children from school and were both involved in some computer game Mark was playing.  Mark told him quite forcibly "get away from me, child" so Alex did.  I told Alex he should apologise to Mark and his wee face was so concerned when he whispered to me "I've forgotten his name" then, reminded, went off to apologise.

Everything went downhill between us from there on, I said I would have to replace it if it had died but that wasn't accepted, later, after he'd sat in the garden for a long time, I asked if he was OK, he said "yes" in one of those voices so I said "then why doesn't it sound like it?".  That got me "No, I'm not OK, I'm just not, now leave me alone" so I did.

Things got a little better later while he tried to get the keyboard off the laptop to check it, without much success; eventually it did fire up but appears to have a sticky key so he couldn't even get past his windows logon as the password gets taken over by the sticky key.  He needs to log in to some jobsite every day or have to visit the gov't A4E type people daily.  OK, so he accepted that he could use my old laptop with the broken casing and  I (had already) accepted he'd be going home today instead of whenever.  So.  I went to bed hoping we and the laptop would be back to normal in the morning, he came up after a while but was in the spare room when I woke up.  Fine.  After he got up, I muttered 'morning' but that was the only word exchanged before he collected and packed his stuff; I asked if I could give him the fare, he said"no, you're all right", which made me feel like a total shit since I know he's flat broke.  Then he gave me a hug and a couple of pats on the back before saying "see you around" and leaving.

Made a right mess of my day that did, not that I'd been full of joy the night before.  I'll cope, just wish it wasn't necessary; maybe I'm overreacting by taking see you around as last words but that's how it feels.  Letting people get close to me seems like a bloody stupid thing to do, it seldom ends well and though I let it happen less often than I used to.  Life really sucks sometimes.

Round 2

I'm now convalescent from a second craniotomy on June 5th to re-clip the aneurysm which ruptured in July 2011.  It's all much less difficult than last time, undoubtedly because my brain wasn't swimming in toxic blood this time so problems are 'only' healing from surgery.  I'm still in the final stretch of recovery from surgery for a malignant melanoma diagnosed in December, excised in January followed by WLE and reconstruction in February.  My blog for that is on Macmillan.org.uk (not for the squeamish) I've had enough of life-threatening situations.

Positive, positive, positive.  My social calendar refuses to lie down or go away so I have various places, people and events to look forward to Battleproms and a possible trip to the Lake District at the end of July, Edinburgh in August and a short holiday "somewhere hot" late October/early November to celebrate the end of Sid's and my sixtieth year as a threesome holiday with Mark because we all get on