Thursday, June 10, 2010

Change of plans

So for the past three days, I was supposed to be here:Instead, only a few hours before I was supposed to leave, shit hit the fan big time. My baby cat (alright, she's 13) seemed to get a bit of a cold - low appetite, snotty nose, slight lethargy - which excluded her from staying at the kennel we'd reserved. So I called up my friend the pet-sitter and scheduled a vet appointment that same day to find out what exactly it was and get some antibiotics or something, thinking it would be a routine fix and I could just leave that evening instead.

Well, as you might have guessed already, it was not exactly an easy or routine kinda deal. Seems that the hyperthyroid medication (it's pretty common for older cats to get this; the vet prescribes these exact pills ALL the time) gave her some incredibly rare, very serious reaction. Basically, it killed her immune system - instead of her white blood count skyrocketing because of the infection, it was practically gone. That's not an exaggeration - at least two of the vets I talked to used the same phrasing.She got very severely dehydrated and wouldn't eat, as well as having this horrible bronchial infection that clogged some airways with mucus and collapsed two of her lung sacs.

She stopped responding to anything at all - you know how cats' ears will usually flick when they hear something? Yeah, not a twitch. She barely moved at all - I'd put her down in one place and there she'd stay for hours if I didn't move her. On the drive over to the special vet school we got referred to from our normal vet, who simply couldn't handle a case like this, she overheated and started panting like a dog and made a mess all over the blanket I wrapped her in (all I can say is, thank you gods of semi-absorbent fleece, you saved my car and my jeans). It was pretty excruciatingly worrying, to say the least. I spent a lot of time staring very hard at fluorescent lights on the ceilings of exam rooms.Here she is as of yesterday evening. The wrapped-up paws aren't casts, just the way they give IVs (fluids and antibiotics) to cats so they don't chew the needle out. Fever's gone, as is the dehydration, mostly. Her blood info is slowly improving, and the docs have told me that now she's off the bad meds, it should continue to do that. No one wants to give me an actual "yes, you can breathe again, she's out of the woods," but I guess noncommittal answers are kind of mandated in the medical profession, and everyone's mood seems pretty optimistic, at least.

So I've had the house entirely to myself while the rest of the folks are at the beach. Crossfit started back up and I am hurting like a bitchmonster. The first two workout focused heavily on legs, specifically quads, so I can't really bend mine right now. Stairs are not so much the fun times.



  • 400m-sprint to warm up
  • 100 squats for time (3-something, without stopping even ONCE. yay me!)
  • max situps in either 3 or 5 minutes (can't remember time or reps)
  • then i puked
  • max KB swings (American, 25lb) in 5 minutes: 74
  • 400m sprint for time (can't remember time but I was first)
  • 400m sprint
  • WOD: run 400m, 50 front squats with 15lb ball; run 400m, 40 push presses with ball; run 400m, 30 walking lunges with ball overhead, arms extended; run 400m, 20 situps; run 400m
Wednesday was pretty horrible (not like Monday was a picnic). I started hitting the wall barely into the squats. Really need to remember that I've been off regular training for 3 weeks, so I can't just jump back to my normal go-get-em-tiger-hooah-rawr level of working out. Part of it is also food. Now that I'm back to this, I've been trying to come up with a plan to get me back on the Zone track, which means seriously limiting pizza, which means brown-bagging it like every day.

For now, though, I'm celebrating with the food money amam gave me for the week. Behold:
  • little plain green (and purple) salad, mostly to take up space
  • squid salad. or octopus. some kind of sea creetur. you get me.
  • 4 fake-crab cali rolls with avocado and cucumber; eel, shrimp, salmon and tuna nigiri
  • a couple pieces of delicious dagoba xocolatl
  • blueberries with a drizzle of real local organic free-range CREAM.
  • and like a gallon of water
This was on Monday, and it was totally the mother of all post-workout meals. Subsequent ones haven't quite been up to that standard, but all of them included ridiculous amounts of blueberries (they had 2-lb containers on sale. TWO POUNDS!!!)

That's it for now.


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