Double the pleasure, double the fun

Tuesday at lunch Rich’s phone rang; it was a nurse from Sarah Cannon. “So I have a strange question … what color are the pills you’re taking now?” she casually asked. “Yellow. They used to be gray but this last time they were yellow. I thought that was strange but figured the color didn’t matter,” Rich replied. “Oh …. yeah, about that.” And that’s when we found out that the pharmacist had accidentally given Rich pills which were 150mg each instead of 75mg each. Since January 8th, Rich has been taking 300mg of his meds a day instead of 150mg. And from January 8th through January 29th while he dutifully took those pills, the Stryker house has been under a lot of stress.

The good news is the study has lots of data on what happens when you jump from 150mg to 300mg all at once. The bad news is that side effects include constant soul-crushing emo song inspiring headaches every waking hour. A corollary to that is your wife wanting to murder you in your sleep because your way of dealing with headaches is to be an asshole for three weeks straight.

We’re all better here but January of 2014 will have a ripple effect for quite a while. Historians will one day write doctoral theses on how it shaped decisions for ages, like the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife leading to World War I.

Originally I was going on today's Nashville trip with Rich to ask in very small words what we were all going to do about these headaches. But on the day before our flight, a great mystery was solved. And so I used my time to make it very clear how unhappy we have been for 21 days. I told the doctor that the pharmacist owed us a spa weekend or perhaps an Edible Arrangement. She assured me that it was not being taken lightly and that an entire investigation was in progress. She said there may be blood stains on our next bottle of pills we receive today. We can only assume that pharmacist was killed and his head set on a pike at the desk of the new pharmacist as a reminder to check his work.

Later today, we met with the nurses and they went over all of Rich's side effects over the last month in detail. The nurse apologized again to Rich. As I was gathering our things, she told him, "I know your wife talked to Dr. Bendell about how unhappy she was and I just want you to know we're very sorry." Rich says that there is now a note in his file about his wife, much like Elaine going to the doctor on Seinfeld. I'm okay with that so long as I get my Edible Arrangement.

We are now back on track with gray pills, only occasional headaches, and the foundation of our house settling back into its original place.

F U February

Long ago I read a study that January 26th is the most depressing day of the year, statistically speaking. All your bills from Christmas have come due, it’s still cold and dark, there are no holidays coming up. The morning of January 26th, my eardrum ruptured in a hotel room in Philly. Let it be known that ALA Midwinter meetings in Philly have not been good to me. The previous conference I was deathly ill. I recall laying my head on some bar height table while the Indianapolis Colts played and thinking I just wanted to die. I rallied to be charming for approximately 45 minutes of a user group and then went back to my pitiful state. I think I also called the Copyright Clearance Center “clunky”. The time before that, our hosted database servers were hit with a virus and Bossman and I had to drive back through the snow in my Mini Cooper at 9pm in order to work on them. And the time before that was my first ALA as an Atlas Systems employee and I was so angry at Bossman and Dan, I left the show early and they weren’t sure I was going to come to work the next week. So Philly has not been great to me.

However, the urgent care on Pallyunk Avenue in South Philly was very nice. And even though my insurance numbers changed at the beginning of the year so I had to pay $197 cash for my antibiotics and Percocet, I at least got antibiotics and Percocet. I felt like the Gunslinger from Stephen King’s Dark Tower series trying to get Keflex.

Oh, and my Southwest VISA credit card that we use for everything in order to gain points for our flights to Nashville was denied both at the Rite Aid pharmacy and the Monk’s Cafe for dinner. When I called to ask why that evening, the lady told me, “well the charge was in Pennsylvania and you clearly live in Virginia.” She then said they had no notes on their file that I might be traveling to another state that week, to which I said, “You’re not my mom!”

So it’s been a rough couple of weeks. My ear is still broken in that it is mostly healed but there is still a small hole (it makes a glub noise if I try to pop my ears) and so I am still half deaf. This means I am also functionally half-witted. I can’t hear anything outside of my head nearly as well as I can hear myself swallow or my heartbeat on the right side of my head All. Day. Long. It’s like I’ve been implanted with some Dr. Dre Beats device. Un-cha un-cha un-cha. It’s maddening.

Rich asked me if I was alright the other night. It was the fourth night in a row I had decided to go to bed before 9pm. He was starting to wonder if either I really disliked him or if there was some love interest hidden my Whirly Word game (note: “hobs” is not a word and you can’t convince me it is! Neither is "bosh"!). I told him that I was sad. We get up in the dark and we leave work in the dark and even during the day it’s gray and cold and wet. I couldn’t understand why I was so upset until I realized it was February 2nd and a groundhog had predicted our collective prolonged doom. Oh, that’s right. I hate February. It was like that moment in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy only instead of Thursdays, I never could quite get the hang of February.

So while Merle Haggard sings about making it through December, and statistics say that January 26th is to be avoided, my nemesis is the entire month of February. I’m sorry for all of those who have birthdays that month or happy anniversaries. But the entire month can die in a fire as far as I’m concerned. For the rest of the month I’m going to work on saying “F U February!” I will do my best to have good things happen in spite of the cold, dark, damp, tax filing, bill juggling nature of the month.

Technically this picture is from the last day of January, but we'll let it slide. Ian and I spent one glorious muddy hour at the zoo once the snow melted last week. He insisted on climbing up the rhino over his sharp, slippery horns but did not gorge himself and a nice other mom offered to take our picture. So there's step 1 of enjoying February.

In memory of Isis the elder statescat

I always have to do math to figure out how old our pets are. I went to college in 94, started dating Jeremy in November of 95, so I got Isis from Ross and Shrew in the spring of 96. She was one of the kitties from their cat Lucky's litter and I think may have been the only one to survive kittenhood. She was a tiny little black fuzzball and I loved her immediately. She has always been 100% my cat and has simply endured other humans in her vicinity. When we brought her home, we closed her in Jeremy's room because his friend was visiting and was allergic to her. Suddenly we heard a CRASH! and plaintive little "mew" sounds from the room. The kitten had climbed Jeremy's cloak draped over his closet doors stored behind the bedroom door. She made them topple over, smash into my computer monitor and hit my desk on the other side of the door. They also wedged themselves under the doorknob. So the tiny kitten weighing hardly a pound had managed to lock herself into the bedroom and it took Jeremy and Paul an hour of using ropes and levers to free her. The entire time, she sat on my monitor looking at them going "mew" over and over. And thus, we named her Isis after the Egyptian goddess of magic.

But really, she will always be Ms. Kitty. She and I have been through a lot. She was a punk cat in our apartments, she was a great huntress that brought me a dead mouse on my birthday, she was a tolerant roommate of our other pets. In 2002, she blossomed into mellow cat behavior once Jeremy and I split. In 2003, she got a horrible infection from cat scratch fever that cost $1000 (how does that even happen?). In 2005, she disappeared for days and after that became an indoor cat. In 2007, she had her cancerous monster paw removed. She used to sleep with me under the covers until she got too old to climb the stairs.

As she got older, she became more obstinate. When I told the vet today that she had started peeing outside of her litter box, she said, "and you didn't bring her in for that?" As my father said, it was not a medical problem but more a psychological issue. We were starting to run out of carpet tiles to wash and replace.

And then there was the getting on things she knew she shouldn't. "Oh, I'm not on the dining room table. I'm on this bag and it just happens to be on the dining room table."

And we won't even get into her escapades on the stove. But we were still sorting it all out. She had upgraded to a new cat palace containment space and we had a lovely weekend of her lounging around the kitchen and snuggling in my arms. This morning, though, she was not her normal elder statescat self. She was lying the litter box and wouldn't move. And when I pulled her out she just stretched out on the carpet and occasionally meowed her discontent at me. The whole drive to the vet, I had a feeling this would be the end, but I just wanted to be sure. When she was so cold they couldn't even register her temperature, that was further evidence that she was fading fast. So when the vet said that her pleural effusion issue usually meant "bad things" and that even if they treated her it would not give her much more time. So we let her go. She was exhausted. The saddest part was when I moved her tail and realized she was gone because it didn't move on its own anymore.

Had I been thinking clearly, I would have asked to take her home. We are usually bury in the back yard kind of folks. But there wasn't a check box on the form for "take dead cat home with you in a cardboard box" so I ended up checking the box for pet cremation. I feel like I should have gotten a discount since she only weighed six pounds but at least I know ahead of time to make sure our other cats stay under 15 pounds so they don't go up to the next price bracket.

It's sad and I miss her. Particularly late at night which was our time for me to sit and play on the computer while she curled up in my arms like an evil villain's sidekick. The other cats are way to squirmy for that but Ms. Kitty would happily sit in my arms for hours. But she lived a very long life. She had a good life full of many adventures and many illnesses she surpassed. And now she's enjoying all the sunbeams and grass she can muster.