How the World Changed in a Month

Roughly a month ago I restarted my cleanse diet. I didn’t have the miraculous return to health like the first time I tried it, as I established in the last post. I did, however, have a few weird and disappointing discoveries.

After abstaining for a while, I decided to have a bit of coffee. I rely on caffeine to get through a day awake, and I don’t have a problem with the caffeine in tea, so I thought this would be no big deal. I had a cup of an unidentified flavored coffee in my fridge, and it gave me a stomach ache. I gave it a few days, then tried again with organic, plain coffee and seemed to not react. I added cocoa powder (soy and corn free) and had the stomach aches like I had with gluten. I tried chocolate almond milk (again, soy and corn free) and had the same bad reaction. A friend suggested I try raw cocoa nibs, and again, the same. So far, I know I have a problem with cocoa and possibly coffee (unlikely, but still possible. I should test more once I am completely healed). On the bright side, I told this to the acupuncturist, and she did a treatment that should correct that problem. I have to wait until my gut has completely healed to try again, so we’ll just see.

I added rice and potatoes back, too, and the jury’s out as to whether they are a problem. These, too, will be retested after abstaining for awhile. How does a person get so many devastating food allergies/intolerances?

Near the end of the cleanse, something even weirder happened. I woke up one morning and, while putting in my contacts, noticed that the whites of my eyes had turned yellow. I went to a doctor and she confirmed that my eyes were still yellow. She ran blood tests to check liver function, and since I hadn’t had a thyroid panel in a long time, ran that, too.

I was able to follow-up with my regular Nurse Practitioner, C, a week later. “Your tests are perfectly normal,” she tells me. “Every value you have is in the center of the range. Good job with the self-regulation of your thyroid hormone dosage, by the way – that’s perfectly in the center of the range, too.” I should point out, if I haven’t already, that C told me to dose my thyroid meds based on my heart symptoms rather than worrying about the lab values. Better to be hypothyroid than in heart failure as far as I’m concerned.

She then asked, “Were you vaccinated for Hepatitis B?” I told her I was, right before college. “Well, that’s odd – you have no antibodies, no immunity to Hepatitis B. I think you’re a non-responder as far as vaccines are concerned.” Makes sense – I’ve contracted diseases I’ve been vaccinated against (like pertussis) or already contracted and should have subsequent immunity to (like chicken pox – I got it twice). This explains a lot, though. My immune system is perfectly happy to attack tissues that belong in my body, but send in a foreign body and the immune system fails to respond. This, to me, is clear proof that something is wrong with my immune system. More confirmation for the ME/CFS diagnosis.

A few days later, I started to feel ill, My lymph nodes swelled up, I got a little congested… I (foolishly) thought I just caught a cold. Heh. I wish. It turned into the full-on flu. I suffered from that for most of a week, and have spent the last week recovering. The acupuncturist offered her theory about the situation. She said that maybe the jaundice was the first sign of the flu. Maybe it got stuck in the most vulnerable organ I had and then replicated there. I could buy that. Nothing about me is normal.

Luckily, I recovered in time to attend a conference on autoimmune disease at a local hospital today. I will devote a full post to that in the future (I’m no longer going to try to predict when, as my illnesses keep getting in the way). I am glad I made it to that conference – it seems that the research is going in the right direction.

In the midst of all this, I made a career move. Dr B has been telling me that I should get into patient advocacy. He thinks that I have some really good life experience, and I have a lot to add to that field. After dealing with a situation in which a friend was being bullied into seeing what other people thought was “the right doctor” for her condition, I realized Dr B was right. I have had to deal with so many health care choices, doctors who don’t listen (or are just plain wrong), other people who think they have THE answer, and other trials and tribulations of being chronically and mysteriously ill that I have a special insight into the whole process. An insight that I can use to help others get what they want and need out of health care.

I looked up information on how to become a patient advocate and learned that really, there is no process. You can just decide to do the job. There are no certifications or degree programs. There are classes and certificate programs, but they don’t actually certify you to do anything – they’re just educational. I might take some of those classes at some point (especially the HIPAA classes), but yeah, I’m ready now.

My plan is to make educational material and do talks about how to get what you want out of health care. Medicine is an uncertain science, and there is rarely only one right way to treat yourself, especially with a chronic condition. I want to point out that patients have rights to refuse treatment if they so choose. I want people to realize the doctor works for them, and that if he/she isn’t working out, they don’t have to stay with that particular practitioner. I want to teach people how to take control of the situation by doing their own research and getting a doctor to listen. I want people to understand that they, not the doctor, make the healing happen. I want them to really think about how they want to care for their health (i.e. natural vs. pharmaceutical, preventative vs. reactive) and go get that. So, I’ve started by attending the autoimmune diseases conference. I’ve also got a nebulous outline for my first talk.

I’ve already had to put my patient advocacy skills to work with our fluffy friend, Duck. For the last few years, Duck has been plagued with diarrhea. I could usually make it go away with lots of probiotics, but this time, it stopped working. I took Duck into the vet and learned he lost roughly half a pound (this is a lot for a twelve pound cat). The vet did an ultrasound, and showed me that Duck has inflammatory bowel disease. His intestinal walls had thickened in some areas, indicating that immune cells are coalescing. The doctor then informed me that Duck would need to be on corticosteroids and chemotherapy for the rest of his life.

I reminded the vet that I foster, and suppressing Duck’s immune system long-term seemed like a poor choice, given that I invite cat disease into my home with every litter I take. “You’ll just have to cross your fingers with that, I guess,” he told me. I asked what long-term effects the chemo might have, and he said that there was an office cat who had been on chemo for seven years and he was just fine. The vet then gave Duck a steroid shot and sent me home with the prednisone and chemo meds.

I left with the medication, and burst into tears on the way home. The vet nurses told me that I would have to give Duck the chemo meds while wearing gloves – that the medicine wasn’t safe for me to touch. I thought about the idea that, if the medicine isn’t safe for me to touch, how could it be safe for my two-year-old baby to take? I always knew he could die young, but to die of the effects of chemo? I then realized that the principles I wanted to convey in my patient advocacy practice apply here. I sought a second opinion with a holistic vet.

This vet, along with several of my cat harboring friends, thought the suggested protocol was extreme. The holistic vet offered me supplements, along with a vaccine detox (unlike in human medicine, veterinary medicine recognizes adverse reactions to vaccines) to try first. Luckily, Duck likes the supplements, and started eating as soon as the steroids wore off.

He hasn’t had any recurrence of the diarrhea yet. I’m not taking steroids off the table entirely, but I am never going to do the chemo. I decided (after reading about how the outcomes of most cancers do not improve despite treatment) that I wouldn’t treat cancer in myself or my cats (save for easily treated versions like early stage melanoma). No, I cannot justify the use of chemo in any circumstance.

In other news, I picked up a foster kitten about a week ago. Meet Mozzie:

When he sits, Mozzie has a heart on his left flank and a broken heart on his right flank. When he stands up, the markings are less obvious – they’re more roundish blobs.

Mozzie was shy and ill when I first got him. He hid behind the toilet and hissed when we went in to visit. It a matter of days, Mozzie cracked – he loves us now, and turns out to be the most affectionate kitten. Mozzie loves to be held, he loves to purr, and he loves to simply be near his people.

In addition to all the above events, this month I got wind that yet another of my friends is expecting. I’ll reveal who in a few months – she wasn’t telling anyone at first, but decided a few days later that maybe she did want to tell. I’ve informed a few close friends, but I somehow don’t feel right announcing it here just yet. I am knitting and crocheting baby stuff like crazy now. I am squeezing in a few other things, but not a whole lot. I fear Michael may never get his socks!

Well, maybe I’ll work on them when we go on the Caribbean cruise we also planned this month. More details about that in the future.

Told you the world changed this month!

The only thing that didn’t change is that I’ve kept knitting. I finished K’s winter garments:

But I forgot to photograph the mittens before I mailed them! Oops. I’m going to visit her and Dr B in May, so I’ll try to get a shot then. Maybe I can a picture of the socks I made her for Christmas as well.

I’m also almost done with Dr R’s giant socks. I’ll see if I can get a shot if him wearing them on Monday (because I should totally have them finished – they are worsted weight socks, after all…). I’m also making progress on Jen’s crayon blanket. Her little girl is due in June, so I don’t have a whole lot of time left.

Well, I have a lot of work to do. My next priority is talking about the autoimmune diseases conference, so be on the lookout!

Fragile Things

I’ll get right to it – I’ve been unwell. It’s kind of my fault, but not entirely. Here’s what happened:

At the end of April, I got a group of five bottle-feeders. They came to me with names of bathroom supplies, like plunger and toothbrush. Michael and I renamed them as characters from the musical “Guys and Dolls.” We have Rusty, Nathan, Adelaide, Benny and Sky. Except for a brief bout with an eye infection and maybe some minor cold symptoms, they have been in good health.

Not long after I took the “Guys and Dolls” kittens, the shelter called and asked if I would take a mom and kittens. They said she had a few surrogate kittens, and they were worried she’d dry up before the kittens were done nursing. They wanted to place the kittens in a home where the foster parent could bottle-feed if necessary. The other kittens were weaning at the time, so I said I’d take them, too.

When I got to the shelter, I learned that the mom cat actually had two more litters mixed in with hers for a total of eight kittens. Well, no wonder they worried she’d go dry – there were too many kittens. We named the kittens Pillow (because the mom, Cinnamon, used him as such), Gingham, Velvet, Linen, Lester (Dr B named him) Esther, Cotton and Satin.

 (Click to enlarge)

When they got home, I learned that Cinnamon just wasn’t really into the whole eating thing. I had to hand feed her for the first few days, but after some time she started to eat on her own, so long as it was Fancy Feast and not something good for her like Wellness. I didn’t care what she ate, so long as she just ate food: she did have eight kittens to feed, after all. I suspect she had a cold that she was hiding (as cats are wont to do), because within a few days several of the kittens developed eye infections and cold symptoms. As some of them began to lose weight, I began supplemental feeding. I took some of the healthier kittens with me to run errands while mom tended to the sicker ones. It didn’t really matter.

First Pillow died. He started to lose weight, and then later when I would visit the kittens, I’d find his nose would be plugged closed with snot. I started thinking about taking him in for euthanasia, but then I found him cold and stiff a few hours later. Nature made the decision for me. A few days later I took Linen and Gingham into the shelter because I thought Linen needed to be put down (for the same cold that Pillow had) and I wanted them to look at Gingham’s eye. The shelter agreed about Linen. They also put Gingham down because the eye that had swollen and gotten crusted shut had actually ruptured. She was too small to do surgery to remove the eye, and the condition is very painful. Two days later, Velvet met the same fate as Pillow and Linen. It was just so sad.

In light of what was happening with the kittens, I began thinking about my own situation. I had gotten tired of taking over 30 pills a day, so I started skipping doses. One morning, I woke up and felt a really strong resentment toward all the pills, so I took the day off. The resentful feeling lasted a few more days, so I just stopped taking them all together. I kept on the thyroid meds, but that was pretty much it. It’s just that with all the kittens dying, I thought about Nature’s wisdom. There were eight kittens living in the exact same circumstances. Four got really sick, and four did not. The ones who died were just weak, and interfering on my part would only have prolonged the suffering – in fact, it did prolong poor Pillow’s suffering. I thought about how I was taking that large number of prescriptions and supplements, and that my energy level was not improving. I want to be in such a position that I can go back to school and get a job. Staying home for an extended time is nice sometimes, but not when you don’t have the option to stop doing it. I felt the reward just wasn’t big enough for all the work I was putting in. So I quit.

A week later, I was definitely feeling the effects of my decision. Every day I got a little more fatigued, until finally getting out of bed was a real struggle. I mentioned that I had stopped the supplements to one of the girls at the front desk at Dr B’s practice, and she encouraged me to talk to him about that. She agreed that the number of pills I took was unwieldy, but maybe I should see what was strictly necessary and stick to that. After thinking it through, I decided that it was indeed best to be up front with the doctor and let him know what happened. I wasn’t prepared for what happened after.

Dr B got a little upset that I had stopped. Not because I wouldn’t be purchasing supplements from his office, as some who criticized his chiropractic practice had suggested. He was upset because he felt that we had gotten into a situation where he cared about my outcome more than I did. After a prolonged period of disagreement and a small “fight” that I would really rather not detail, I learned that Dr B was a much better doctor than I had realized. I mean, yes, I realized that his style was very different from other doctors I had seen, and I kept seeing him for that reason. He wasn’t content to say, “Well, I can’t find anything wrong, so you’re fine.” If I wasn’t well, then he wanted to keep looking for the reason. But what I learned from the situation is that he actually cares – he wasn’t just checking off boxes so he could say he did his job regardless of the outcome. I learned that he doesn’t stop thinking about me when I leave the office; in fact, he said that he thinks about my situation every day. Even though I wanted to give up, he didn’t want to. In my experience, every other doctor I’ve ever had was ready to move on long before I was.

To be honest, I have no reasons of my own to continue treating my chronic fatigue. I have lost hope that I will have a future in which I won’t be tethered to pills and doctor’s appointments. I am pretty sure that I will never be able to stick to a reasonable sleep schedule in which I get up in the morning and sleep at night. I’ll never be able to hold a job because my health just isn’t reliable. I can’t enjoy a vacation because I have to sleep so much. It takes a lot of caffeine to make it through a day. When the caffeine doesn’t work, I have to move on to pseudoephedrine. I felt like that was Nature’s way of telling me that I am just not viable, like all the kittens who died recently.

I spoke to a few friends during my crisis, and one was able to give me a reason not to quit treating my condition. She pointed out that despite what I might hope for, this condition might not kill me. In fact, it may just disable me to the point where I lose my agency, my ability to make decisions for myself. I value that, at least, and I am moving toward getting back on the track I was on, with all 30+ pills/day. I won’t lie – it’s hard to motivate myself to keep trying. My reserves are gone. I’ve been fighting fatigue for over ten years, and all I’ve gotten is worse. It’s at a critical point now, and I’m not sure it will ever improve. Somehow, between my friend’s reminder that I could find myself seriously disabled and my doctor’s personal interest in the situation (I really hate to disappoint people whom I admire), that’s going to have to get me through.

While I was off the supplements, some pretty scary symptoms emerged. At first, I stopped being able to feel the right side of my face, just like after the stroke-like event I had in February. It’s like when you’ve been to the dentist and had a filling – I can tell that there is something touching me from the pressure, but my ability to really “feel” it is gone. In a few days, the numbness started spreading in to my ear, and I actually started having hearing trouble, like I had my hand over my ears. The numbness also started to spread to the left side of my face.

Even after I restarted the supplements, new symptoms emerged. I went out for coffee with a friend, and when I went to the bathroom, I noticed I had swelling around my neck. Upon closer inspection, I realized that it was swollen in the distinct shape of my thyroid gland. I wasn’t too terribly worried about it, but to be fair, I’ve lost the ability to judge what is a serious issue and what isn’t. I err on the side of dismissing things, largely because I don’t want to be seen as a hypochondriac. I read a book (Life Disrupted) in which the author mentioned that people who have chronic disease tend to ignore what could be serious symptoms, in part because they are so used to being sick. She said that it’s important to try to step outside yourself and imagine how a healthy person would see the situation – I’ve tried to take that to heart. When I showed the swollen thyroid to my friend and she freaked out, I considered the bit of wisdom I had obtained from the book and listened to her. I called Dr B and the allopathic nurse practitioner (C) that day.

The nurse practitioner took blood samples and scheduled me for an ultrasound. She and Dr B were both under the impression that this was just a flare-up of the Hashimoto’s disease, and the blood tests would show abnormal thyroid hormone levels as well as an increase in antibodies. Well, the tests all came back normal. In fact, the antibodies were lower than they have been most of my life (they were 40% of what they were when I was checked four years after my diagnosis).  The ultrasound revealed a small nodule, but it was only concerning enough to C to make her want to monitor it yearly. Again, major symptoms with no explanation. It’s infuriating. Honestly, I kind of wish she said I had cancer so that we could do something about it. Not that I want to have cancer, I just want an answer. I want to be able to do something about this.

I have managed to get some knitting done since my last blog post. Admittedly, it’s hard to focus now, and the work is intermittent, but it happens. I finished a few projects.

Gwendolyn:

 

I made her from a large cone of angora fiber I got from Art Fibers many years ago, before I moved from San Francisco. The thing is, she sheds. Pink bunny fur all over everything. I still love this shawl, though, and I deal with the fur. Just like a kitten.

I also cast on and finished these fingerless gloves for my sister-in-law.

I made them from some merino/tencel yarn I spun in 2008. Alicia really liked the yarn, and who better to give it to?

I’m also designing a shawl. I don’t have pictures of it yet because I want to have some people test knit the pattern. I plan on working on it when I have focus, but charting lace is kind of fiddly. My version of the shawl is going to be a wedding ring shawl. It’s made out of 1-ply cobweb weight yarn. The idea is that the knitting is delicate enough to pull the whole shawl through a wedding ring. I will try to have at least teaser pictures soon.

That’s what I’ve got for now. I can’t promise when I’ll update again, but I will. I have to take Nathan and Rusty back to the shelter today because they just made weight. I need to unload kittens. I suspect that I will have to take another long break from fostering because of my health, but we’ll see. I hope my condition doesn’t take away everything…

A Weekend Vacation

Michael and I are in San Francisco again. It’s a relatively short trip (3 nights) because I wasn’t sure how I’d be feeling by this point. I’ll just start with the punchline – I’m feeling good again. I’m still looking at this with cautious optimism because I’ve had so many false starts before, but I think it might be different this time.

When I went to Burbank last week, I learned that I had a massive infection. I’ll quantify it for you, like H did for me. The non-cognitive biofeedback machine gives a measure of your response to certain stressors in arbitrary units – an index. A healthy person will respond with a reading of about 1000, and a person who has an acute condition (in this case we’ll refer to viral stressors, since that is my exact problem) will read about 2000. H said that she will see a reading of about 6000 in someone who has had a long-term infection. H sees big infections all the time, so when she told me mine was big, it meant something – I measured at 15,000 on the viral stress response. Here’s the kicker – I had blood tests drawn just two weeks before seeing H, and they showed barely any immune response to the viral stressor.

I brought this information to Dr B, and I did some thinking about this on my own. I mean, why did no one catch it if I had such a massive infection? Not even the allopathic physicians caught this one. H told me that my immune system was just ignoring the infection. I guess it was so overwhelmed that it didn’t even try. If that’s the case, then no matter what virus I have, I’m not making antibodies, so none would show up on a blood test (doctors test for the presence of a virus by measuring the antibodies to that virus in your blood stream). I can buy that. The reason I buy that is this: H gave me a homeopathic medicine to support the immune system’s response to a viral load (Dr B also has a similar product, but without the diagnostic, there was no way he could have known to give it to me).  After I started taking the medicine, I started to feel worse. I know this seems bad, but it’s actually good – my body is finally responding to the infection, trying to fight it off. My throat has been an angry shade of purple for about a week now, and it’s been swollen to the point where I can barely swallow. I’ve had sinus congestion and fevers like no one’s business. As of yesterday, it seems to be clearing up a bit. That may, however, be deceptive – I had to take pseudoephedrine to make it through the flight because the congestion in my ears got downright unbearable when the plane took off and landed, so it may just be the drug making the congestion go away. I plan to continue taking it through my weekend in SF, since there are things I want to get done here, and I don’t have the time to just rest (although I am making sure to pay attention to my limits).

We still have to deal with the hypoglycemia, but I think that the virus can account for the worst of it. Still, this is major progress.

Before I left for the trip, I had to drop the kittens off at the shelter. I am getting them back when I come home on Monday, but I made sure to photograph them just in case. Alas, I cannot post the pictures because the wireless internet connection at the hotel is poor. I should be able to connect a wired connection, but the computer doesn’t recognize it. This sucks.

In any case, I will blog about the trip and post my pictures when I get home. I guess what matters now is that for the first time in a long time, I am up for this. What a relief!

A Little Faith

This week has been brutal, no doubt about it. I have a lot more going on than I normally do, and a little bit of Murphy’s law kicked in while I’ve been trying to juggle it all.

On Monday I went out to run errands, despite the fact that I had been up since 2:30 in the morning. I had appointments to make later in the week, and since I was traveling on Thursday, I needed to get out at the first opportunity.  The day went as well as could be expected, and when I got home around 3:00, I wanted to collapse. Of course, since I had babies at home, it wasn’t an option – I had to feed the babies first. Inky (the little black one), Misti (the grey one) and Muffin (the black and white one) all came out for their bottle. After feeding the first three kittens I found Bear (the bigger black one) sleeping in his carrier. That’s pretty common for a kitten to sleep so hard he misses the fact that everyone else is screaming for the bottle. I woke Bear up, and he nursed for a moment before giving up. I re-fed everyone else, then realized that Bear was sleeping in my lap. Concerned, I placed him on the floor and tried to get him to walk – he was ataxic (medical for “walking like he’s drunk”). I immediately put Bear in the car and rushed him to the shelter.

The shelter staff took Bear into the back to begin rescue procedures. As I was waiting for them to update me, my cell phone rang. Normally I don’t take phone calls from anyone other than Michael when I’m busy, but an instinct told me to pick up the phone this time. The caller was a casual friend of mine who happened to adopt Donald from the last litter of foster kittens. I didn’t blog about these kittens, I realized. It was in November or December, and mostly Michael was caring for them since I really couldn’t.

These are Donald, Goofy, Ariel, and Jasmine. Poor Donald was really sick, but he pulled through and became the sweetest little guy! Goofy died, though. He had a case of megacolon – his intestines stopped working and he got so constipated that he couldn’t be unblocked and they had to put him down. It was incredibly sad.

Back to the present: My friend had just moved into a new place over the weekend, so Donald was already a little scared. When the pizza guy came by to deliver dinner, Donald snuck out of the house. On Monday, a little girl brought Donald back to his home, but Donald was in bad shape. The little girl witnessed one of the neighborhood boys stomping on Donald. My friend was in a panic, not sure what to do. I instructed her to take him to the emergency vet. When a cat is injured like that, even if you can’t find broken bones, it’s important to make sure there’s no internal bleeding or something. I also advised her to call the police – that kind of animal abuse is a crime. Since I was at the shelter, I had an animal control officer set up a case for her. The bottom line is that Donald is ok now, but the little girl’s mother made her change her story to protect the boy who hurt the cat, so it appears there will be nothing done about the abuse. Great, that mother just taught her daughter several very bad lessons – it’s ok to hurt animals, don’t report crimes, and lie when questioned by the authorities. I hate people.

As for Bear: the shelter kept him overnight on IV fluids. They returned him to me the next day, telling me I just hadn’t fed him often enough. I try not to take comments like that personally. First of all, I’ve been doing this for a long time – I know how often to feed kittens. It was his regularly scheduled feeding time, and the other kittens were just fine. Second, when I told the vet how many kittens I’ve fostered (almost 250 now), she said I’d seen far more of them than she had. The vet was young, probably fresh from vet school. She really had no idea what she was talking about. I decided that I would just monitor him more closely for awhile. He’s been fine since the incident, so I just chalked it up to the fact that sometimes kittens crash and even die for completely unknown reasons.

As of right now, the kittens are great! They have started eating just a little bit of wet food mixed with milk. They are still eating the dry food as well. They use the litter box, and play just as I expect. Misti even made friends with Duck.

Duck was afraid of the kittens when they couldn’t really get around, but now that they are no longer infants, Duck thinks they make great playmates.

I’m plugging along on my knitting WIPs. I finished one of Robert’s boot socks with the intention of sending it off to him to be fitted. I later decided that I would like to have the socks together so I can just make them match, and if I have to rip them back and re-knit them I’ll count it as another project for my goal of finishing up the WIPs.

I’m pretty happy with the way the first one turned out.

I know a lot of people have been waiting for the health update, so here it is:

On Thursday, I got on a plane for Burbank to see a woman (we’ll call her H – she isn’t a doctor, but she has a bachelor’s degree in biology) who specializes in non-cognitive biofeedback. I’ll be the first to admit, this diagnostic method seems a little… exotic. In theory, this machine can read meridians in the body and tell where your body is stressed. I went into it with a healthy dose of skepticism, but I thought that since no other diagnostics were really telling me anything (the antibody tests Dr B ordered came back negative, but there were other things I’ll get to in a minute), well, I had nothing to lose.

One of the first things the machine told her was that I was severely hypoglycemic. I already knew that – the tests that Dr B ran showed that my hemoglobin A1c levels (a measure of your average blood sugar over the long-term) were too low. Also, when I got out of the car at the airport, I wasn’t feeling right. Although I didn’t have the right symptoms for hypoglycemia (sweating, dizziness, trembling – all adrenal responses), I immediately got out the blood glucose meter and checked my blood sugar. The meter read 45, and it reads 15-20% high, which means that my real blood sugar was between 36-39. That fits the clinical definition of hypoglycemia. This was the most severe hypoglycemic event I’ve ever had, and I wasn’t sure I’d be able to correct it well enough to fly. Fortunately, I had the foresight to bring candy canes left over from Christmas with me, and they worked. Crisis averted. The scary part is, other than just a vague sense that something was wrong, I had no symptoms. If my blood sugar gets too low and I am unaware, I could have seizures or even go into shock or a coma. That’s just such bad news.

The question is not whether I am hypoglycemic or not, it’s why am I hypoglycemic? The first thing the machine told H is that I have a massive infection. I’ll go more into detail about it later this week, after I speak with Dr B about the results. Overwhelming infection can most definitely cause hypoglycemia – in fact, that’s the most common cause I’ve seen for the death in my foster kittens (infection culminating in irreversible hypoglycemia). The next thing that came up is that I’ve had a large pesticide exposure. That one baffles me – mostly, I eat organic food now, and I wash my fruits and veggies before eating. Maybe it’s the flea medication I’ve used on foster kittens when I lived in San Francisco? She also noted that I had a high insulin load, but she attributes it to insulin resistance (which I am still not sure about – I have been on a diet that should reduce the resistance, and a lot of the supplements I am on also have that effect). There were other things that came up, but we aren’t dealing with them right now. H says that if we change too many things at once, we could do more harm than good.

I’ve invested in books about treating hypoglycemia, and after reading them, I’m sure that this is the cause of my fatigue. I’m still not sure of all of the reasons for the hypoglycemia, and there may be many. Still, this is MAJOR progress, and I’m feeling optimistic that it can be sorted out now. There is a very real risk that I might not survive long enough to get better, but if I’ve lived this long with an infection of the magnitude H describes, well, I must be a sturdy sort.

I also learned from reading the books (Hypoglycemia for Dummies and a textbook written in the UK called Hypoglycaemia in Clinical Diabetes (Practical Diabetes)) that not all doctors believe that hypoglycemia can exist in patients who are not taking insulin. Really? The textbook repeatedly states that hypoglycemia in non-diabetics is rare and practically dismisses the possibility, but I attribute that to the fact that the book specifically explores the condition in diabetic patients (I got the book because I wanted to understand the mechanisms of hypoglycemia, and it does do that). According to Hypoglycemia for Dummies, even the doctors who believe hypoglycemia can exist in non-diabetic patients don’t believe that diet has an effect on the condition. Again, really? I guess it explains why no one ever talked to me about low blood sugar before. Every doctor I’ve ever seen has been focused on my family history of diabetes (both types) and has consequently been worried about high blood sugar (which I have never demonstrated, but I do have signs of high insulin). It’s the same as the blood pressure – they get all over my husband for being mildly hypertensive, but no one ever bats an eye at the fact that my blood pressure is too low. I’m just going to put this out there for medical professionals to ponder: “There is a functional range out there, people. With a high and a low. Both ends need to be attended to.”

This week, in addition to preparing to travel to San Francisco, I am going to read as much as I can about hypoglycemia and I’m going to discuss what I’ve learned from the books and from H with my doctors. By Wednesday I should have the information I need to discuss what I’ve learned with you in much better detail. No matter what, I’ll check in so those of you following the health crisis know what’s happening.

Unexpected Breakthroughs

I’ve had quite a few surprises since I last posted, most of them good, but a few not so much.

The kittens have gotten to the point where they can use a litter box, if they are so inclined. I planned to put them in their “crib” on Saturday (the crib is a large plastic bin with wheels – it’s bigger than the the cat carrier, but it still keeps the little dudes contained and out of trouble) and introduce a litter box. When I woke up, Michael had already moved the kittens to the crib. Good deal. The little girls have sprouted their milk teeth as well, and have shown an interest in eating softened Baby Cat kitten food. They are mostly on the bottle at this point, but it’s nice to see them try food without being forced. At the first feeding since the kittens were moved to the crib, I noticed one of the black boys (we’re calling the larger one Bear and the smaller one Inky) squatting in the litter box. “No way,” I thought, but when he moved, there was the clumped up cake of cat litter (corn based litter, for those who worry). The next morning I noticed a lot of little pee spots in the litter box, so it seems that they all know how to use it. What a great development! These are the easiest bottle-feeders I can recall having.

I’ve achieved my goal of finishing three WIPs to account for the sock I cast on. The good news is, I’m not feeling the itch to cast on a new project – in fact, I’ve been content to finish old ones. As part of my second wave of projects that must be completed before casting on a new one, I’ve made progress on Robert’s boot socks. I was planning to work on the hemp shopping bag as well, but I just wasn’t feeling the project, so I switched it out for the beach skirt that I am designing. The newly cast on socks are part of the three active projects as well. I am doing a lot of traveling, so it’s nice to have that small project to carry around.

I decided that the circle rug did indeed need a border after all. I figured that if I kept thinking about it and feeling guilty for not adding a border, then that meant it was needed. The border helped to soften the edge I left when joining the long strip.

I also finished the Everyday Tweed sweater. This is one of the less pleasant surprises of the week. I made a small size and I followed the pattern. I even made the slightly differing dye lots work with a bit of fancy color work. Still, the sweater didn’t come out right. Somehow, it’s too large around the neck and upper back – the fabric actually bunches up and folds over at the top. It looks nice, though, so maybe I’ll wear it around the house over another shirt on cold days. <sigh>

(the comic is “Rhymes with Orange”)

I also achieved another goal that wasn’t on my list, but it’s something I’ve been trying to achieve for about two years now. (click to enlarge)

I finally broke 200 in bowling! Sweet! My next bowling goal is to get a clean game.

I’ve saved the best for last – I think we’ve finally had a breakthrough in figuring out what is wrong with me. It’s kind of a long story, but I’ll tell it as concisely as possible.

Earlier this week I watched an old episode of Mystery Diagnosis that has been waiting around on my TiVo. Ever since the onset of my Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, I’ve tried to get as much information as possible about what could be wrong, both by actively researching my symptoms and by just putting myself in the way of information. The episode I watched was about a kid who kept having hypoglycemic episodes. His were far more severe than mine – he actually had to be hospitalized for his condition. It turned out that he has a genetic condition that causes his pancreas to produce a lot of insulin, regardless of how much he needed to deal with the sugar in his blood.

I thought about my symptoms, and after assembling the puzzle pieces, some things started to make sense. I had a strong reaction to the new supplement. My primary care physician thought it had to do with the ATP in the supplement (ATP is the currency your body uses to transfer energy). I guess that I had so very little ATP that the small amount in the supplement was overwhelming to my body. Well, then I had to wonder, why am I not making ATP? My chiropractic endocrinologist/nutritionist then began to suspect mitochondrial malfunction, and ordered tests for antibodies for that, and a few other things. Those have not come back yet, as far as I know. Working from his theory, I researched what else might cause mitochondrial malfunction. At some point it became obvious – how can the mitochondria produce energy if they aren’t getting the fuel needed to do their job?

I have three known conditions: Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (also known as PCOS, which is basically early type 2 diabetes: the patient is declared insulin resistant, but I am coming to suspect that insulin resistance may not be the only cause of the syndrome), Hashimoto’s disease (autoimmune low thyroid) and immune system malfunction (overactive, generally). Of these conditions, the one to look at is the PCOS. What if the syndrome is not caused by insulin resistance, but overproduction of insulin? What if I make too much insulin, just like the boy on Mystery Diagnosis, and when I eat, the blood sugar does not get into the cells like it should, and is instead whisked away into storage before I get the chance to use it. It would be like putting so much of your paycheck into savings that you have little to no spending money, to the point where you can’t even pay your bills. I’ve always had high triglycerides, which are your body’s way of storing excess blood sugar. It’s a form of bad cholesterol (sugar combined with some fatty acids).

I brought the idea to the chiropractic “endocrinologist” (I’m going to call him Dr. B), and he said that he had actually discussed that very same possibility with the chiropractic neurologist (Dr. A) the day before. There are several possible causes for the overproduction of insulin, but I only know of two: an insulin producing tumor (called an insulinoma) or a genetic predisposition to produce too much insulin.

Overproduction of insulin (also called hyperinsulinemia) would explain every single symptom I’ve had. The brain cannot store its own energy, so low blood sugar in the body means the brain isn’t getting enough fuel. A doctor on Mystery Diagnosis said that repeated and/or chronic hypoglycemia has the exact same effect on the brain as drowning and being revived repeatedly (because the brain doesn’t store oxygen either). That was the comment that led me to further explore the insulin problem.

I told Dr. B that I wanted to do an experiment. I said that I wanted to add complex carbohydrates to my diet (I’m supposed to be on a grain-free diet right now, per the neurologist, and this involves adding back grains) with protein to slow the absorption. The idea would be to monitor my blood sugar closely to ensure that I didn’t overdo it. I tried this experiment over the last four days (maybe three and a half – I didn’t wait for approval, I was really just telling him what I planned to do with the intention of stopping if he raised a compelling concern). On the first day, I started to sleep better (I now stay asleep rather than waking up repeatedly). On a later day, I started to feel actually refreshed after sleeping (for the longest time it was just like I lost consciousness for a few hours, and when I awoke I was just as tired as when I fell asleep). I’m still sleeping a lot, but I think that’s because I have an enormous energy debt to pay back to my body, and it will take time to do that.

The catch is, I don’t think I can keep this diet up forever. If I do, my triglycerides are likely to go back up, increasing my risk for heart disease. Dr. B is concerned that the carbohydrate load will stimulate even more insulin production, and if that happens, it will eventually become impossible to keep up with it. What I really need to do is find the cause of the high insulin load, and treat that. Depending on the cause, that can be tricky business, and it may mean surgery. But this is getting a little too far ahead – I haven’t confirmed that my (our?) suspicion about the insulin production is correct. It could just be really strong insulin resistance as well (the idea being that insulin tries to get the blood into the cells, but it can’t so it stores it instead. I’ll explain that further if it becomes the operating theory). I foresee a lot of testing in my future.

A Bump in the Road

I’m not sure if it’s just this way for me, or for everyone, but I can’t recall a single road I’ve traveled that didn’t have a few bumps along the way. Even when I was a kid and played on the Slip ‘N Slide (remember these?), I would manage to catch the only rock under the plastic. I’ve thought about this a lot lately, and even the things that I felt came easily to me were actually quite difficult roads. Yes, maybe I was an A-student in grade school, but I had to do that while changing schools multiple times, sometimes in the middle of the school year. Taking care of kittens comes naturally to me – I hand-raised my first one when I was thirteen years old – but there have been quite a few deaths along the way. We won’t even go into all the yarn craft mistakes I’ve made.

I have mixed feelings about this. Sometimes I have to wonder, “Why me?” just like anyone else might. What did I ever do to deserve that nothing should just simply work out, the way it does for my husband. On the other hand, I do rise to every challenge, and that is one quality that I actually like about myself. I never assume something is too hard until I try and fail. I don’t like the failing, but I’m not afraid for it to happen.

That said, I’ve been plugging away at my WIP list. It’s the only goal I’ve been managing lately, but I’ve also gotten into a spring cleaning phase that was never an explicit goal, but should have been. I guess it all evens out. As for the WIPs, I’ve finished two (I think) projects this week.

1. The Monkeys are finished! One of them has a tighter cuff than the other, but I can get it on my foot, and that’s all that matters. I now have three pairs of hand-knit socks in my drawer. Now that I live somewhere with snow, the wool socks just seem that much more valuable to me.
2. I finished the circular rug! Well, maybe. The pattern calls for a border, but I’m not sure I want to put one on. I can’t decide if it’s laziness or if I really think it looks good without one. The cats think it’s great the way it is, but I want to make sure that the friend for whom I made it will like it just as much.

The circle rug was surprisingly tough project to sew up. Setting aside the fact that I hate sewing in the first place, I just made so many mistakes.

As I was sewing the rug up, it seemed to go ok, until I looked at it from the side.

The center just rose right out of the rug, like a giant nipple.

I understand geometry, so I should have been able to head this off at the pass. In the beginning, I joined the garter ridges in a one-to-one ratio. The problem is that ratio makes a shape that resembles a cylinder more than a circle (think socks); hence, the bump. The solution is to join more garter ridges from the outer, un-joined part of the strip to a single ridge in the inner portion. It’s a bit of an art to figure out just how many to join, but it’s mostly just math. Pi is 3.14: therefore I should have started by joining three outside ridges to one inside. I didn’t think of that right away, and instead joined two to one. I got this:

It’s more like a zit than a nipple now. Not perfect, but much better.

The art of the joining lies in the fact that I’m making a spiral. Elizabeth Zimmerman designed a pi shawl that spaces increases regularly throughout the project, resulting in a circle. Unlike the shawl, there aren’t distinct rings in the circle rug, so I had to judge where and how I should increase largely by feel. When I crochet, this is simple: every row is increased by the same number of stitches. If I start out with six stitches, the next row should have twelve, then eighteen, then twenty-four, ad infinitum. I can mark each row, even if I do it in a spiral instead of distinct rings, and  make it work mathematically. Somehow, even though I know I should be able to solve this with math, I could not apply the same logic to sewing up a pre-made garter stitch strip. No matter, the rug is finished now and I declare it good enough. Moving on.

Although it’s not finished, I have made progress on the Everyday Tweed sweater. I managed to deal with the slightly different dye lots in the yarn by separating the differently colored sections with a band of color work. I’ll reveal it when I’ve finished.

Now, I know I made the rule about finishing three projects before I cast on a new one. There’s a little stumbling block in that plan, too. Michael and I are going to New York City next week for a business trip, and I’d like to have socks to knit on the plane. I’ll bring the sweater with me as well, but in coach class seats, it’s much easier to work on something small like socks. I’m a little ashamed of myself, but as long as the sweater is completed before the socks, I think I can justify the premature cast-on.

There has also been a bump in my road to recovery. For most of last month, I was doing comparatively well. Sure, I had to increase my dose of the new supplement by a little bit a few times during a week, but I could make it so I had the energy for just a few hours a day to focus and complete long-neglected tasks. My doctor noted a lot of changes in me as well – he said he could see the improved mental clarity, my posture and mannerisms changed to reflect a more serene mind, and he noticed I was more willing to stand up for myself. As of a week ago, I noticed I was feeling a little more run-down despite all my efforts: I figured it was just because I was acting on my new found energy and I just needed to build up endurance.  Alas, it is not so. Last week, the fevers started coming back with increasing duration and frequency. I had to lie down and rest more. This weekend a whole new symptom popped up. A friend pointed out on Friday that my face started to turn red at the same moment as I noticed my temperature rising. The next morning, I noticed that when my fever restarted I had what looks like a light version of the malar rash associated with lupus (an endocrinologist ruled out lupus a few years ago, so it’s not that).  By the end of the day, my chest and arms looked like I had gotten a sunburn, despite the fact that I hadn’t been outside all day. It had mostly subsided by the time I woke up today, but I am willing to bet the redness will come back as I get more tired.

This setback is the reason I was reluctant to share my good news a few weeks ago. I didn’t want to put it in writing because I thought it might generate a little false hope on my part – and it did. Not so much that I am totally crushed by the recurrence of new, unexplainable symptoms, but I am disappointed. I thought I was finally on to something. I guess we are getting more clues, but it’s just so sad that the improvements don’t last long. On the other hand, it was great to have the reprieve. It tells me that I can feel good, it’s just a question of finding the cause and addressing it.

Happy Birthday to Mew

It’s official – Duck is no longer a kitten. Today is his very first birthday.

It really doesn’t seem like a whole year since that yellow trouble-maker came to me, and at the same time he seems so far from that half-pound kitten who I was sure I was going to find dead one morning. He still gets diarrhea on a regular basis, but he’s healthy, clean, and beautiful now.

We got Duck a piece of cat furniture for his birthday. I believe we got a cat tree for the other three on their first birthdays, so I guess it’s tradition. Duck loves the new scratching surface. The raised part in the back has a toy dangling from it, and Duck spent hours licking it and swatting at it.

He even shared his new toy with Buttercup. What a good kid!

Here’s hoping for many more happy birthdays with my fluffy baby boy!

Sweet Relief

I’ll start with the good news – I actually slept a full night last night! I’m thinking that the sheer exhaustion of the day (or maybe the weekend) just caught up to me. Or maybe it was something else. I have some suspicions.

Yesterday was an extraordinarily stressful day. After the sleepless holiday weekend, I had to wake up early to get a chiropractic adjustment. I really don’t mind doing that, especially because the adjustments make me feel better and improve my mood a bit. I was actually looking forward to it, in fact, because sleeping upright made my back hurt a lot. So, I went to my appointment and described my weekend to the doctor. “We are going to learn a lot from you,” he told me. It was such a poignant comment to me because my friend Lane told me just days before, as I was sobbing to her about just how awful it is to have these odd medical issues keep cropping up, that I am “making better doctors.” In any case, that adjustment was amazing – there was a lot of scary cracking and popping, but when I sat up, I knew something was very different. Good different.

I went back home afterward and handled a few business items. I checked Wesley’s gums (he’s had an infection for a little while now), and since they were no better after 2 weeks on antibiotics, I called the vet. They asked me to bring him in – great, another task for the day. Because Wesley needed to go to the doctor, that meant Michael would need me to take him to work so I could have the car. As a side note, I really wanted to avoid buying a second car, but I think it’s becoming apparent that we have to <sigh>. I tried to nap before I took them guys to their respective destinations, but no dice. I tried to pack for the trip, but for some reason I had a hard time making myself do it. I just really didn’t want to travel again.

After Michael and Wesley made their respective appointments, I again tried to pack. Again, I just couldn’t focus on the task. I had some green tea (it seems to have some some good effect on the congestion) and sat in front of the computer. I dawdled forever, and only managed to finish packing when it was becoming imminent that we had to leave. For the record, I don’t recommend this method of packing. I managed to forget a whole lot of things, including my tennis shoes. I was wearing heels that I can easily slip on and off at the airport, and just forgot. It’s not a good thing when you’re going to a city where the best mode of transportation is generally walking. Schiesse.

The shoe thing really came back to bite me when we got to the airport. The garage was shockingly full and we had to hike a greater distance than we usually do to get inside. I wasn’t happy about that. When we got inside, the airport had closed the security gates nearest to us, so we had to walk all the way across the (really huge) terminal to get to another set of them. My feet were just killing me at this point – I hadn’t anticipated that much walking. It’s never been that way before. Then, we got to security. I think we’ve established how I feel about airport security. I managed to forget that I left my good sewing scissors in my knitting bag, so the TSA confiscated them. They said I could ship them back to myself at an for an exorbitant fee, but I realized it would be cheaper to replace them. That incident really didn’t help my mood.

We trudged to the gate for our flight, only to learn the flight was delayed. There had been weather problems somewhere that delayed earlier flights, so ours was the victim of cascade effects. The plane that was supposed to pick us up landed maybe 5 minutes later than it was supposed to, so I really didn’t think it was a big deal. About  20 minutes later, the gate attendants informed us that they were still deplaning the last group, but we would get to go soon. About another 15 minutes later, the attendants informed us that they were short a flight attendant and had to wait for her to get there. It wasn’t long after that two passengers waiting for the flight we were supposed to be on got into a brawl. There was a lot of yelling and name calling, and because I was in a bad mood, I was secretly wishing they would just punch each other already. (I know, it’s not very nice of me. I haven’t exactly been proud of my thoughts and behavior this past week.) In the meantime, there was a long line of standbys waiting at the gate to be assigned seats on our flight. Fortunately for them, there were quite a few open seats. After getting about half way through the line, a gate attendant made another announcement. “We’re off the clock now, so you’re going to have to wait until someone else gets here.” The gate attendant made one call for help, then just left, not bothering to ensure that someone actually bothered to answer her call. The missing flight attendant arrived, but we couldn’t get moving because there were now no gate attendants. Another passenger flagged down someone who appeared to be a security guard at some point, and asked him for help. He made a few calls for more gate attendants, but it took a long time for anyone to get there. About an hour past our original departure time, we were finally able to start boarding.

Let’s not forget, however, that there was still a long line of people who still wanted to get on our flight. While the attendants boarded those of us with tickets, other attendants were busy assigning seats. We waited in the plane, at the gate, for another hour while they processed displaced passengers. Our original departure time was 9:30pm. I was already tired before we got on the plane, but the delay completely wasted me. We finally took off around 11:30pm.I remember a time when the airlines would compensate passengers for having to deal with that sort of ordeal. Instead, the flight attendants just got on and started making announcements about all the crap you could buy from them. Really? We’re all tired – leave us alone.

At least the flight itself happened without incident. We landed at SFO around 1:30am. I know it wasn’t his fault, but I was vaguely peeved that the captain said he hoped we’d enjoyed the flight and that we’d patronize the airline again.  Bitterly, Michael and I dragged our exhausted bodies to luggage claim. While waiting, I had another “incident”. I was minding my own business, standing near our carry-on bags, when I suddenly found myself in the worst pain I’ve felt in a long time. My heart was beating so hard I could feel it in my throat, and the pain in my chest was so intense that I couldn’t move. It wasn’t long before everything started to hurt and I started to sweat. I had gotten nauseated near the end of the flight, and I wasn’t so sure I wasn’t going to vomit right there at baggage claim. I began to fear that I wasn’t going to get to the hotel at all, that we would have to stop at the hospital first. Fortunately, after our bags arrived, the pain subsided to the point where I decided I could just live with it for the night and see what happened when I had some rest.

We got to the hotel around 2:00am. I hadn’t been able to sleep on the plane (a feat that I used to be able to accomplish on a regular basis), and I was still in moderate pain, so all I managed was to collapse into bed. Somehow, I didn’t wake up until 10:30 this morning. I was surprised to realize that I actually feel ok. I wasn’t sitting up, and still managed not to wake up coughing. The full night’s sleep has also affected my mood – I’m not quite as surly as I’ve felt for the last little while (well, reliving yesterday didn’t help, but I’m talking more about the big picture). Maybe I’ll make it through the week. Right now though, I need to go find some lunch and some tennis shoes. One thing at a time.

Lemonade

My weekend didn’t go so well. The medication that made me nauseated by the last update on my last post also turned my hands yellow by the next morning. I first thought my hands were dirty, but when I washed them it didn’t go away. I then realized the yellow color was actually in my skin – jaundice. I’ve decided I’m not taking any synthetic medication anymore – I can’t handle the side effects.

From the years I spent too sick to really achieve the lofty goals I set for myself, I’ve learned how to remain somewhat productive despite everything. I am naturally a very driven person, and when I’m well I can be a force of nature. For several weeks I had a taste of what being healthy is like, and now that I’m sick again, I feel cheated. Being who I am, I was not about to let simple (ok, complex) illness stand in my way. This time, I took my motivation from a surprising source.

While I wait for my appointments at the chiropractor’s office, I knit. Is this a surprise, really? It’s kind of a great thing, since it makes a conversation starter for other people in the waiting room. The doctor has also taken an interest in my knitting, asking me basic things about the mechanics of the craft, and lately, about projects he’s seen me working on in the past. I’m not used to medical professionals who actually pay attention like that (it’s a good sign if you ask me). When I came to the office on Thursday, I was working on a scarf. The doctor asked me what happened to the christening gown I was working on, so I informed him that I was a promiscuous knitter and that I had put it down for awhile. The startled laugh he reacted with actually made me feel guilty for my knitting infidelity. My shame inspired me to do this:

Yeah, I finished it. I knit 10 hours a day from Thursday until Sunday (very late night), and then I sewed it up today. I’m going back once more before I leave for San Francisco tomorrow, so I’ll bring it in for the office staff to see. It’s also going to San Francisco with me so I can show the owner of the shop where I bought the yarn for the project – she did ask for pictures, after all.

After all that work, I calculated what this thing is worth. If I figured the wage I get for teaching (I still teach in San Francisco when I go) times the number of hours I put in, it’s worth over $2,000. This one is going in the carry-on bag.

I finished a few other projects today as well.

Michael brought these guys (and Mulan, who managed to avoid my camera somehow) back to the shelter this morning. They have all made weight, and will be adoptable as soon as they have their spay/neuter surgeries! The top two have been renamed Lilly and Jackson, and they have an adopter, a lovely woman recommended to me by my vet’s office.

In times like this, when I am sick and feeling completely useless, I am glad I keep this blog. It keeps reminding me how skillful I’ve gotten at making lemonade out of the lemons life keeps handing me.

A day off (mostly)

I’ve taken a day off from my newly busy life. Not that I didn’t feel busy before, but now that my good days seem to be outnumbering the bad ones (yea!), I am busy in different ways. Ways that involve not sitting down for long periods of time in front of the computer.

I made arrangements to pick up kittens on the way home from the airport after our last trip. Since it is the heart of kitten season now, the shelter wanted to send me home with kittens who would be ready for adoption when I returned them. This means that the kittens would be on the larger side and already social enough to be considered “adoptable”. This is the new family:

From left to right: Aladdin, Cinderella, Mulan and Ariel. Disney kittens, these. Perfect in every way!

Mae, their incredibly affectionate and cat friendly mother.

These kittens and their mother are all love and comedy. I’ve been letting the babies out to play with Duck since he’s so curious about newcomers. What I didn’t expect is that their mother took an instant shine to Ducky, and when she’s out, the two of them hang out like old friends.

It’s good to see that this mommy cat is tolerant of others. It will help her adoption prospects immensely. Shoot, if I didn’t have four already…

But I do have four lovely cats. They were happy to see us come home from the last trip, perhaps in part because we arrived at home at the same general time of day that our pet sitter arrives to feed them. Ducky was particularly naughty on the day we got back, though, stealing and mauling balls of yarn he pilfered from my knitting bag. I realized that maybe they just missed being able to go outside, so I took the four of them out to burn off a little steam. The weather here has been so beautiful and the sun has been out so much that I had the opportunity to take really nice pictures of my kitties.

We  have Buttercup lounging on the porch.

Duck and Serra resting on the porch.

Duck thinks he’s hiding in the tall grass I need to remove from my garden.

Wesley observing the birds and bugs he wishes he could catch.

The cats look so beautiful in our yard. Sigh. It makes their naughtiness forgivable.

While we were traveling I managed to make a lot of progress on knitting the christening gown for Michael’s sister. Oh, poo, I should have gotten a picture of her in her seventh month of pregnancy. In any case, I did take a picture of the christening gown.

This is the entire front of the gown in its unblocked glory.

At first, the lace pattern was a lot of work. I had to keep the pattern with me at all times, referring to it after every few stitches. I couldn’t imagine getting it finished in time if I was going to work at that rate. At some point on our last trip I suddenly grasped the way the pattern worked and could knit without looking at the pattern anymore. The rows started to fly by, and before I knew it, I made so much progress that any concern I had about finishing it just vanished. I’m working on a sleeve now, but I will get to the back as soon as I’ve finished the sleeve. I just needed a change of pace.

Despite all the knitting I accomplished on the trip, it all came to a grinding halt when I got home. For the first few days,  I was very sick. I had some sort of throat infection that burned and left little blisters all along the back of it. I also felt a little inflamed. On Sunday night I laid down for a nap at about 6:00pm and awoke at midnight for a little food, then went back to sleep until 9:00am the next day. When I woke up on Monday, I felt great. Better than I’ve felt in a long, long time. I felt so great that I decided to finish painting the formal living room / dining room I abandoned last summer. The thing about the painting is I chose to paint the ceiling, and I didn’t really give enough thought to the fact that working above your head while standing on a ladder for 8 hours is brutal. I was just so motivated, and I’m not used to having that much drive. Additionally, I’ve gotten so used to the fact that my good days are few and far between, so I just worked myself to the bone. When I woke up the next day, my body felt like I had been in some sort of brutal vehicular accident, but my mind was clear and I still felt ambitious. I brought out the paint again and did some detail work, making a crisp line between the ceiling and the walls (the walls have this knockout texture on them that makes creating a clean line tricky). On the third day I went back to the ceiling and the ladder, making even more progress. I have been physically exhausted by the end of the day, but I feel so much more accomplished than I have in the past.

Here’s a peek at what I’ve accomplished:

You can see on the top left where I haven’t gotten to painting some of the ceiling. There’s a lot of real estate to cover here – the ceilings slope to a maximum height of 17 or 18 feet. The parts over the dining room table and in the hall are all at the maximum height. It’s slow work just because of the bit about working over my head.

I thought I was going to work on the painting more today, but that just didn’t happen. After I went to the chiropractor (for a spinal adjustment, not the diet/medicine piece of it) and did a tutoring session with the girl who lives next door, I just didn’t feel like it. I have bruises all over my shins from where I leaned up against the ladder for days, and I’m just a little tired. Even more pressing, I have a deep desire to knit. I haven’t even gotten started on my swatches for the skirt I’m designing. On the second day of my painting binge, I realized that I was going to have to learn to pace myself if I am going to have multiple good days in a row. This break is me pacing myself. I’m learning.

I have no idea when the painting will be done, or how much I will do. I am considering painting the kitchen while I’m so motivated, but there are a few things I want to fix first. There is an issue with the grout in the tile work I did when we renovated the kitchen, and it’s been bothering me enough to want to fix it. There are also some mistakes on the wood floor I laid that I can’t help but notice as well, so those will have to be addressed if for no other reason than to quiet the perfectionist who lives inside me and believes that everything I make is flawed and that everyone can tell.

I hope for my next post that I will have a sample of the new skirt to show you. Let’s hope it goes well!