Goal Progress

I’ve spent this week learning what my limitations are despite my improvement in health. I’ve determined that if I have a big thing I want to accomplish, it has to be first thing in the day – that’s when I have the most energy, my supplements have the greatest effect, and I’m not sore (well, more so than the persistent pain) from trying to do things I’m just not ready for. I can accomplish one “big” thing in a day, but my definition of big had to be altered. Now big means going grocery shopping or assembling the shelves I bought yesterday. It used to mean spending all day painting the house or getting to that tiling project I’ve been excited about. Those things now fall into the “too-big-to-do-right-now” category.

I’ve also made a concerted effort to work on the list of goals I outlined a few days ago. I’ll re-list them here for comment.

1. Write a book. I have written part of one chapter. It is by no means a complete chapter, but it has been helpful with ironing out all of my feelings about where I just was and where I am going. 
   
2. Finish all of my knitting and crochet WIPs. I am almost done with the monkey socks. I decided to focus on something that I could easily bring with me to my appointments so I would have more time to put into the task. When I’m home, I’m trying to focus on cleaning my house. The place can get gnarly when you’ve only really been able to make the most basic things happen for half a year.
3. Do a wardrobe purge. This one is done! Michael and I both cleaned out our closets this morning, in fact. I had a surprisingly large amount of clothing to donate and an equally shocking pile of things that were too worn to donate and thus had to be trashed. It feels good to be rid of those things.
4. Blog more often. Well, obviously I am accomplishing this one. I only committed myself to once a week, but I am managing twice. Good for me!
   
5. Spin a skein of yarn. I haven’t really put much consideration into this one yet. I have a partially spun bit of roving from a long time ago that I’m hoping to make into the aforementioned skein. I like that I have a head start on the project. The only catch is that I’m not sure that I will be spinning the same way as before. I feel different, and it may affect how the wheel works for me.
   
6. Sort out my digital pictures. Yeah, this hasn’t even been on my radar. It will happen, since I want to put pictures on my walls. I also want to upload things to Facebook. I think the limiting factor here is that I cannot stay at my desk for too long – it hurts my back.

Ok, so I’m not useless. Not totally, anyway.

In other news – Duck got a job. I adopted him almost two years ago for his unusual temperament – he’s ultra self-confident, cute as all get-out, and patient with people. I had no idea that he would actually be useful. Here’s what happened:

If you follow me on Facebook, you know that I bowl every week in a league. Michael and I didn’t have a pre-organized team, so we were randomly placed with a few guys whom we didn’t know, but who quickly became our friends. The team consisted of a father/son pair (I’ll refer to the father as C and the son as T) and the son’s friend from work, K. This year, K decided not to bowl again, but we gained another teammate, B, whom we also like a lot. The cool thing about the league we are in is that the people  range widely in age. T is in his late 50′s, C is 81, and B is in his 60s or 70s. Michael and I are in our 30s, and there are younger people than us who also bowl. Not unlike the yarn craft community when it comes down to it, except that there are far more men than women in the bowling leagues.

This year, C has been having trouble with his shoulder. After being in pain for months, he finally went to a doctor and got devastating news: he has stage four cancer in his lungs, a rib, his lymph nodes, and his shoulder bone. His wife had also been diagnosed with lung cancer and was given six to nine months to live – that was three years ago.

The last six weeks or so have been exceedingly rough for C. His wife succumbed to the cancer right around the same time he started radiation. His family has come from other parts of the country to take care of him, but it’s a big job. I asked his daughter if I might be able to visit C at home since I hadn’t seen him at bowling in a long time. I thought it might cheer him up to have guests. She thought that would be a nice idea, so I came by on Friday to see how he was doing. When I got in the door, C asked “Did you bring your cats with you?” Had I realized he wanted to see them, of course I would have done so.

I then had a brilliant plan. Duck is a terrible traveler – he actually rolls over on his back when he’s in his carrier and kicks the top of it like a toddler having a temper tantrum all the way to our destination. So I thought maybe Ducky can be an animal assisted therapy cat for a while. He gets the practice making car trips, and C gets the opportunity to snuggle a soft kitty without the responsibility of taking care of it. I might get Buttercup involved, too. She travels just fine, save for the car sickness. Fortunately, C lives only two minutes away (according to my Nav system). Ooh – and maybe I can get to fostering again when we get back from our next business trip, and I can take kittens to C as well! How fun!

It’s a good thing for me, too. I don’t have a lot of energy, but I can certainly knit and talk to C at his house. I understand what he’s going through better than most, given that I’ve been incapacitated for a long time, too. Maybe we can help each other out of our respective rough patches. I think this will be good.

Setting Goals

Check this out – I’m posting again within a few days my last post. I don’t know what to think about this – maybe I’m getting some of that ambition back? It would be nice.

I’ll start with a short health update: I haven’t been able to experiment with the magic combination of supplements because, unfortunately, I got a cold. I can’t help but feel my physical response to getting a cold is exaggerated. I mean, for most people, they get a little stuffy, maybe a little tired, but they can function. When I get even a small cold, it just wipes me out. I forced myself to have a good time with my gaming group yesterday because I have so few interactions anymore with real people who aren’t doctors. Since I last posted, I also managed to do some research on nitric oxide, and I learned something hilarious – the supplement I’m taking seems to be the herbal equivalent of Viagra! No, the doctor isn’t crazy for prescribing that to me. Viagra was originally developed to help people with heart problems, basically by modulating the nitric oxide pathways in the body, thereby opening up blood vessels. The reason we know Viagra as a drug for erectile dysfunction is that the pharmaceutical companies found this to be a more profitable way to market the drug.

Today, I’m going to get back to the original topic of my blog, to some degree. I’ve been feeling that since I’m kind of trapped in my house, sentenced to doing low energy activities, I should use that for some practical purpose. I just hate feeling like I’m doing nothing, like I’m useless. I’ve got some goals related to knitting and outside activities, so I thought I’d share them, to make me more accountable. Here they are, more or less in the order I manage to think of them:

1. Write a book. I have no idea whether this book is just for me, for only close friends, or for the world, but I want to write a book on what it is like to live with a long-term, mysterious and invisible illness. I won’t know for whom I am writing the book until I’ve finished it because it is kind of personal, and I just don’t know what I want to share and with whom.
2. Finish all of my knitting and crochet WIPs. This has failed in the past, largely because I see something new I like, and I just toss the old stuff aside like dirty laundry. I know that by denying myself the freedom to cast on something new I only manage to trigger a rebellion and I suddenly feel a burning need to cast on a ton of new projects, so I’m going to set guidelines like, “I have to finish three projects already in progress before I cast on a new one.” Of course, then the new one will soon become one of these old projects, so I am really just making the problem worse by adding to it, but at least I am taking a few steps forward as well. And who knows, maybe being trapped into this disciplined yarn crafting might just be the trigger my body needs to get better. I will gladly discard my newly instated rule if I have energy and can do other things that don’t involve sitting down. It would be a reward, in a sense. If I don’t get better, seeing that pile of half-finished projects get smaller would be a different kind of reward.
3. Do a wardrobe purge. This is a smaller project than the others, probably something that will take a day or two, but it’s something I really need to do. I’ve lived in parts of the country that have had relatively consistent weather since I was fifteen years old. First it was Hawai’i, then Florida, then San Francisco (I am using the city here rather than the state because SF really is different than the rest of California in general. They get seasons everywhere else in the Bay Area, but not so much in SF. Southern California has a consistent climate, too, but it’s warm, whereas SF is cold. Even in the summer.). Now I have to have clothes for multiple seasons, and some of them are worn out, some don’t fit anymore (due to weight loss), and some I just don’t like. The volume of clothing I need has become comparatively greater than before. I need to get rid of what I don’t wear, then supplement the areas of my wardrobe that are lacking. The latter part will be harder, since I really don’t have the energy for shopping trips that involve trying on clothes. The goal, though, is just to get rid of stuff. The replacing will come later.
4. Blog more often. This goal is a little vague, but I want to aim for once a week right now. I won’t get too hard on myself if I only manage every other week, though. I think that it might help me achieve my goals if I write down the progress I’ve made. Sometimes I feel like I’ve done nothing until I’ve made an accounting of it. Right now, I need to see that I’m not entirely useless for my self-esteem. I have none left after all this being sick business.
5. Spin a skein of yarn. Also a small goal, but I just haven’t spun anything in a long time, and I really want to. I got a lot of fiber for Christmas (Amazon.com allows you to add things from other websites to your wish list now, so I went to Etsy and added the pretty things I saw), my fiber storage is overflowing, and, well, it’s a way to get new yarn without having to go shopping for it. Plus, spinning is a very mild form of exercise (see how your calves feel the day after spinning for a few hours), and I really want to try to get exercise. I miss simply moving around.
6. Sort out my digital pictures. This is a medium-term project. I have hundreds, maybe thousands of pictures on my hard drives, and I want to do something with them. I’ll probably put quite a few on Facebook, I’ll print some to hang on my walls, maybe I’ll showcase pictures of kittens I had before I started keeping this blog… the idea is that I don’t know what the point is in having all these pictures if they are to remain unseen in a hard drive.

So, I’ve listed goals of varying time commitment and difficulty. I think that I might start with a smaller goal (like spinning a skein of yarn or the wardrobe purge) sooner so that I can get the accomplishment momentum going. The book, WIPs, pictures and blogging will be things that sort of happen in the background, perhaps concurrently, or perhaps I will focus on one of them at some point just to have the achievement. I will make regular updates about them, just to keep me on track.

There are more goals I have in mind, but making them something I have to commit to right now would simply be setting myself up for failure. There are things I want to do like finishing the painting in the house (there is still a lot of wall space left unpainted) and getting back to fostering, but my health limits those. It’s downright dangerous for me to get on a ladder, for example, because all it takes is one black-out and I’ve fallen and broken my neck. Of course, my over-arching goal is to get healthy, but I don’t think I have much control over that. Control that I haven’t already exerted, I mean. I go to the doctors regularly, and I take my supplements regularly, no matter how nasty they are (and let me tell you, some are quite powerful). I’m planning to see a new specialist in Los Angeles for a diagnostic procedure called non-cognitive biofeedback. Admittedly, this one seems a little… out there… but I’m at the point where I’m thinking anything is worth a shot. I cannot go on like this anymore.

So, for now, I’m focusing on what I can do. Modest goals.

All the Little Pieces

I finally have some answers about what has been wrong with me. Really reasonable answers. Answers that give me something to aim for.

This all goes back to the fact that I started a program designed to get my immune system under control just under six months ago. The short version of the story is that the program worked. It worked well, and it worked fast. In maybe two months or so, my immune system was under control, no longer viciously attacking my thyroid gland all the time. On the surface, that’s great news! The thing is, I was still treating the underactive thyroid with the same dose of medication I had been on before the program. My primary problem is not hypothyroidism, but rather an immune dysfunction that is ultimately associated with the adrenal glands and cortisol. While I was diagnosed with hypothyroidism, I was really just somewhere in the oscillation between hypothyroidism and hyperthyroidism. Since I treated the cause of the problem instead of the disease that happened to be just a symptom, everything should have gotten better downstream.

Since I had been hypothyroid for so many years (I’ve been treating it for maybe eleven years, now), no one really thought to look for hyperthyroidism. That’s really too bad, because so many bad things started to happen. The breathing and chest pain issue came back. I had heart palpitations (when your heart beats really hard, so much so that you become very aware of it – it seems like a heart attack the first time it happens, before you know what’s going on). Next I started to have trouble staying asleep, getting maybe four hours of sleep per night. At first I felt really good, maybe for three weeks. Eventually, though, being in a hypermetabolic state took its toll on me. I started to lose weight at an alarming rate. I developed a low-grade fever (usually around 99.6) that was accompanied by nervous breakdowns. In the last few weeks, I started experiencing numbness or constant pain in certain nerves. To top it all off, this whole time I’ve been dealing with burning muscle pain that is only partially and temporarily relieved by massage. Anti-inflammatory medications just didn’t work for me. I was such a mess. Still am, for the record. For the last two months, I’ve been sick to the point where it interferes with having a normal life.

I stopped taking the thyroid medication for a month. Normally, this isn’t a good idea, but I resorted to that option because I had trouble communicating with my endocrinologist. When I knew for certain that I was hyperthyroid (my chiropractor did regular blood tests to confirm this), I called my endocrinologist’s office. The thing is, they make you talk to a nurse rather than the doctor himself. She then takes the message to the doctor, who tells her what to tell you and she calls back. This process is ridiculous. First of all, it’s a literal game of telephone – things get lost and confused in the translations. Second, had I been able to speak to the doctor, he’d have been able to ask some very relevant, very important questions. As it stood, I told the nurse that my thyroid medication was at a much too high dose, and that I thought it needed to be dropped significantly. She went to the doctor, who told her that I was just having a normal fluctuation and should only drop the dose by a little bit. This process took two days. I informed her that I didn’t think that this was just a fluctuation, that I had been seeing a chiropractor who managed to control the underlying disease, and that I thought we really needed to reevaluate my dose as if I were a newly diagnosed thyroid patient. The nurse was really rude to me. She asked “so you think your chiropractor cured you and that you don’t need medication anymore?” I informed her that, no, he didn’t cure me, but he did manage the underlying disease, which really affects my needs for thyroid medication. She said she’d bring it to the doctor, but she never called back. She had such an attitude with me, and I knew she really didn’t get what I was trying to tell her. She seemed to think I was some kind of idiot. I chose to take matters into my own hands because I was being dismissed.

It gets worse. The levels of thyroid hormone in my system left me in a state of thyrotoxicosis. What this means is that the levels of thyroid hormone in my body had gotten to a toxic level. If left untreated, I was at risk for a thyroid storm, which is the release of a whole bunch of thyroid hormone all at once. Thyroid storm can be fatal. I don’t think that I ever quite experienced a thyroid storm, but I did get pretty close. The endocrinologist would have known that had he spoken to me personally.

The best thing I could have done in that circumstance was to discontinue the meds (given that I couldn’t get the doctor to prescribe a significantly smaller dose, which would have been the best option). After a few days, most of the symptoms of hyperthyroidism, particularly the sleeplessness and the heart palpitations, began to subside. I decided that I would give the medication a month to clear my system, then I would go to my primary care physician (who is much more accessible) to get my medication needs reevaluated.

While I was off the thyroid medication, another complication appeared (which exemplifies why it’s generally not a good idea to quit taking the meds cold turkey). I began to have severe emotional crashes. I was suicidal much of the time, and just plain critically depressed the rest of time. I started to experience a lot of physical pain, from nerve pain to muscular pain. I would sleep twelve hours a night and not wake up rested. With naps, I was sleeping about sixteen hours a day. It was a complete disaster. The reason for this is complex. Because my metabolism was so high for so long, it overtaxed my adrenal glands. The adrenal glands are responsible for producing cortisol, which regulates inflammation and stress responses in the body (in addition to a few other things, but these are the relevant functions for my story). The high metabolism forced the adrenal glands to produce cortisol at a very high level to combat the stress of being generally overworked. The thing is, the adrenal glands can only do that so long before they, too, become tired. When my metabolism slowed down and stopped stimulating the adrenal gland so aggressively, the adrenal gland began to take breaks, effectively collapsing from exhaustion.

This left me in a very precarious state. Any stress, no matter how small, caused an extreme physical reaction in my body. Muscles cramped up, and inflammation plagued me. I had nervous breakdowns. I also had this feeling that I needed to be dead – it was like a call of nature. Often when someone is suicidal, it’s a reaction to a situation that makes them feel frustrated and powerless. The desire to kill oneself is fueled by anger and passion (I’ve been there, I know). This was a very different feeling. It was like my body knew it was malfunctioning on a critical level, and maybe it figured I was dying already, so might as well make it quick? The only way I could stop myself from doing something about it was to call someone.  This happened a lot.

I got some supporting supplements from my chiropractor, and things got a little more manageable. I never felt “good” (and I still don’t), but I was at least stable and not constantly in danger of offing myself. I reintroduced the thyroid hormone into my body at a much lower level, and it also helped a bit. It wasn’t long, though, before I became hyperthyroid again. This is where I’m at now. For about two days, I got normal levels of sleep and woke up comparatively (but not properly) refreshed. As the hormone level came back to toxic levels, I stopped sleeping for more than four hours at a stretch, and even that sleep wasn’t (isn’t) really solid – I wake up several times per night. The heart palpitations started again, and I had trouble breathing accompanied by chest pain. I gave it ten days to settle out (because it may have been my body just getting used to the hormone again), but it only got worse. I just had a blood draw today to confirm the hyperthyroidism, and tomorrow the doctor should have the lab results to justify dropping the dose again. I am nowhere near out of the woods.

The hyperthyroidism is also responsible for another mysterious, chronic condition I’ve had – the chest pain and shortness of breath. Because I just had to know what was wrong with me, I spent many, many hours researching my symptoms, conditions, etc. Here’s what I learned:

Excess thyroid hormone has the effect of dilating (relaxing) the blood vessels, and if you’re thyrotoxic, it can lead to low blood pressure. No doctor has ever believed me when I said I thought my blood pressure was too low – with the focus on high blood pressure in this country, it seems doctors can forget that low pressure is a problem, too. The doctors tell me that it’s great that I have such low blood pressure and immediately move on to other matters. Recently my resting blood pressure was measured at 98/56. Ideally, your systolic blood pressure (the top number) will be somewhere between 90 and 120. This indicates that your heart is contracting well and properly supplying blood to your body. The diastolic blood pressure should be between 60 and 80. This means that when the heart relaxes, the ventricles are properly refilling for the next contraction, pushing blood back into circulation. My diastolic pressure was too low – that means that my heart is unable to properly refill after a contraction. This condition, when it leads to pulmonary edema (fluid build-up in the lungs) is known as Diastolic Congestive Heart Failure (or left-sided heart failure). The link I included describes the condition pretty well, except that it leaves out another possible cause of the dysfunction – heart palpitations. Somewhere between the fact that my blood pressure is too low to force blood back into the heart and the fact that my heart beats too fast, giving the blood less time to go where it is supposed to, my left ventricle was not refilling. This leads to angina (chest pain). Think of it like vomiting when there is nothing in your stomach – it hurts more when that happens. The blood that didn’t make it into the ventricle then backs up into your lungs, creating pulmonary edema. It was upon reading the three articles I referenced in this paragraph that I figured out what was going on. One of the articles I linked to above notes that the kind of heart failure I have is often missed by doctors. But I caught it.

I even think I know the mechanism by which the whole thing is happening to me. There are two times that my blood pressure is inappropriately low: when I exercise and the blood pressure does not rise enough to meet the demands of my body, and when I rest for long periods of time. I believe that when something (the thyroid, the brain, the adrenal glands – who knows?) detects that my blood pressure is at dangerously low levels, my body produces adrenaline to increase my heart rate. I think that’s how it generally works, and that’s why your blood pressure naturally rises when you exercise. The complication occurs when my blood vessels are too relaxed to respond to the rapid heart rate. I think, but am not certain, that if my thyroid hormone levels are more carefully regulated, this problem can reverse itself.

I’ve presented my theory about the heart issue to four of my doctors so far. When they heard my thought process, they all said to me that it was incredibly impressive that I figured this out. They thought my idea was completely logical, and most likely the correct diagnosis. Two of them suggested that I should seriously consider going into medicine because I have a unique perspective (of experience, largely) combined with a really great puzzle solving ability and could contribute a lot to the field.

I’m taking all of this in right now. I’ve been looking into getting back into the work force when/if I get better. I thought I was going to take up a career in yarn craft, and maybe it might still be a serious hobby, but after the experience I just had and the repeated suggestion that I should go into medicine, I have to rethink my feelings on the matter. I don’t believe in predestination, but I do believe that sometimes things happen that really shape your life, that suggest where you should be heading. I do have a unique opportunity here to do something big. At the same time, the idea is really scary to me. It just seems too big, and I wonder if I can really do it. I just don’t know. What I do know is that I have to focus on getting better first. It might take a long time.

I have a lot to think about.

How I Knew

I’ve been on yet another of our combined business/ friend visiting trips this week. We have one more trip to San Francisco coming up, then we have a break until September when my sister-in-law is expecting to have her (currently unborn) baby’s christening. After that, there are no plans, but I know something will come up. For example, I came to understand that my Aunt Lydia and Uncle Greg are in their last year living in Italy, so I may leave the continent for the first time in my life. Anne-Catherine, if you’re reading this, we plan to come see you, too!

I had a few very odd feelings before this trip. A day or two before, I got the feeling like a big life change was coming. I spoke to my husband about it, but he couldn’t really think of anything momentous that should be coming up. Regardless, I knew. I’ve always had such strong pattern recognition skills combined with a high passive perception score (sorry, I’ve been playing too much Dungeons and Dragons of late!) that I have dreams of events before they transpire. I’ve been informed more than once that I seem to always know how something is going to play out, but not a lot of people believe me until after the fact (Cassandra syndrome). The feelings I had about this upcoming event were so strong that I felt compelled to share them on Facebook, particularly when I was at the airport (we all know by now how I feel about that place) and there were tornado warnings blasting over the intercom. I just felt like everything was as it was meant to be.

Also in the week prior to the trip, I learned of a cruel coincidence. The National Needle Arts Association (TNNA) was going to have their trade show in the hotel right across the street from the hotel we were in for the Ohio portion of Michael’s business presentations. Why might this be cruel, you ask? Well, I am not a member of TNNA, and you have to be in order to get in. I would have to own a business with a business ID number, or since I teach, I’d need a long list of requirements that I simply could not gather in time for the show.

When we got to the hotel, it was very late. The tornadoes delayed our trip by about an hour an a half, so we had to get in and get to sleep right away so Michael could get up in the morning. If I was going to do anything about even trying to get into the trade show, I also needed to be up early. Before we attempted sleep, I looked out the window. My view

was this – the location of the TNNA trade show.

I found myself simply unable to sleep after about 7:20am. All the better since, if I wanted to see the pretty yarn, I had to get it all in before noon when we were scheduled to drive to Michigan. I went to the restaurant attached to the hotel for my breakfast. Almost immediately after I sat down, the waiter asked if I was one of the knitters. Cool – I wasn’t even knitting or wearing a knitted item! A critical (natural 20) on the stealth (or perhaps the disguise or streetwise) check. I informed him that no, I wished to attend the trade show, but I could not. However, at this point I knew that I could blend in if I wanted to attempt to gain access to the show. I belonged there!

On my way out of the restaurant, I noticed a woman with a Eucalan bag. Knowing that she had to be involved with the show, I stepped out of character and started up a conversation with her (I don’t usually talk to strangers unless the approach me first, but I’ve made a concerted effort to be less shy lately). I told her about my situation and asked if she knew of any way to get an “ordinary knitter” into the show. The very kind lady informed me that no, I could not get into the show since they were checking badges at the doors, but if I happened to have the requirements together I could sign up to be a TNNA member on the spot. I told her I didn’t know about the show early enough before my trip to gather the letters and such that I would need, so I was out of luck. “Well, there is a display right before the gates,” the lady informed me. “You could look and touch the yarns, maybe pick up a few samples.” Perfect. I went straight to the convention center.

The walk to the part of the convention center with the trade show was very, very long. I had to climb flights of stairs and walk nearly to the other side of the surprisingly large building. All at once I saw the knitters – and the yarn. Oh, the pretty yarn. I helped myself to one of the books listing the names of some of the vendors and what they had on the sample display. I noticed other knitters taking samples of yarn from beneath the displays and taping them into the books, so after gazing at and fondling some of the samples, I did the same. I noticed another knitter taking pictures, and since no one yelled at him, I did so, too. Here’s what I have:

These two were my favorite displays. The one on the left is Pear Tree Fibres, 100% pure Australian wool. The yarn was so soft that I just couldn’t stop touching it. In fact, they call the yarn “Supersoft.” The one on the right is Knitcellaneous. I particularly liked the “Scrumptious,” a blend of merino wool and silk.

There were other very nice displays that I liked, but the ones above were my favorites. Here’s just a sample of what they had:

I plan to show my samples to some of my local yarn shop owners and ask that they carry them. Heck, I’ll probably take them to San Francisco and ask my favorite shops out there to carry them as well. I figure the TNNA folks can’t get too mad that I kind of snuck in if I bring the vendors some business. I should also note that I would not be foolish enough to blog about it if I actually did sneak in to the trade show because a) I might like to be a member one day and having a written confession in a public forum would not help my chances and b) had I managed to do it, giving away my secrets would make it impossible to do so again.

That said, I realized something after I left the trade show. I wanted in badly. I wanted in so badly that I contemplated trying to con my way in, maybe trying to sweet talk someone at the front desk into taking pity on me because fate wanted me to be here. I also realized that I’ve been trying to figure out what career path I want to pursue now that I’m feeling better. The last time I had to have blood drawn, I had a moment that I truly believe was predestined. I forgot the paperwork but I didn’t realize it until I had driven all the way to the testing facility. I had to drive all the way home, and I was starving because I was fasting. It made me bitter because when I came back, the waiting room was much fuller and I’d have to wait even longer to get through it. I sat down and took out my knitting. A few moments later, a little girl arrived with her mother. “Oh, look!” she cried, “Mommy, she’s knitting!” The little girl asked her mother to teach her, and the mother was kind of trying to dissuade the little girl, so I wasn’t sure if I should offer my services (in retrospect, I could have slipped the mother a card and let her decide for herself). I wondered then if it was a sign. I think, my friends, that my questions have answered themselves. I have officially decided to pursue an honest-to-goodness career in the needle arts.

I most certainly thought about a career in other fields. I mean, this blog is “Knittin’ and Kittens” – I couldn’t pick just one subject. I seriously contemplated finishing what I started in college, ending up as a veterinarian. I still desperately want the title of “Doctor,” and I want to be just as important as the teachers always told me I’d be when they realized I was a lot smarter than most of the other kids when I was going to school. Alas, life has not led me there. Now that Michael and I travel so much, going to school and having a practice of my own would be impractical. Additionally, I began to realize that I hate it when people come to me for advice about animals, then ignore it in favor of  what their friends and family think. As a vet, I’d have to deal with people not giving the meds I prescibe and then wondering why their pet isn’t getting better. I’d have to kill animals that I believe I could save, just because the owner doesn’t want to pay the bill and won’t surrender the animal. I have to bite my tongue to keep from ripping the back yard breeders a new one for their contribution to the killing of perfectly wonderful shelter animals. I’d fail as a vet because I care too much about the animals themselves – it would be better if I just liked the field of medicine. My contribution to the animal welfare field is best kept to exactly what I am doing right now – fostering. This doesn’t mean I shouldn’t also go to school for the vet tech license I was contemplating. Getting the education would give me a better understanding of how to help my kittens, and give me a way to earn extra cash if I want to. I am writing all this here because I had to admit it to myself first, and that was a hard step to take.

I’m not saying that the yarn-craft career is a second choice option, either. When I really think about it, it’s what I should have been looking into all along. I started to work with yarn when I learned to read, and that was well before I started to attend school. I love yarn. I want to be involved in every aspect of yarn, from making it to dying it to making it into projects. I am good at and enjoy doing the math to make my projects look and fit the way I want them to. I’ve written technical manuals, which aren’t that different from writing a pattern book when you get to the essence of it. As a bonus, a career in yarn craft would absolutely suit the lifestyle I have now. I can knit and design projects when we are traveling (so long as the government doesn’t keep punishing knitters for the acts of terrorists… grr… as if we had something to do with it), and if someone doesn’t like my knitting advice, I am not at all offended because no lives are at stake (and it’s art – there are no hard and fast rules in art). The best part is that I enjoy the work so much that I do it for fun – imagine if I could draw a regular pay check from it!

So the events leading up to and including the trip I am on now have shown me what I should have known all along. I am not a knitter – I’m a Knitter.

Improvising

Last week was one in which things just didn’t go as planned. I thought everything was going well. I spun exactly one ton of yarn for the baby blanket I am knitting. I was on top of the infections the mommy cat and her kittens had. I started bottle feeding at the first sign of weight loss. I spiked the formula with Lysine and probiotics to help warn off the URI that mommy cat had. It all just… failed.

The blanket:

As I spun the yarn, I was pleased with the thought that I was making so much I could not possibly fall short of what I needed for a baby blanket. I mean, come on, baby blankets are small, and I spun pounds of yarn (I think maybe 2 pounds?). I began the pattern I selected on Ravelry, knitting happily away with the green yarn. I moved on to the blue, a little concerned about the amount I had of that color – I had to dispose of a significant amount of yarn due to a chewing incident that Serra and Duck perpetrated. No big deal, it was just one color, and maybe I could make it up with another color of yarn.

Then I got to the undyed yarn. I knit the first section using the suggested number of stitches and rows, thinking nothing about it. When I bound off, I noticed that the ball of yarn was a lot smaller than it should be. I weighed the yarn, and it turned out that I had used exactly half of what I had spun. Half?! Really? I had two more sections to do, and they were to be larger than the first. Oh, crap.

It was at this point that I decided two things. First, I decided that the pattern is just a suggestion. I would place the color blocks in the same places (roughly) that the pattern called for, but they might have fewer rows than suggested. Additionally, the blanket might turn out a little smaller than I intended. My friend Julie pointed out that the new blanket size would be absolutely perfect as a nursing cover up and as a place to just put the baby on the floor. Julie is a doula, so I believe anything she says about human babies. She could tell me they were born with horns and I would believe it. Not going to find out, myself. The second thing I decided is that I would spin more of the undyed fiber, since I have quite a bit of that.

I might also have to cook Serra and Duck for dinner. I keep threatening to eat them when they destroy my yarn.

The kittens:

At the beginning of the week, Charge finally started to feel better. I was able to stop giving her fluids, then I was able to stop hand-feeding her. The babies were still on the bottle, though, because their poor, sick mother dried up. The little ones also developed an eye infection – Quark in both eyes, Neutrino in just one.

I jumped on everything. I started the boys on the bottle at the first sign of weight loss. I started them on eye drops the moment the eyes got infected. I added Lysine and probiotics to their formula when Quark showed signs of their mother’s cold. I thought that if I stayed ahead of everything, it would all come out fine.

When the kittens’ eyes didn’t improve on the eye meds I had, I took them to the vet. They were given stronger meds and some Clavamox to fight the first signs of mommy’s cold. Two days later, it all went down hill. Quark couldn’t sleep because he couldn’t breathe. Around every 30 minutes, he woke up screaming. I offered him the bottle, but he lost the will to suckle. When I tried to give him fluids, he would panic and back into the needle causing himself to bleed. It all broke my heart. I spent two days holding Quark in the steam from the humidifier until his nose cleared enough to eat and sleep. He loved that – he would hang is head over my hand (I kept my hand in the steam to make sure it wasn’t too hot) to sniff the moist air. I fed him twice as often as his brother, but he still kept losing weight. On the last day, Michael and I took turns holding him, keeping him warm so he could sleep an hour at a time. We even offered Quark to Duck for the grooming his mother couldn’t give and I couldn’t manage because it would involve wetting and chilling him to dangerous levels.

Duck is such a good mommy for a baby boy-cat.

By the next morning, I knew Quark was finished. He clamped his jaw closed and refused his beloved bottle. He could not be consoled no matter what I did. Neutrino was gaining weight and getting chubby, and in comparison, Quark just looked so small. He was also cool to the touch. I called the shelter and asked that he be put down. I’ve gotten better with this. It’s such a bad feeling, wondering if you gave up too soon, but I have had that worry so many times at this stage and it never ends well. My opinion is always seconded by the vets at the shelter, so it’s not even a unilateral decision. I know I did the painful, but right thing. I have to keep reminding myself of this.

Within two days of Quark’s end, I noticed that Neutrino wasn’t taking the bottle so well for me. I also noticed that when I stimulated him to go to the bathroom, there was usually nothing coming out. I was concerned, until I reached under his mother and rubbed her tummy. Imagine my surprise when I discovered she was full of milk! Now that Charge was feeling better, she went right back to caring for her baby. By the end of that day, Charge was so full of milk that she sat in the kitten room howling with discomfort.

I then got a brilliant idea. I called the shelter in the morning to give them the status update on my kitty family. I also suggested that if they had kittens who needed a surrogate mother, Charge might be a good candidate. It turns out that I couldn’t have called at a better time. Another mom cat came in to the shelter with six newborn kittens. The problem is, the mom was very defensive of her kittens, and the babies had nasty eye infections. The shelter staff couldn’t get enough access to the babies to give them regular treatment to clean up the eyes. I brought Charge to the shelter to see if she would take in some new kittens. It could not have gone better – the first thing Charge did when she saw one of the new guys was bathe, then potty him. I gave her the 3 sickest kittens (one had so much pus coming out of his eye that I thought the eye had exploded) and took them home. By that evening, the babies had gained weight, so I knew mommy was caring for them. Charge just seemed so happy, so relived to have more babies to care for.

Meet Butterscotch, Fudge, and Marmalade. Yes, the umbilical cord is still attached to these kittens.

Neutrino is great with the new siblings. The day after they arrived, he started eating wet food like a big boy, so he isn’t really competing for milk. He snuggles the babies as if they were his litter mates, despite the disparity in size. The only problem is that Neutrino’s eye didn’t heal all that well – he probably got an ulcer – and he seems to have bad vision in that eye (he falls down a lot, always the same way, on the side with the bad eye). The little guys’ eyes are clear, but it was just too tough for Neutrino.

(I know I look rough here – I’ve been a little unwell, but I’ve started getting tested for everything). Neutrino’s right eye might be like this permanently. It’s just so cloudy and misshapen. If you compare him to the kittens above, you can see he doesn’t fit in my hand as well anymore. He’s big, and getting bigger every day! I feel good about his future, despite the eye.

So, the whole kitten thing may not have gone as well as I had hoped. On the other hand, if I hadn’t lost Quark, I may not have been able to save these other babies. I do still have Neutrino, and I’ve given his mother another chance to be the great mother she started out being. While nothing this week has gone like I planned, with a little improvisation, I still managed to get something good.

The next stage

We’re in a strange season here in Colorado. Winter isn’t quite over, but Spring is fighting its way into existence. One day it will be in the 20′s or 30′s, snowing so hard that you can’t see more than a foot in front of you, but the next day it will be in the mid to high 60′s. It’s strange, but it gets us a jump on watering our lawn for the summer. Plus, you get really neat images like this one:

The snow that covered the skylight just a few hours before is now melting.

As the seasons change, so do the kittens. Unfortunately, Charge got sick, but her babies have been surviving well despite the exposure to a pretty rotten URI. I’ve been bottle feeding for at least four days now. The smaller kitten, Quark, has an eye infection, but antibiotic drops are making a big difference. The larger kitten, Neutrino, has no signs of his mother’s illness. In fact, both boys started walking today! They have crawled out of the nest before, right when their mother got really sick and couldn’t feed them. Kittens that small just don’t leave the nest unless they are hungry or neglected – it keeps them safe from predation. When they leave their nest in search of care, the little guys cry in such a way that anyone with even the faintest mothering instinct can tell that something is wrong. Today’s outing was different. They see me as “the other mommy” now – they purr for me, which doesn’t happen when the little ones are dependent on their mother. The kittens also come out of their nest to see me, hoping I’ve brought the bottle. I had not warmed a bottle for the babies when I went in to see them last, but I had filled a syringe with food for their ailing mother. While I fed her (she had to breathe between bites of food, so it took a long time), the boys just explored their world. They tried their rubbery little legs, leaning against my foot to stand up. After a few wobbly steps, they would fall over, frustrated and shaking from the exertion. They sniffed the food bowls and climbed into their litter box. They walked toward Michael and me in search of the elusive bottle. They licked mushy droppings from the syringe off of the floor. Those boys will be honest-to-goodness kittens soon!

As for the yarn side of things, I’ve also moved on to a new stage in the hand spun baby blanket.

I finished spinning all the yarn ,

ending with the light blue and undyed wool .

I began knitting the Moderne Baby Blanket (Ravelry Link), first with the green, then adding the blue.

The blanket looks a little uneven in the picture, but I assure you that in real life it is just fine. I think that attaching the new color distorts the work a bit, but as I add more sections, the green square will be pulled equally around, making it appear even again.

I noticed as I knit with my freshly spun yarn that it looks store bought for some stretches. Don’t get me wrong – it’s still a little thick-and-thin, but I am really happy with the way my yarns turned out. I hope I have some left when I finish the blanket so I can give it to Sara to play with!

I mentioned my observation to Michael while we were watching TV.

Me – “Look at this – it looks like real yarn!”

Michael – “That’s because it is real yarn.”

It looks like all that practice is paying off!

Spin you right round

I been spinning. Round and round the wheel goes, and occasionally, yarn comes out. The thing is, spinning in my house is much more difficult than you might originally think. I can boil the difficulty down to three words: I have cats.

Duck especially has been curious about my wheel. Every time he figures out I am spinning (it wasn’t hard for a while there), Duck runs into the room to interfere. He likes to put his paws in the spokes. He bites my drive band. On one particularly frustrating day, he put his head on the treadle while I spun.

I managed the fix the squeak, for what it’s worth. It turns out that the dry air here in Colorado is really tough on wood. In the winter time, all the wood in my house shrinks. Remember the floors I installed less than a year ago? Well, as soon as winter comes, the boards start to shrink. No big deal, I expected that. The thing is, I didn’t expect them to shrink as much as they actually do, and spaces have formed between the boards that are big enough to collect stray cat litter. I think next time I install wood floors it will be in the dry season. As for the wheel, the wood shrunk in such a way that the parts I screwed together got loose and made the wheel squeak when I used it. The dryness has also caused most of my bobbins  to just fall apart. It got really ugly when five ounces of green singles fell off the broken bobbin in a tangled heap.

I’m just glad that I managed to figure out the cause of the squeak, because it would have eventually driven me off the deep end. I am spinning so much yarn for Sara’s baby blanket that the noise might have bored a hole in my brain! As it is, I have managed to get some nice yarn off the now squeak-free wheel.

That cake of green yarn is probably the biggest one I have ever made. This includes store-bought yarn. Yes, I have been spinning that much. I have a light blue to make (one ply is pictured above with the purple singles), and I am going to add some undyed wool to the mix. I plan to put them all together to make this blanket (Ravelry Link).

So, that’s my current life: spinning yarn, repairing broken spinning wheel parts, and fighting off rogue kittens. Coming soon: furious baby garment knitting!

Mystery

I love waking up to this every morning.

I love having 8 kittens to care for. I love bottle-feeding them, I love snuggling them, I love introducing them to new food, and I love watching them learn. There is a lot to love here.

But there is one thing I do not love. There is this mystery… thing… that has been plaguing my kittens. They seem fine, and then I come back a few hours later to a half-dead kitten. These kittens have been tested for bacteria, viruses, and whatever else the vets can think of. Nothing comes back positive. While I think it’s great that the kittens don’t have any recognizable diseases, it’s really terrible that there is nothing to treat either.

Friday night, just after midnight, Lamb went down. I came in to do the final feeding of the day, which involves Michael making rounds at the litter boxes. When he pulled back one of the boxes, Michael found poor Lambie, cold, barely breathing, and unresponsive to her world (I’ve learned that a veterinary term for that is “obtunded”). The thing is that the kittens make a full recovery by the next day. I don’t get it.

Duck has been looking kind of yucky lately, but at least he has had the decency to warn me that he might crash. He has been losing weight consistently and he’s had very low energy levels. I want to get him into the vet for another vitamin B shot. In the meantime, I’ve been trying to give him exclusive nursing visits with his mother. Theresa does still nurse the kittens, but I try to make sure that anyone who lost weight gets time alone with her. The catch is that she likes to lie on the narrow part of the counter, so I have to hold the kittens up to her to nurse – it’s exhausting!

In addition to the kittens, I’ve had a bunch of knitting and crocheting to do. I’m going to be teaching a few “Mommy and Me” classes at the yarn shop, so I had to make samples of the projects we are going to do.

This is the crochet scarf

and this is the knitted scarf.

I’m also going to be teaching some amigurumi classes next month, but I haven’t gotten to those projects yet.

I embarked on an ambitious spinning project as well. I wanted to spin enough yarn for a sweater, and then make a sweater pattern that will fit me, come hell or high water.

The yarn I came up with is a 3-ply, with 1 ply of a merino wool (the reddish brown color) and 2 of a merino wool/bamboo blend. It came out somewhere around a worsted weight. Since it’s handspun, it’s a little inconsistent, but the inconsistency isn’t terribly obvious. I’m going to knit it on size 9 needles. I tried size 6, but the fabric was just too dense. The challenge at this point is to find stitch patterns that help achieve the shaping I want, but that aren’t so complicated that they will be lost in the pattern of the yarn – it’s a little busy when it’s knit up.  You know, I should photograph the swatches. A project for later, I guess.

So, I have a few mysteries right now. Will all of my kittens survive their stay here? What is causing them to crash like they have been? Will I finally be able to knit a sweater that fits? Will it look good enough that I will wear it? Stay tuned for the answers.

Wandering Obliviously

The Kona post is up. Click here or on June 24th in my calendar.

I’m not myself right now. While I was in San Francisco, my new doctor called, unreasonably panicked about my last thyroid function test. I had just had my dose increased, and it takes about 3 months for the numbers to be stable again. It was only 2 months since my dosage change, and the numbers were too low, so she said she wanted to decrease my dose. In retrospect, I should have handled this differently, but I didn’t really think through the consequences. The doctor wanted to put me on a dose that was lower than I have been on in 5 years. I asked if I could just go back to the dose I had been on previously. No, she said, it would only be for a month and they would call the “emergency” prescription in to the pharmacy in SF. I should have said no, I’ll call my old endocrinologist since I was there in town. I just went along with it, picking up the generic prescription at the pharmacy. That should have raised more warning flags for me, but I apparently ignored them. I have always been told that you should not switch from the name brand to the generic because they work differently. The doctor did not ask what I was taking, and last time I went with the generic I could not get the numbers under control. This is why I prefer a specialist to treat my endocrine diseases – General Practitioners  have no idea what they are doing.

It’s really bad this time, worse than when I hadn’t realized that my disease was progressing earlier in the year. I will ask Michael a question, and he’ll tell me I just asked him that a few minutes ago.  I have no short term memory. I am requiring about 12-14 hours of sleep a day, but sometimes I can’t fall asleep no matter how tired I am. I realized that I can’t focus enough to drive. I picked up some drugs for the kittens earlier this week (more on that in a minute), and I realized that I zoned out a few times on the highway. I couldn’t remember parts of the trip. In the last few days, I have been getting dizzy when I stand up, and last night I actually blacked out for a second and nearly fell on my way to the bathroom. I have to go in tomorrow for a follow-up blood test, and I am going to inform the doctor that I am going back to my previous dose and brand, whether or not she will prescribe it to me. I did, at least, contact a specialist (it takes awhile to get in). I have also decided that I am going to look for a new GP. I will never, ever stay with a doctor who dismisses my input about my body and fails to ask important questions.

Anyway, the kittens. Many of the kittens have had soft stool since I got them. I added canned pumpkin to their food, and it helped most of them, except for Palau. In the end, I took a fecal sample to the shelter. The kittens have Giardia (Jee-AR-dee-uh), a bacterium that lives in the digestive system and causes diarrhea. Humans can catch it as well, but you have to consume the kittens’ feces in order to get an infection yourself. More commonly, if people and cats in the same household contract Giardia, it’s from a common contaminated water source. I am guessing that Tahiti was at least an indoor/outdoor cat and found a dirty puddle to drink from, then the kittens contracted it from grooming after visiting the litter box they shared with their mother.

Now the kittens are on Panacur, and they are much better. They are gaining weight rapidly, and eating a ton of food. I think Molokai will be ready to go back soon, but he is going to have to wait for at least 1 other sibling.

Since the kittens can reliably make it to the litter box, I have started giving them outings. Buttercup, of course, was personally offended that I would let them into her living room.

But Wesley was more content to supervise from the kitchen above.

Getting out of the bathroom is usually a great time for the kittens to explore a bigger space and to get a good run in. They played with an interactive toy:

and Tonga caught it!

They found solo toys:

And Palau found my new jumbo bobbins for my spinning wheel. I’m not sure which strikes me more – how big the bobbins are or how small Palau is.

Palau showed me how he isn’t afraid of the vacuum. Marq, however, seemed to be spooked by anything.

But look at Marqesas’s eyes – is that not neat? (Click to enlarge)

Besides playing with my newly freed kittens/prisoners, I got some knitting and photographing completed. Here’s the Clapotis that I wanted to wear to a luau, but never managed to finish in time:

and the baby booties for the kid with the loose socks.

Despite being incapacitated, I am getting stuff done. If only I had more hours in a day. I’m tired of the insomnia (har, har).

Moving too fast

The world is moving to fast for me. I kept thinking that I had plenty of time to do things, but when I started scheduling all the last get-togethers with my friends and trying to make plans to see and do all the things I need to before I leave San Francisco, I realized that I am not going to be home for much of the remaining time we have here. We have practically 2 solid weeks of travel coming up, mostly business trips for Michael. One of them happens to be in Florida, so we will go see Lane and Jen when we get there. Another trip is to Denver, the same week we are closing on the house (just like we planned). It just feels overwhelming right now. I just thought there was more time. I think I lost  a lot of it due to sickness. Gotta love air travel.

I mentioned in my last post 2 things I needed to do that were the most pressing. I have done neither. To be fair, the Wesley thing resolved itself. I believe that he might have been lonely since the kittens and his parents went away. Every time he got the chance, Wesley hung out in Michael’s or my lap for the first few days after we got home from the house hunting trip. It wasn’t long before the little guy was himself again. The car thing will have to wait until I get home and am <gasp!> foster kitten-less.

We brought Carrot home the day we got back. I called her new mother the next day and arranged her adoption and Carrot was spayed on Tuesday (yesterday). Tomorrow, my sweet Carrot will leave my home for the couple who was meant to have her all along. I kept her tonight because the poor thing hadn’t yet recovered from the anesthesia. Her eyes were dilated and she freaked out around my cats. Carrot couldn’t walk a straight line, and she would lie down next to her toys so she didn’t topple when she reached for them. About 10:00pm she started to become the Carrot I know and love. She jumped onto my lap and rested her head on my heart. I think it must be her way of saying “thank you for taking care of me.” She’s going to be just fine in her new family. Despite the pull I’ve felt to adopt just one more before I leave, I know it just isn’t meant to be. <sob>

I do have the other 4 kittens to distract me from my grief. The boys have all made weight, so I am taking them back to the shelter every day to try to get them adopted. Esme is about 170g away from being ready herself. The only problem: she has ringworm. At least I think it is. It glows under the black light, but other foster parents who looked at it thought it could be chin acne. It really is presenting unusually – there is no fur loss, but there are a lot of dark, crusty scabs like pimples on her chin. Either way, I washed her and they boys with Malaseb and lyme/sulfur dip to hopefully stop the spread of the fungus. I have a suspicion about how they caught it.

It seems a certain Carrot doesn’t understand that she is not a baby and can’t play with the little ones.

The little ones do look great, though. Ernest is fluffy and handsome. Emo has the same fluff and sweet personality as Ernest. Esme still steals her daddy’s heart. And Widget is action man! He really knows his way around a kitten toy.

Over the weeked I had a spinning party. Only 3 of us from the spinning class I took last summer could make it, but we had a great time. As a result of the party, I got custody of this:

(a drum carder) which turns this:

(loose fiber)

Into these (kindly modeled by Carrot, who went all kid-in-a-candy-store on me):

(fiber batts)

which turn into this when I spin them:

I haven’t yet had time to make any more fiber batts, but I have to transfer custody of the drum carder to Naomi while I am out of town, so I had better get to it soon. It’s just that I’ve been busy.

Later that night I went to a party for a friend from my knit group, Celia. She was celebrating her birthday with her father, Jack. I learned that Jack was the Poet Laureate for San Francisco not long ago. That’s kind of cool in my book.

And finally, I finished the dishcloths for my contest winners. The pictures aren’t in the best focus, but you can look anyway. Which ones will you get, Sara and Anne-Catherine? You’ll never know until you open your mail…

Here are the Ravelry links in case anyone wants the patterns:

Kitty Love

Moon Gazing

All Tangled