What a Week!!

I'm not sure much else could have been squeezed into this one week. Let's see if I can document the essence. 

Here is Missy in a special box upstairs only a few days before getting deathly ill - photo taken by C.

Over the weekend Missy, our grey indoor kitty got sick, or shall I say sicker. She's been very skinny for the last few weeks and I'd been giving her a type of laxative for cats with hairballs. Suddenly though, she seemed to develop an upper respiratory infection and just from browsing the web, I think it may have been something like calicivirus??(cah-LEE-chee...) Anyway, due to her acute thinness, age (13+), and maybe cancer (she seemed to have some lumps in her abdomen), to cut a long story short, she died in my arms on Wednesday morning. That was horrible.

In the meantime....on Monday morning I'm awakened at about 5am with terrible itching on my wrist which in a short while, is seen to be not confined to that one spot but totally systemic, including from the top of my head to the bottoms of my feet. Huge ugly red patches covered almost everywhere, with welts and purpley-red, VERY itchy skin. Nevertheless, we took a planned family trip to the Aquarium and had a good time there. Tuesday was not much better, with chills developing etc. Still managed to go with a friend to a fascinating talk by the famed Frank McCourt (of Angela's Ashes fame), in the evening in downtown Chattanooga, and take C to her morning school at CHE, and afternoon Keeper's club meeting - I just dropped her off. Wednesday I was feeling pretty bad, with chills, nausea, some vomiting and would have spent the afternoon in bed (after Missy died in the morning, of course) had not S insisted I go to a doctor and get this thing cleared up, for Pete's sake! So I drag myself off to find a doctor that has an opening (hard to find, it turns out, in this flu season) and eventually get in at a Physician's Assistant's clinic. That revealed a fever, elevated WBC count of 15.8, and a positive diagnosis of Clostridium difficile, etc. Not exactly what one wants to hear but it had been suspected with diarrhea pretty constant for the previous month from that lovely antibiotic the dentist prescribed for the abscessed tooth in January. Moral of the story - TAKE CARE OF YOUR TEETH - no crowns!! (for interest' sake, you can look up C. difficile on google - you'll be enlightened, I'm sure! - never take Clindamycin, for one thing!). So, I'm on metronidazone or something like that to kill the C.diff. Pray that works! Now, with the itchiness still around, but less severe, we have to find a cure for that little problemHere is C by the little grave site in the woods, feeling sad that Missy's gone. (They buried her Wednesday afternoon while I was doc hunting).

OK, on to other things...C has a cough - mostly in the mornings - feels fine during the day, thankfully. I really don't think I could have taken care of a very ill cat, an ill and itchy self, and an ill child at the same time!! Thank you, Lord, for small mercies!

Thursday and today have been much better, but no rest for the wicked - still have to teach school, be taxi lady for cello group, help fold newsletters for the non-profit I volunteer for, help move in a new library cabinet and move books over to it for said non-prof. group, and all that stuff that doesn't let up for "nobody". But at least life isn't boring and I can truly say that God has given the strength to get through, especially losing Missy. (Who cares about C.diff?). And I didn't even mention that C and I got borrowed violins on Sunday and have been playing them from time to time when life permits. C already plays several pieces by ear in the violin Suzuki book one, and I'm up to about number 11 in the book. Of course, we're just excited by the novelty. I'll talk more about the violins next time....(still taking cello - violin is just a side hobby, ha ha!)

Cheerio, and hope for better news next time!