She's ok!

Hoorray! Fluffy got the all-clear! The lumps were just 'fatty lumps'. We have to keep an eye on whether they come back bigger or strangely shaped, but otherwise, it's all OK!! We're sooooooooo relieved and happy.

The poor thing had all these staples in her wound: No surprise then, that once they were removed she was singing and running about all over!

She is also getting very cheeky- this is her brother's bed, made from an old computer packing box and lined with an old quilt. We made it for him because he is so enormous we couldn't find a good one in the shops for him..... Fluffu decided that a visit to the vet gave her squatter's rights:
Never mind. Another old cover on a bench in the garden, and Scooter found a nice alternative in the sun:

I'm very happy that my little rogues have survived to purr another day!

Off for a few days..

Fluffy has a strange liking for leather shoes. With her sister it was bags. I still have a black leather handbag that has scratch marks all down one side. I'll never part with it. It says, "Figs was here". But Fluffy's fetish is definitely of the shoe kind. Here she is, a few weeks ago, sitting on my shoes. She later slept on them for hours. I have to take spare footwear with me. The alternative is a visit to mum's spent indoors.

Ah well. I'm off later today to see her, and to take her back to the vet tomorrow. We might find out what the lumps were....

The other day I dreamt that she had got the all-clear. I woke up smiling and relieved. Then I remembered it was just a dream. I can't say how much I hope that one will come true. My brain is telling me not to worry. My gut is saying "Prepare."

Should be blogging again by the end of the week..... please keep good thoughts for Fluffy.

*****

thanks for the birthday messages!

Scroll down for a post about the day....!

How to survive your 40th birthday

Birthday cards: they make me smile whenever I look at them.

Being a supply teacher, my partner didn't know whether he would be home or not for my birthday. Sure enough, he got a call the evening before. Never mind. Once you get past your 21st, you get used to being on your own on your birthday. Once you get past your 30th, you start preferring it that way. Once you get past your 39th, you sort of hope that it won't happen at all...

So off he went to work, leaving me to have a lie-in, one ear on the radio, one ear on the letterbox. Despite both, I slept for another few hours.


Then I did the girly bath thing- run the water deep and just warm enough, pour in the remnants of ALL the bottles of bubbles and oils that you've accumulated over the last three Christmasses and birthdays, fix a huge cup of tea and set a pile of chocolate biscuits at arm's length, and bring in the radio on a mile-long extension lead. It takes some setting up, but it's worth it.


A long, long soak with several hot top ups later..... soft pink slippered and dressing gowned thing floats downstairs stinking of lavender/rose/nutmeg/strange green oil of Ulay mixture.

Alas. No cards or letters on doormat. Sigh. Check outside... oooo! Two parcels! -Cards and presents from my partner's parents (suprise) and one of my brothers (miracle).


I've a total of £30 tucked inside cards, so I spend the afternoon in town. I keep looking at things that would suit other people. What so-and-so would just LOVE for Christmas... oooh I should get this for.... No! I have to reel myself in and tell me NO! Today it's for ME! I'm buying something special for ME!


I often come home from shopping with 'nearly gots'. My partner asks me how I got on and the list starts; I saw a nice skirt and I nearly got it, but (insert excuse), or I nearly got a new jumper, it was only £5. "Why didn't you get it then?" he says. Oh, didn't really need it. I've got a jumper. And so on. I'm good on nearly-gots, I am.

But this time I'm determined. I buy a watch that I saw and admired last year. I've liked it for a year, so it's safe to buy it. A certain bear has put a photo of it on his blog.


In the evening, a minor headache: make-up. Don't normally wear it. I have large, open pores on some of my face and make-up just sits in them. From a distance it all looks perfectly flawless, as they say on the adverts. But up close it looks like the surface of the moon. I go through the usual process of putting it on, taking it off, putting it on, oh, maybe if I just take SOME of it off, no, take it all off, put some back on again.... and so on, till my cheeks are so red I don't need any colour on them anyway.


Off we go, for a meal in town. We've been there before and it was good..... and it is again. I get the wrong starter, my partner's salad doesn't turn up, but the deserts are magnificent, just like last time, and that's what counts!!! Then I decide to have some alcohol. I'm not really allowed, not with my medication. But hey, just one yummy drink, just for today.


"Irish Coffee? Oh, we would, but we're out of cream, sorry. Would you like something different?"
I think, "That WAS my different. I normally have tea!" But think better of ordering anthing else. Maybe it's a sign I shouldn't drink after all. Hey ho. Off we go home.


Change into baggy jumper and jogging bottoms.
Chocolates. Tea. Telly. Both fall asleep on the sofa.
Trip upstairs. Snuggle into bed, on our new 'memory foam' mattress topper. Ahhhhhhh..... a few pages of PD James and away I go, asleep....

It might not sound like much, but I had a very, very happy birthday.

Keeping busy after the shock of the vet's bill!

Chicken pie out, wholemeal fruit scones ready to go in...

I've had the bill from the vet. For a dental clean, a few teeth taken out, one blood test, the removal of two suspicious lumps for sending to the lab.... guess how much? £954.82.

The nurse told us not to worry as "You can get it all back from the insurance." Not so!

I have an email friend, Donna, in Missourri. Her husband is a vet, and had never heard of Pet Insurance. Is it a UK thing?

Anyway, I pay just under £15 a month for Fluffy's insurance. But there are catches: NOTHING to do with the mouth is covered at all. Of everything else, there is an excess of £60 PLUS I have to pay 25% of what's left.

This means I will get back £539.98. Hardly getting it all back! I hope that nurse isn't saying that to everyone. I'm used to it, but others might have a bad shock coming.

I wonder if this attitude is behind the high fees, and even the strange fees. For example, I have been charged £225.25 for "surgery" and then £47.00" for "surgery theatre fee".

What the??? Where else was he going to operate? In the street?

Off course, Fluffy is worth it. And it's what my credit card lives for- I only have one for vet fees! But I do wonder if vets take the p**s.

She has 25 staples AND stitches, none of them being removed till next Monday. Poor thing. I don't think I can get down to my mum's (where she lives) to see her till Saturday. I may have to forego partner and blogs for a few days, and stay there well into next week. I feel I owe her lots of hugs and attention...

It was nice to feel good for a week!

Move along, there's nothing to see.... move along there....

If you want a happy post, that is!

........bad asthma attack, first one in many years....

.....Fluffy the cat has an operation today: two lumps found (her sister had some, and died of cancer)....

and.... why do people have to let you down?

Back!

Old archway squashed between modern buildings, Limerick, taken Tuesday afternoon, 23/10/07.

Well we got back from Ireland yesterday, and it was all fine.

Better than fine, actually, it was lovely.

Once there, I didn't suffer from nerves or butterflies or dread. On previous visits it has been so bad that I have counted the hours till we could set off back to the airport for home. I'm amazed by the difference this time.

It wasn't plain sailing all the way. I felt so panicked at the airport. I was in tears more than once. Had to take one of my blue pills.... I didn't want to go through check-in. I tried to find ways, in my mind, of getting home again from the airport, and telling my partner to go on without me. Maybe I could call my friend, the one in Enfield, and ask if she can meet me if I can get to her by Tube. Or maybe I could take the Tube to Liverpool Street station and a train home from there. It would take 3, maybe 4 hours, no- on a Sunday, after all, it would be more. But I'd be home. I'd be safe. I could get back into my bed and curl up, coccooned.

But I kept thinking of how awful I would feel about myself afterwards, in the days to follow.

Surely I should push against this, make myself do it..... I hadn't had the strength to do so before. I've never been able to join in. I loathe get-togethers, groups....

Seagulls by Limerick Castle.

I don't know why there was such a difference this time, once I was there. I felt completely comfortable, not scared or fazed by the people or situations at all. Didn't have to think twice about anything. Just went with the flow. Is that what it's like to be "normal"?

So maybe the only answer is that I am a little better, mental-health-wise, than in previous years.

Whether this is true or not, there is still some good news in this. I did it. Horray!

Off for a while....

I'm off to Ireland for a few days. We're staying with my partner's family in the south west. I'm nervous as hell. Took a long time to decide to go. Don't usually, he goes alone - it's not a snub, it's the butterflies in my tummy when I'm around people I don't know well. Already, yesterday, I was running to the loo with nerves.

Wish such family stuff wasn't such a big thing for me. Is it for others? Do you tie yourself up in knots over things like this? Or is the decision to go or not to go really easy, just takes a minute?

Asthma

A visit to the astha nurse, once you're over the age of 10, always makes you feel like you're too tall.

Everyone seems to think that asthma is one of the "childhood diseases" that people either get and grow out of, or manage to miss. We had a charity envelope for an asthma charity through the letterbox the other week. You know- one of those you fill with brown coins from down the side of the sofa and then present to the collector at the door whilst trying to make a "honest, I put a pound in" look on your face, whatever that might be. Well, on the front of the envelope was a photo of a particularly peuse looking child, complete with gooey lips and snotty nose. I don't recall having either during an attack myself, but they seem to be compulsory for illustrating illness, especially when the artist is working in black and white.

The thing is, it isn't an illness that only affects children. I didn't have it till I was 23. I've only had one bad attack, and by bad, I mean a stay in hospital. This was December 1996. I lived alone then, and there was no phone in the flat. I had a bad cold, a bad chest infection on top, and had run out of my inhalers. I lived a long way from the doctor's surgery and had no cash for a taxi. Oh, and I had 4 cats. All these little things meant that the bigger things, like chest pain, and wheezing, grew worse.

I remember wrapping a blanket round me and walking to the public phone box. I called for an ambulance, then sat on a wall nearby and just waited. I think it took about 15 minutes. I then spent 4 days in hospital surrounded by victims of the worst flu outbreak this country had seen in years.

The wards were so full, extra beds made out of trolleys were squeezed in between existing patients: privacy was lost, as curtains could no longer be drawn round each bed. The wards were filthy and stank of stale urine. It took them 48 hours to get round to putting me on antibiotics, and by that time it meant having a drip.

After spending my first night in a nightmarish mixed ward- a senile woman on my right, waving soiled underwear around, a senile man farther down the ward trying to get into the wrong bed over and over, an intolerant yob somewhere in between who spent the dark hours shouting abuse at anyone: nurses, doctors, me, shadows.... I was moved to a geriatric ward in the morning as this was the only one with a space.

Because of staff shortages, I was given a chart that measured my breathing and shown how to fill it in. I was also told to note my pulse at the same time. There was a column for blood pressure, but was told not to worry about that one.

When I had originally reached hospital, samples of my blood was taken. These were lost, so a doctor came along for more. "I don't believe this is a chest infection," he said, "I think you have a blood clot on your lung, and it's very, very dangerous." He said he had to take blood from a different place to be sure, and then extracted some, extremely painfully, from my wrist. He left the bloody needle tip on the bedside table. It was still there the next day. I never saw or heard of him again.

Another doctor came the following evening on his rounds. The nurses presented him with "my" x-rays, which turned out to be those of an 85 year old woman. He eventually dismissed mine, as they were now 48 hours old.

The food was tasteless and cold, but at least I ate it. Plates were left on trolleys next to the beds of old ladies I had never seen move. After no staff had been around to help them eat, these were wheeled away when cold, untouched, leaving the patients to grow more skeletal.

One morning, when someone asked for tea, the steward couldn't find a cup on the tea trolley. They hadn't loaded enough. Spotting one on my bedside table, she asked if I had finished with it -which I had- then shook drips out of it into a bucket, filled it with tea, and gave to the other patient. I had been sipping water from that cup all night.

After 4 days I asked to be discharged. By this time I had caught another infection on top of the one I had arrived with: one that gifted me with diarrhoea and vomiting. The head nurse told me I would "be better off at home with that, if you stay here you'll get worse" so off I went, antibiotics and inhalers in bag.

Once home, I started to get better. The next day I called my employer to ask if they wanted me back on Monday, 23rd December, or should I leave it till after the holiday now?

They had given my job to someone else in my absence.

So you see, asthma isn't just a wheezy kid at the back of the class trying to get out of PE. I did put some money in that envelope the other week, but added a note, it isn't just kids, you know.

Toe Tabby

This postcard came from a friend in Rome.

I love the way cats have no respect for things that we hold in any kind of esteem: the hard-worked flowerbed, the basket of clean washing, the best chair, the hand-embroidered bed cover that's been passed down through the family. To them it's all just a place to relax.

And here. Geography? History? Art? Nahhh..... this toe just fits my shape perfectly, thanks, and the stone makes a cool spot for my afternoon nap. Why? Was there something else?

5 minute sketch

Fluffy is actually a black cat, but it was the expression I was after. To colour it in would have spoiled it. Or put another way, I was just too chicken.