On the road

Sam in 2011.

Sam seems to be on the road to recovery. She is still not as active as she was, but she is improving every day. She is not totally healed, but she is so much better than she was.

She has been through a lot: constipation, arthritis and body pain, infection. Our vet used the words “life threatening” on Saturday.

We were reminded that Sam is 17 years old this month, and that any illness in a kitty that old can be serious.

Our plucky girl didn’t give up. She bravely withstood repeated vet visits, needles, x-rays. She put up with the worried attention Larry and I gave her. Poor baby probably needs a vacation from us.

And Larry and I didn’t give up on her. We shed tears and paced the floor. We lost sleep and had a lot of worried conversations. We held on to hope that Sam would come back to us.

And we are grateful that she is on that road back.

I appreciate your comments and messages of concern you sent.

I haven’t missed writing a post, but I feel like I’ve been away for a long time because I haven’t been keeping up with YOU. I have missed you and hope to get back to the routine I enjoy so much—reading your blogs and catching a bit of what you’re doing in life.

I’ve not been following my regular routine lately because of all that has been going on. My emotions have been all over the place. I hope I’m on the road back, too.

Let’s start with the comments section: what’s one thing YOU have been up to lately?

Update on Sam

I snapped this photo as Sam came out of her bed to drink some water.

Late last week, we thought Sam was doing better. However, late Friday night and early Saturday morning, we found blood in her urine.

We took her back to the vet on Saturday morning. She had a temperature and blood work showed high white cell counts. She was also very depressed, reacting very little to the work of the vet and her assistant.

The vet said she had an infection that seemed to have gone into her kidneys.

She said it was very serious and life threatening for a cat Sam’s age.

She has been on antibiotics and pain medication over the weekend.

The vet suggested that we offer her sliced chicken or turkey or baby food, or perhaps some roast chicken, to entice her to eat.

She loved the roast chicken we bought and the sliced turkey. She didn’t like the baby food. She likes dry food soaked in water.

But her eating has been erratic. Sometimes she eats, sometimes not.

They gave her subcutaneous fluids at the vet’s office on Saturday, and then Larry and I gave them to her Sunday morning. She’s drinking water on her own, too.

She’s mostly staying in the bed we made for her in what we call the futon room, right off the den. We don’t want her high up on furniture because we’re afraid that she will fall.

She comes out to use the litter box and to drink water, occasionally to eat, but goes right back to the bed.

Larry took her into the den Sunday night and sat her on the couch with him, but she wanted to get down. He put her back down on the floor and she walked back to her bed.

We have an appointment to take her back to the vet Monday morning.

We are concerned, of course. We’re very worried and very anxious. It’s hard to keep the anxiety at bay. We are hoping for the best.

I am trying to remind myself that healing takes time, that Sam needs to rest and perhaps she needs to stay in her bed.

Thank you for all of the kind comments you left on Friday’s post. Please keep Sam in your thoughts.

P.S. After I wrote this post and put it in Blogger, I heard a noise just as I was ready to press publish. I looked up and Sam was getting out of her bed. She walked into the den to find Larry. She walked around a bit, then went back to her bed. That's reason for hope!

I'll be back when I can.

Random 5 Friday: Our Baby Sam

Hello, dear readers, and happy Friday to you! I’m joining in Random 5 Friday, hosted by the wonderful Nancy of A Rural Journal, when, as she says, “you can share 5 random facts about you, your day, your pets, your kids, whatever!”

One

Our cat Sam has been sick this week.

She has an ongoing problem with constipation which sometimes requires intervention by the vet. On Monday night, we had to take her to the emergency animal hospital. She was in pain and had struggled for hours to poop.

The treatment apparently aggravated her arthritis, which left her barely able to walk. She saw her regular vet on Tuesday and Wednesday. X-rays showed arthritis in her spine, hips and ankles, but no fractures or dislocations, thank goodness.

She has been on pain medication, and she’s moving around a little now and is looking better.

Sam in the carrier right after the procedure Monday night, before we knew that her arthritis was flaring.

Two

Sam will be 17 years old in October. Larry has had her since she was a kitten, before my time. He said she was so tiny as a kitten, he could carry her around on one hand.

Three

I came into Sam’s life when Larry and I started dating in 1999. I became her mom when we got married in 2003. Sam likes me and trusts me, but she adores her Larry. It is very sweet to see.

I think I've posted this photo before, but it's one of my favorites: Sam and Larry.

Four

Wednesday was a really hard day while we waited for results from Sam’s X-rays. Larry asked me to discuss things with the vet because he was too upset to talk.

It’s hard to accept the fact that your cat is an “old lady,” as our vet called her. It’s hard to accept that you are going to lose her someday. It has to be accepted, of course, but it’s hard to lose a loved one, as all of you know.

Sam is doing better, for which we are so grateful. I hope that she has more good years ahead of her. And I hope that I have the good sense to cherish each day I have with her and Chase Bird and my Larry.

Sam in her fluff bed. I call her Baby Sam sometimes. She seems to like it.

Five

Larry and I seem to trade off being the strong one when needed. Not that both of us can’t be strong at the same time. But when Waddles was so sick, Larry was the stoic one while I cried myself sick. With Sam, though I cried, too, I kept it to myself and tried to be upbeat and positive for Larry.

It works for us. We lean on each other when we need to. That’s a comfort.

My OCD is better

Step by step

Today I told someone that my OCD seems better.

Until then, I had kept the hope to myself.

But I’ll say it a bit stronger here: my OCD is better.

OCD is tricky. It can wax and wane.

During especially stressful times, it can grow stronger, leading to more obsessive thoughts, less ability to control the compulsions.

Other times, it grows stronger for no clear reason.

Then the symptoms ebb away, interfering less with the rest of my life.

There is nothing that I can point to as the reason for the current improvement. I think it’s probably a combination of things:

*Good medication

*A focus on preventing myself from following through on the desire to do a compulsion as I work on Exposure and Response Prevention on my own

*Good therapy earlier this year and last year

*A dedication to being mindful

*A growing realization that worrying doesn’t do me or anyone else any good

This time the improvement feels like a step up. I’ve improved in the past, but I wasn’t so aware of working on my OCD and keeping it at bay as much as possible. 

I’m more deliberate about it now.

It's not that I don't still have obsessions and do compulsions. But the symptoms are bothering me less and less. I'm better than I've been in a long time.

I’m very grateful. No need to analyze that too much, is there?

I’m not an expert on OCD. I’m just someone who has had the disorder since I was a child. I realize that OCD can seem very weird, and there are some misconceptions about it. Is there anything about OCD that you’d like to ask me?

The changing of the seasons, a time to change

Happy Autumn! I am so happy it’s officially the fall of the year. I love the chill in the air in the morning and in the evening, and the reduced humidity.

My husband and I went out into the yard today with our cameras, looking for signs of fall. We still have a lot of green, but there are signs that the foliage will turn soon.

And here’s a wee acorn sprouting up on an oak tree branch.

Soon enough the acorns will be raining down, providing a vast supply for our neighborhood squirrels. And sometimes leaving little dents in my car.

I feel like fall is a new beginning. Maybe it’s because I went to school for so many years, but with the fall of the year, I get a yearning to start anew, to try new things, to get organized.

Lately, I’ve been finding pieces of wisdom about using our time wisely on the Internet and elsewhere. I haven’t been purposely looking for it as much as it just seems to have shown up.

I’ve been reminded about the preciousness of time, of how we’re all given the same amount of time, how we can easily make the excuse that we don’t have time to do something that is important.

On Sunday, I went to the store and bought some lavender legal pads and purple ink pens to use for creating lists and plans to help me achieve some things I want to achieve.

Why the special paper and pens? Well, I love office and school supplies. And I wanted something pretty and special to use for something so important.

I’m starting out with lists of what I want to accomplish, from the big, life-changing things to the small ones. I’m going to gradually break things down into doable goals that will help me plan each week as it comes.

I’m not starting from scratch. I’ve done this before on the job, when I worked as a health educator. At my current job, I keep a list, or budget, of the stories I need to follow in the future, then transfer those items to weekly lists.

I know what my priorities are. I know many of the things I want to accomplish.

It’s time I applied a more organized approach to the rest of my life.

Again, I’m not starting from scratch.

But I do have a new sense of urgency to not let time slip by any longer without me using it the best I can.

I won’t be giving up on spontaneity, and I won’t panic if I don’t follow to the letter everything I write down.

But my tendency is to procrastinate. My tendency is to think instead of act. My tendency is to push things aside for later. My tendency is to drift along, with no plan.

Some of this comes from having OCD. OCD used to rule my life so much, tell me what I had to do when, that I rebelled against routine.

Some of this comes from having depression. When you’re depressed, it’s hard to see the point in planning. It’s sometimes hard to have the energy or desire to do anything beyond the basics.

But I need more routine. I need a plan. I need accomplishments.

As the leaves change, as the weather changes, so I need to change. As the leaves drop off the trees, letting go for the winter, so I need to let go of certain habits.

I’ll share more as I move forward in this journey.

How do you ensure that you get the important things done?

Ready for the dirt, and other randoms

Hello! It’s Friday, and I’m participating in a meme I enjoy so much, Random 5 Friday, hosted by Nancy at A Rural Journal.

It has been a strange and seemingly endless week. I was busy but feeling a bit under the weather. So if I didn’t visit your blog as usual or if I commented way after the post was published, I apologize.

And now for the randoms for the week!

One

Larry has nearly finished the raised bed garden. It’s ready for the dirt and, in due time, seeds and plants.

The bed is mostly fenced in to keep out the wildlife critters that visit our yard. The two ends will be open, so I’m sure the animals will get a little bit of something.

The enclosed bed is 4 feet by 12 feet. To make access easier, Larry put in two gates on both sides.

When I went to get my camera to take the photos of the finished project Thursday evening, I couldn’t find it. So these photos are taken with my iPhone.

Two

It worried me that I couldn’t find my camera. I take it to work each day and bring it back home every night. I thought I had brought it home Wednesday night (I was off on Thursday). But it wasn’t in my car or on the table in the living room.

I thought I must have left it at the office, but I couldn’t be sure. And I didn’t want to wonder all night about it until Friday morning.

So Larry went with me to the office Thursday evening to retrieve my camera.

It was in the office, thank goodness. And while we were out, we saw the almost-full moon and I got some pictures.

Three

This week has seemed so long. The visitation and funeral for my aunt were Monday evening and Tuesday morning, respectively. It was good to see cousins that I hadn’t seen in years, but sad that the only time I see them is when someone dies.

The funeral was in my “home church,” the church I grew up in in the community I grew up in. The memories flowed as I drove down the country roads to the church, and as I walked through the cemetery, where many of my family members, including my father, are buried.

Four

I started taking antibiotics this week for an ear infection. My right ear started hurting Monday, and by Monday night, the hearing was muffled in that ear. I didn’t have time to see the doctor until Wednesday.

I’ve had ear problems off and on since I was a little girl. When I was a child, my mother would warm a towel in the oven (NOT a safe idea, by the way) and lay it on my pillow. I would lie down with my ear on the warm towel, and it felt so good.

Five

I work 32 hours a week, so I usually have Thursdays off. When I reduced my hours earlier this year, I knew I would enjoy the extra time at home. I just didn’t know how much I would enjoy it.

Lately, I’ve been seeing quotes here and there and reading articles with really good advice about time management. I think I’m getting the message that I need to start making better use of my time.

Do you ever feel like you’re seeing or hearing the words you need to at just the right time?

Gratitude post

Today I am thankful for many things. Here are a few of them:

*The good report my husband received from his doctor.

*Cool mornings, cool nights, cool breezes during the day.

*The quilt that keeps me warm during the cool nights.

*Nature on the fence.

*The sound of my kitty Sam’s deep breaths as she sleeps in her little bed beside me.

*The feeling of Chase Bird’s purrs as I hold him and place my cheek against his fur.

*Getting lost in a good mystery book.

*Time spent with cousins I haven’t seen in years.

*The fact that there are always new things to learn.

*My camera.

*The shape of leaves against the sky.

What are you grateful for today?