October 2011 Visit

Right now Banu is in ICU at Carolina Veterinary Specialists (liver issues) and I'm going up there to visit her in just a minute, but yesterday I managed to pull this post together and want to publish it before I forget. I saw many sub-folders in my photographs folder from family visits, so I decided to randomly picked one and put up the pictures.

This was the visit that Cyrus got hooked on Saeed's information about the brain. Even though it was an adult textbook he wouldn't let it go, and continued to search through it for pictures of the brain.

Who knew he'd be SO interested in the functioning of the human brain?

Not wanting to be left out, Kai proceeded to pull books off Shirin and Gabriel's bookshelves and bring them to me as gifts. Thank you Kai joon.

Every few hours Shirin had to attend to her patient. She doesn't often bring patients home over the weekend but the owner of this kitty couldn't make that final decision to euthanize and Shirin couldn't leave him at the office all weekend so...  Here she is feeding him through a tube that is inserted into his esophagus. Poor kitty was ultimately euthanized.

On a happier note here is Earl, the crazy nearly blind cat who now lives with S & G permanently-ish. He was very sick when Shirin first brought him home but through her administrations is healthy and happy (and crazy.) This is BEFORE he climbed up a tree and fell to the concrete. Crazy Earl.

I love his toe fur tufts. You can see them if you click on the pic.

Satin was still called Smootz in October. Satin was named after a character in our favorite books from A Song of Fire and Ice series. His fur is really satiny too.

Satin took his blue ball and went up on Shirin and Gabriel's bed for a nap.

Kitty TV.

Uh-oh, look out Earl. Somebody is coming after you!

I had to save him. I thought he was enjoying being in my arms. Obviously he just wanted to get the the TV wires!

The cat hunter with a guilty look on his face.

Cyrus always takes the best pictures of me. I think it's because you can't help but smile a genuine smile when you're looking at a kid.

Or not.

He likes it when I'm silly.

Tummy aches always get better with mommy rubs.

Cyrus wasn't down long. A trip to the park on a gorgeous fall day will make anyone feel better.

We were pretending to be pirates that day. Here he continues to walk the plank.

This was his ship. It had a water slide. Not bad!

Now wish Banu luck that this is something that can be treated. If she's not better tomorrow after IV fluids, antibiotics, and medications, they will need to do a biopsy tomorrow. Could we possibly have another cat with cancer? Hope not.

New Year's Weekend...

... is supposed to be for partying, but we lost so much time being sick recently that we are using it to catch up on long overdue projects. For Saeed that means outdoor work, and since he received a coupon from me for Christmas for one hour of outdoor assistance that means outdoor work for me as well. Trust me, I'll be out there for hours despite the stated one hour limit. What was I thinking?

The current project is pruning. Our house has been taken over by Mother Nature not unlike the castle Sleeping Beauty slept in for 100 years. The bushes near the house hold in moisture, a big problem in SC crawl spaces, so the man with the pruner went wild.

Our front steps, waiting for me to cart off all this refuse.

I am taking this pic from the back door. See anything missing?

There is what used to be our gardenia bushes. I'm not actually happy about losing these bushes because the blossoms are so fragrant and beautiful, but each ice storm has pulled the bushes forward across the sidewalk until they actually were growing at a 45 degree angle. It looks better without them but I will really miss them.

This is what happens when two people get sick and no one goes to the recycling center for three weeks. (We were in Athens on the weekend of the 10th and then sick the next two weekends.) After I loaded this up I drove to work and crammed more into the truck, back and inside. I alone do the recycling for my office. Once in a great while someone takes the cans, but honestly I do 99% of it myself. Once I got to the recycling center it took me no less than 30 minutes to properly dispose of everything I'd brought.

When I came inside to make myself a sandwich I had an immediate crowd of vultures waiting for some Ezekial bread bits (Chappu, who is definitely better) and Tofurky (Chappu, Obi, and Tippy.) I cheated them though, and ate my sandwich in the sun on the back steps in the 62 degree loveliness. I know they were cussing me behind my back.

So what do two people do who's New Year's resolutions SHOULD be to eat a healthy diet? We went out to breakfast! I will never eat breakfast at Shoney's again though. Saeed was attracted to the fact that it was laid out as a breakfast bar, but the food was not good. I'll go to IHOP and 'suffer' the restriction of having to order off the menu any day. Sorry Shoney's, never again.

So, wish me luck on my obligatory outdoor work today. The things we do for love.

Christmas 2011

Somehow despite having pneumonia and sinus and ear infections this December, we managed to pull off a very nice Christmas. The only downside to this Christmas was Tita's absence, but we did get her at Thanksgiving and for that we were grateful.

Christmas Eve morning I took the boys outside for some fresh air while their parents slept. Here they are posing with our chalk rendition of Santa and a sleigh (behind Kai.) We then went for a walk around the block to look at our neighbor's decorations. 

Once inside, Shirin, BUG, and Obi watch The Grinch That Stole Christmas.

Baba and Kai were jammin' to Old McDonald Had A Farm.

Finally time to open presents!

Cyrus spells out his name with his new magnetic letters.

Shirin shows him how to tell that that's his present by reading the name tag which says, "To Cyrus, From Santa."

Notice our fancy Christmas tree. Hey, it was better than nothing!

Cyrus doing his math puzzle.

Kai is just as happy with this plastic lid as with his presents!

Even the Grinch got something.

I got stuff from S & G too but here I am with gifts from my sister.

Next morning's stockings reveal the beloved Larabars.

With a Peanut Buddy in his right hand, Cyrus digs deep with the left.

Kai found a very bouncy pink ball in his stocking. I think he liked it better than anything!

Some videos:

Kai was getting tickled to death while Cyrus was trying to make the gadget play Twinkle Twinkle Little Star so he could sing along with it:



Finally, Cyrus gets to sing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star:



Saeed's singing debut (please excuse Kai):



I think Kai would've danced too if he hadn't been so distracted by the person to my left eating something out of a bowl:

Uuuuuungh........

I was going to get so much done this weekend including blogging but this thing I've had has turned into the worst head cold ever. I just don't think I can blow my nose any more. I've even gone so far as to stuff tissues up my nose but I can only stand that so long. I may just have to let it drip and put a pan under my nose like people do when the roof leaks. Please kill me.

The Leaf That Fell From A Bird

I’m not sure if it’s because I’m in that age group where the material aspects of life are less interesting or if it’s because with children grown and gone I have the mental space to focus on other things. Things like poetry didn’t used to do it for me. My ability to see into the true meaning of a creative piece of writing, though still abysmal, is getting better as I push my brain to think in those terms. I appreciate the clever turn of a word or a beautiful visual phrase that does more than convey a concrete action. Any poetry I’ve ever written could easily be seen on the student wall of a fourth grade classroom, no offense to fourth graders.

It’s with this new energy that I stumbled across a recent NY Times article (“The Doctor as Poet”) describing a poetry contest offered to the med students by Yale University School of Medicine and University College London Medical School. The modest $1500 prize was anonymously offered by a patient interested in literature and they expected only a few student entries, but more than 160 were submitted! The article’s author, Dr. Pauline Chen, writes that poetry has long been linked to medicine. She writes that “in mythology the Greek god Apollo was responsible for, among other things, both healing and poetry.”  Poets like John Keats and Oliver Wendall Holmes Sr. were trained as physicians. Though not poets I think of award-winning authors such as Khaled Hosseini and Abraham Verghese (of Kite Runner and Cutting for Stone fame respectively) both of whom are physicians.

Chen says that in recent decades the medical profession has been preoccupied with primarily high-tech approaches. More recently they are placing more emphasis again on the patient as a person, and “are once again turning to poetry for inspiration. And education.” Associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, Dr. Rafael Campo, an award-winning poet himself, uses poetry in his classes. He has used “Cancer Winter” by Marilyn Hacker to help students better understand the experience and feelings of a patient dealing with the news of her cancer. “Poetry does a better job in teaching because it is about embracing the human aspect of suffering, not just knowing how many lymph nodes are positive and where the pain is on a 1-to-10 scale.”

Below is one of the poems submitted by one of the med students who entered the contest. I particularly love the imagery in this poem. It was written by Noah Capurso.

Aphasia

We are taught that the brain
Is a set of highways;
Corpus callosum,
Spinothalamic,
Optic radiation.


But there are other roads, as well.
Scenic neural backroads
That are hidden from view;
Dusty and seldom used.


Sometimes we can see them
When the highways are down;
From cancer,
Surgery,
Or a stroke.


Our patient had a brain tumor.
We tested her highways
With a feather drawing;
“What is this?” we asked her.


And the answer she gave
Came by the scenic route;
“A leaf
That fell
From a bird.”

OMG The Struggle

I was doing so well, avoiding the Halloween candy and then... my super powers wore off, my magical shield was wrest away, my anti-bad-food sorcery got flummoxed!  

For most of November, OK, ALL of November I ate what treats were brought into the office, even the ones I didn't like so much. What the hell! So this is my public announcement that as of this asterisk ---> * I am no longer going to fail on my quest to eat only healthy foods. I will be allowed to eat some of the goodies at our office Christmas party, BUT THAT'S IT!

Super powers, sorcery, and magical shield RESTORED! (as of that asterisk up there)

Kitty Update

OK, where to start...  I guess anyone reading this knows we have our house divided in half to keep Frosty Paws away from Banu. After four years of peaceful coexistence Frosty began to beat up Banu and the dining room doors have been closed ever since. Banu lives on the upstairs side of the house with kitties who chose to live on her side and Frosty on the downstairs side of the house with his companions. It's not perfect but it works.

Over time Frosty and Obi began having trouble with each other. Obi, the oldest and self-proclaimed King of the downstairs kitties, clearly was fearful of the rather large, strong, and sometimes aggressive Frosty Paws. Instead of screaming and running away (like Banu did) Obi exhibits fear aggression - not good when your opponent is twice your size. Last spring we put them both on 'calming' medications and tried some behavior modification and these definitely helped, but nothing is foolproof.

Recently we had everyone home for an early Thanksgiving. There was a lot of noise and people coming and going. Obi behaved very badly, but he was stressed out and I don't blame him. After everyone went back home it seemed like the kitties calmed back down but one evening Saeed and I both heard a cat fight in the living room. We ran from our respective areas of the house to see that Obi got the worst of it -- no serious injury but he got roughed up. Enough is enough.

Frosty now lives most of his life in the computer room. If I'm in the kitchen and Obi is asleep in the little bed on the table (Frosty doesn't jump up there) I let Frosty out of the computer room to cruise the big wide world of his former downstairs area. When we're home we also open the sun room; he loves the sun room. Frosty actually seems pretty happy and we wonder if he's happier now that he doesn't have to deal with tense Obi. Obi also appears so much happier. We are amazed at how much more relaxed he behaves.

So we are sort of like a cell undergoing mitosis - we keep dividing our house into new separately functioning units. Some may question our sanity. Why would we do this to ourselves? Why? Because we are reaping the consequences of our earlier decision to have many cats. We assumed they would all and always get along. We were wrong, but that's not the cats' fault, so we are accepting our responsibility as loving cat companions and doing the best we can to keep everybody as safe and happy as possible.

One day our house will be free and open again. Sound good? No. It will mean that the little furry creatures we love so much who have totally screwed up our freedom, are gone. Not good at all. Our mitosis house with the multiplying iron curtains is a house of love.

Of the original upstairs girls only Banu...

 ... and Lupe remain. I miss Teddie and Layli.  :- ( 

 Frosty, the thug, happily hanging out in the sun room.

 Chappu screaming at me to let her into Frosty's room. She goes back and forth about 40 times a day and often stays in there with him all night. Isn't that interesting? She loves the thug.

 A very happy Obi.

 Tippy (or should I say Tippless) also goes into Frosty's room sometimes but she doesn't stay long.

 Not that this picture has anything to do with the Kitty Update, but here you see Chappu staring down Saeed's piece of bread. She loves carbs and will take that toast right out of your hand if you're not careful! That couch was Calvin's favorite place to sleep. I miss him too.