Sick Euthyroid

So, I've spent a lot of my week dealing with Simon (my one remaining cat, a 10 year old indoor neutered male DSH). He's drinking a lot more than normal, and urinating somewhat more than normal but not markedly. He is a mystery at this point. His blood work was completely normal, not a single value outside the reference range on his CBC or chemistry panel. His urine is concentrated (> 1.050) and the sediment is not active-- there are a lot of lipid droplets, less than one white blood cell per high power field and an occasional epithelial cell (not unusual for sterile free catch-- we tried for a cysto but he just peed all over us, luckily one of the techs standing by caught it midstream in a red top). His physical exam is unremarkable, with the only notable finding being that his kidneys are on the small end of normal, with one at 3 cm and the other at 3.5 cm.
Just for kicks, we ran a free T4, which came back markedly low. (I ran a T4 last spring when he had a bout of vomiting and it was within the normal reference range then so I do have one point of comparison).
So he is sick euthyroid but we can't find a reason. Seriously, Simon, do you have to this difficult?
I decided to culture his urine despite no clear signs of infection, just to rule out infection.
The next step is measuring his daily water intake to see if he is truly polydipsic and then repeating his free T4 in a few weeks.

Why can't my animals have normal diseases? Lindy had chronic kidney disease from the time I got her at 8 months and then her last two years a giant cyst on her kidney that grew so large that it felt like a bladder and no one knew what to make of it. Now Simon... Yes, I'm relieved he doesn't have diabetes mellitus or chronic kidney disease but I wish it could be something simple for once, like sterile cystitis or a urinary tract infection rather than a mystery!

Spring?

I realize I am woefully behind on blog posts. Life has been hard and I just seem to keep getting hit with stuff every time I finally begin to pick myself up. There are lots of stories and photos I want to post, so hopefully I will get around to it someday, even if it is over the summer. It is sad to see my blog fall by the wayside as I did such a good job keeping it up last year but such is life I suppose. School and my precarious sanity come first.

The beginning of this week was amazingly, wondrously sunny and even somewhat warm. I was talking to one of my professors in lab yesterday and she said she loved this time of year, the hint of spring, the tease of nice weather followed by colder weather again. I mentioned this to a classmate who said, "I don't need foreplay to enjoy spring." Me either. But it's snowing, grey and dreary today so I guess I'd better get used to the tease of spring in Ithaca.

Financial Aid Deadlines

So, my FAFSA and CSS are due tomorrow, March 1. Guess what time I submitted them? Just now, at 11 pm Feb 28. Yup. I've always been really bad about financial aid and do it last minute, but at least it gets done.

The first year that I had to fill out a FAFSA and CSS it took me hours and hours and I found it extremely confusing (be warned if you are applying to vet school and have relied on your parents to do this before that it needs to be done well before April 15, the earlier the better as some aid is now on a rolling schedule). This is my third time round filling out these forms and it now seems quite straightforward.

It has occurred to me that even though I am only about halfway through veterinary school, I will only ever have to fill out one more set of financial aid applications for vet school (this time next spring). Yahoo! Somehow this makes me feel much closer to graduating than I actually am.

In order to do my FAFSA and CSS I had to do my taxes, various papers for which I organized last minute at SyracuseSurrogateParent's last week. SyracuseSurrogateDad made a funny comment after I explained that I paid an accountant to prepare my taxes because I have multiple states (plus some other complexities). He said, "So do you get taxed differently in different emotional states? Like if you are in a state of silliness is there a different rate?" If only he knew! It definitely makes me smile every time I think about it.

Spring In Ithaca

overnight the trees are blooming
not sprouting leaves or flowers
but bearing fluffy cotton snow
from last night's storm
white puffs thickly coating the branches
blowing off in bursts of snow pollen
to cover the ground

this is ithaca in spring
the snow is wetter
clinging to, piling on the branches

*

It snowed yesterday in parts of the Bay area, including near PK, for the first time in almost half a century. PK loved it, according to her mom. It makes me homesick. I'm used to seeing Mount Hamilton coated in snow, rising up behind the nearer mountains, white cap poking out. I wish I could have seen my regular haunts with snow.
There is a book by the title of Crazy Weather, published in 1944, that I read a few years back about a boy caught between the Mojave and white people's worlds. It was during a stretch when I read everything I could about how the West, and California in particular, used to be. I think of this book, by association, when I think about the weather because we are certainly having crazy weather now.

Snow walk

wet dog smell: musky, yeasty-moist
tail tucked between her legs
shivering
shake it off, shake it off

flakes clinging to her hair
eyebrows, hat, gloves, jeans

loping along the shoulder of road
snowdrifts higher than her head

sky merges seamlessly into ground
white on white, not even a hint of horizon
the only crease an occasional chain link fence
or clump of woody plants, tips poking out from
under a thick blanket of snow

Turning 33

a small zygote of a poem (still a work in progress):

light

lightness

alight

flight

the atrium is suffused with sunlight

her veins infused with liquid luminescence

walking up stairs to the library

her body almost weightless

there is a bounce to her step

she could push off and take wing

I Bought My Cat A Scarf Today

Yes, you read that correctly. I bought my cat a scarf today.

This morning I got up bright and early in order to go to a flea market at the Varna community center building just down the road from me.

I walked in and there was a woman with a whole table of scarves. One of them was the softest scarf I have ever touched, a cashmere mix. It was 50 cents. I just knew that Simon, hedonist of hedonists, would love it, so I bought it for him.

I came home, threw my stuff down on my bed and went to the farmer's market. When I came back Simon was curled up on the scarf. He's been nuzzling his face into it all night. I didn't even fold it or arrange it. When he gets up I am going to place it on the bed next to my pillow and perhaps this will discourage him from trying to sleep on my pillow (which inevitably results in Simon gradually displacing me so that my whole head is on the mattress and he is curled up on the pillow. Nevermind that I have two pillows for this reason. We both prefer the same one!)

Also purchased at the flea market: a video on potty training with a reggae tune featuring the song "I've gotta go." No folks, this is not for my own enjoyment, but for Ianite. Hopefully his parents will approve.

Overall, I must admit my purchases tend to be bizarre.