Surviving

Rocket Boy has been gone for 11 days and we are all still in one piece -- oh, actually that isn't true. Ha ha, funny. OK, I'm getting ahead of myself. We're all still here, me, the twins, and the cats, and we're surviving, or most of us are. It's not easy, but we're doing it. I wish it were a little easier, though.

Last week was a crazy week, special activities every day. It helped that my boss and co-worker were out of town at a conference, so I could just "work" at home (well, I did SOME work). It also helped that Kid A had special activities at his regular school both Monday and Tuesday, so I didn't have to do the commute to his afternoon special school. Tuesday was a nutty day: an 8 am meeting at the school, then my regular workday, then off to Kid A's special school for a conference in the afternoon (even though he didn't go there that day), and then a school fundraiser at Abo's Pizza in the evening.

And then came Wednesday. It started well, with the kids' last instrumental music concert of the year at 8:15 am. (Kid A is in back with the trombone section, wearing a pink shirt, and Kid B is in front with the clarinets, wearing yellow.) (I chose their shirts to be a nice contrast to the color of their instruments.) Although I wouldn't actually call the 5th grade band good, they had improved a lot since their first concert, back in December. After the concert I went back home and worked until it was time to drive Kid A to his special school.

After school, Kid B and I got ready to take Pie Bear to the vet. He's been acting ravenously hungry recently, and I've been wondering if he needs less insulin. While racing around getting ready I banged my left foot against our little cat tree/scratcher at the end of the hall (the photo shows Chester sitting on it). I smash into this fairly often, and it's always so painful. But this was really bad. "Ouch ouch ouch, oh shit, sorry, but oh my gosh, ouch!" etc.

Then I picked up the cat carrier and we were off to the vet. My foot still hurt, but I didn't realize anything was seriously wrong until I was carrying Pie from the car to the vet's office. I must have stepped down on my left foot's toes, and the pain was incredible! Oh my gosh, I think I've broken my toe.

Long long story short, yes, I had broken my toe. I called Kaiser as soon as we got home and talked to the advice nurse. She wanted me to go to Urgent Care, but the closest one is in Westminster and I found it very difficult even to drive home from the vet in rush-hour traffic. And Rocket Boy doesn't live here any more. If it had been a true emergency, I probably could have found someone to drive me, but if it had been a true emergency I probably would have called 911 and gone to the hospital. Anyway, I drove myself to Boulder Kaiser in non-rush hour traffic the next morning, had the foot x-rayed, and admired (with a PA) the clean diagonal break through my toe that the x-ray revealed. I told someone the break looked like an earthquake fault that had slipped slightly. It was impressive. So now I'm wrapping my toe with its neighbor every morning and wearing a special shoe with a hard sole whenever I go out (and much of the time in the house too), and I'm miserable.

But that's not all. At the vet appointment, while my foot felt more and more uncomfortable, we got some bad news. Pie Bear probably has cancer. The vet was examining him briskly, chatting as she went along, and when she looked in his mouth her tone of voice changed. She said, "We'll come back to that later," and I thought, uh oh. After we discussed his eating habits and his insulin, she came back to it. Pie has an ugly red growth in his mouth, where a tooth would be. I asked if it could be a diseased tooth, and she appeared to consider that, but then she said, "I don't think so." And apparently tumors like this tend to be very aggressive and resistant to treatment. She said the next step would be a biopsy and she told me to think about it after we had his blood work done. So I paid $300 and change for the appointment and tests, and went home to deal with my foot.

Kid A and I came back on Friday with Chester for HIS appointment with the vet, me limping along with my special shoe, and after discussing how Chester had managed to gain TWO POUNDS while supposedly being on a diet, I told them I want to go ahead with the biopsy for Pie. It will be expensive ($700), but that's all we'll do. They'll scoop out as much of the tumor as they can, give us some advice and expectations, and then we'll let him live until it regrows so much that it hurts him and interferes with eating and a happy life. And then we'll have him put down. Having a little more time with Pie is important, I think, because the twins are having to deal with SO many changes right now. Let's not have our cat die just right now, let's keep him a little longer. He's 14 (we've had him 11 and a half years) and he's had a hard time since the diabetes diagnosis 6 years ago. It's not a tragedy to lose him. But I wish it didn't have to be like this.

It's been getting colder, in fact I turned the heat back on yesterday after turning it off three days before. It's raining tonight (at least no snow), and is supposed to rain all day and night tomorrow. My book group is coming tomorrow night, if they make it through the storm, and I cleaned for them today (I'll do more tomorrow, too). Before the rain came, Kid A and I also mowed the lawn, and I finally planted the flowers that I bought a week ago (see photo above). Blues and purples and yellows. As for things I didn't plant, we have a bumper crop of those purple alliums, and this year some of the iris are blooming -- I don't think we had a single one last year, but this year all the purples are covered with buds and some have come into flower. I love dark purple iris, so these make me happy. And of course the city and county are awash in lilacs -- when I drive Kid A to his special school I go out in the country and I drive by these amazing lilac hedges, all in full bloom. I moved to Boulder because of the magpies, but also because there are lilacs. I learned to love lilacs in Ann Arbor and afterwards felt I could never live anywhere that didn't have them.

When we called Rocket Boy tonight, in St. Louis, he said his dad's old car is starting to have problems. It got him there, but now the brake light won't go off. Something he'll have to deal with soon. And on we go, surviving.