Whole lot of shakin' goin' on.

Let's see. My friend Madeline's 19-year-old granddaughter just underwent a double-lung transplant (after having been on the transplant list for maybe a month!). Madelyne still wasn't breathing on her own, last I heard, but they're hoping to take her off the ventilator later today. Maddy has cystic fibrosis, so the transplant was very much needed.

My friend's young cat, Pumpkin, has been diagnosed with FIP, a disease that is 100% fatal here in the U.S., but she ordered interferon from the U.K., which has shown a 30% success there. She's just hoping he hangs on until it gets here and it's not looking good at the moment.

Another friend's young daughter (also 19 or so) is showing signs of mental illness and is in real danger of being suspended from the very prestigious and very wonderful college she's been attending. And she's behaving very badly toward her mother and is basically being self-destructive.

A sort-of-old beau is, apparently, dying of cancer. He's had part of a lung removed, has spinal stuff going on, needs radiation therapy and chemo and .... really, doesn't sound good at all.

And last but not least, my mother is driving me crazy. But that's for another post. As is all the other crap that's going on out there in the world (Weiner, Palin, other crazy Repuglicans, economic stupidities, etc.).

So, as much as I'd like to just pull the covers up over my head and retreat from the world, the world keeps bringing me news like this. Thank goodness for the wonderful people who work with me and my friends, even the ones who are sick or have family members going through awful stuff. Thank goodness for all the lefties I know who are engaging in the good fight every day.

sitting

I shouldn't be sitting here this long. It's been about 40 minutes and I should have gotten up about 20 minutes ago.

Did you know that cats can have allergies to pollen, just like the rest of us? Guess how I know this. Yes, last couple of weeks there have been a few days here and there where the pollen count was not just High (according to weather.com) but Very High and yet I still opened the kitchen window because the weather was otherwise very nice and, besides, there really needs to be SOME fresh air in here sometimes. (We'll leave the discussion about how fresh NYC air is exactly to some other time.)

Anyway, I had also started to notice that Spike's white eye (that's the one that has white fur all around it, as opposed to the other eye, which has black all around it) was getting inflamed all of a sudden. Just for a little while and then it would go away. Then I started paying attention and, sure enough, I'd open the kitchen window and he'd jump up to, you know, survey his kingdom and 10, 20 minutes later he'd show up in my office with the eye all extra-pink and sometimes a little squinty, too. Sigh.

Saturday was the worst. Not only did his "white" eye get very inflamed and swollen, but it didn't respond to the eye gel that had been prescribed for him other times and then the "black" eye also got pink and swollen. Not easy seeing pink around an eye that has black fur and black "eyeliner", but it was there.

I waited till morning and called the vet. His regular vet was all booked up, so I chose one of the other vets and schlepped him over there. She confirmed that yes, it could certainly be allergies, but she prescribed him another antibiotic, this one with an anti-inflammatory and these were drops, not a gel, so I figured it'd be easier to administer. And it was, as long as I put his e-collar on him.

Twenty minutes later, both of his eyes were dramatically worse. So I called the hospital, where fortunately his regular vet was on emergency duty and he called me back a couple of hours later and told me what to do next. Tuesday afternoon is when Spike's eyes were both back to normal. Needless to say, I'm not opening my windows for the rest of the summer or fall.

(And, oh, in the no good deed goes unpunished line, I injured the piriformis in my left butt in transporting said cat to and from the vet's office. Am seeing Hector, the gorgeous physical therapist, tomorrow. This is why I'm trying not to sit very long.)

shoulda, woulda, coulda

There is so much stuff I should be doing. And I am doing some of it. Just way too little of it. It feels like I'm building a sand castle one grain of sand at a time. Or some metaphor like that.

It should tell you something if writing in this blog is actually a better use of my time than some of the other things I've been doing lately.

And now I'm hungry, so I'm going to go do something about that, at least.