Seems like a Friday

Cisco did well at the Vet's yesterday. He seems to be healing ok and no infection. Good news. He just meow'd for the first time since he was attacked! Music to my ears! I was so afraid that his vocal cords or some nerves had been damaged. But when I came home this afternoon he wanted food (another good thing!) and I heard two soft meows!

I've had a bit more discomfort than usual. Pains up under my ribs and on my right side. Prolly due more to stress than anything. Hopefully they will not bother me over Christmas. I have NO idea how I am supposed to pay for all these medical bills! I thought it was next to impossible to get coverage for MY cancer, but Vet bills and surgery are way over the top! It's going to be something like $2000 or more before all is said and done. That kind of money is out of my league! It's like two months pay if I was full time! More like 5 months at my current rate!

I'm finding it more difficult than usual to deal with issues like this. My coping skills are pretty worn down I think. I'm thankful he's doing well, and can't imagine not having him as my buddy at home, but money issues suck!!

What a weekend!

Cisco is doing better, but a more terrorized cat I've never seen. If there is so much as someone walking by, or a noise outside, he panics and runs to hide for an hour or so. He's eating a bit more. I have to take wet cat food and water it down into a "gruel", but he eats maybe 1/4 cup.

We spent most of the time wrapped up in a quilt on the couch. He wants to stay close to my body so we snuggle on the couch watching TV. Not a good way to get anything done, but it feels like the right thing to do to support Cisco's recovery.

I'm exhausted from dozing on the couch and not really sleeping.

The Animal Control man came to the door again on Saturday, saying he had one more question. "Do I think the dogs are dangerous?". How on earth do I respond to that?
They were certainly dangerous to my cat who was sitting on my stoop. The neigbors chased them away earlier in the day when they threatened Their small dog. I hemmed and hawed and said I really didn't know, that my concern was that the owners were responsible for the damage to my pet. He said he'd be serving the papers today if they were home (they were). I don't know how things proceed from here, but I assume I will hear from the court eventually.

Wednesday I take Cisco to the vet for a check up. I hope they will say he's out of the woods, but I quake with fear every time I see his poor damaged body wobbling around the house.

More about CISCO

I got Cisco, my 10 yr old cat, home last night.
He's going to be ok. He's very shaky, and in pain and fear, but today is improved over yesterday and I'm hopeful that will continue and he'll mend fine.

The vets had to shave his neck and shoulders to treat the bites from the two neighbor dogs who attacked him. Then they had to surgically place a wire through his jaw to mend the broken bone. He can still eat and drink, but the bones are wired together. See photos.




So he's bald about the neck and shoulders and I'm bald above the neck! What a pair we make!

Cats and Dogs

I had probably one of my worst nights last night.
My cat of 10 years, CISCO, is used to a short "constitutional" outdoors after dinner most evenings. As the night starts earlier and it gets colder, that time outdoors gets very short.

Last night I let him out about 6:30. It was supposed to be a cold night here in Tucson so I went outdoors after about 10 minutes to call him back in - if he wasn't already waiting at the door.

As I'm heading to the front door I hear an ungodly ruckus and huge barking. It sounded like a war outside my door. I open it to see two HUGE blonde dogs attacking my cat. ON MY FRONT STEP! These dogs had Cisco down and both were at his throat. They were maybe 2 feet away. I was petrified! One dog looked up at me and then returned to Cisco's throat. I started screaming! Fortunately my noise must have scared them, so rather than attacking me with their charged up adrenelin, they ran off down the alley. Cisco tore off across the yard the other way.

I knew who the dogs were, I was pretty sure. I hadn't heard them barking as they usually do two houses down, but they have been loose before and are unique in our neighborhood. I immediately started calling and whistling for Cisco, but I knew that since he is such a mellow cat and avoids noise, cars and any commotion that it would probably be some time before he returned - IF he could return. IF he wasn't dying, IF he didn't bleed to death or freeze, or ... I was in a panic to find him.

It was cold. My neighbor happened to come out of her house just as I started calling and she immediatly put off her grocery-store trip to help me. We called and searched for Cisco for almost three hours. We ran into a neighbor on the next block who saw two blonde big dogs twice earlier in the day. She said she'd recognize them again and believed they lived up near us. We called and searched, freezing our butts off.

Finally I had to go in and warm up. I'd left my door open in case Cisco returned when I was out of sight, but no such luck. My house, of course, was also freezing by then. My next door neighbor on the other side came home and said he thought we should check HIS back yard which is fenced with wood. As my neighbors went around back to do that I came back outdoors to join them. As they came back up the alley, one's flashlight happened to go across the street into a bush & cactus that I'd searched before, but we saw the reflective eyes of a cat!!!!

I went up to Cisco who was laying there patiently, but he did not get up. He let me get next to him and after a minute, complaining, he let me pick him up. I first felt puncture marks around his neck. As I talked softly to Cisco, my neighbor grabbed my keys and pulled my car out and we rushed to a nearby emergency vet office. In the car I noticed a cut on his mouth and that his mouth didn't look "right".

The kind people at the pet hospital took x-rays and determined that Cisco was very lucking indeed for such a brutal attack. His central jaw bone was broken. He had to have surgury and his jaw had to be wired. It will have to be that way for 4 months.

The good news is that there was no internal organ damage, no other bones broken, the punctures only deep enough to form air pockets but not bleed much or pierce the body. We were lucky that I was there to see the attack and stop it almost immediately. Another minute or two and I'm sure that Cisco would have been crushed dead.

He's still in the hospital right now, and they want to keep him another night as they still can't interest him in trying to eat and they want to know he'll eat before they release him. I can't tell you how many gallons of tears we've spilled for this charming, well-loved little guy.

I also hate to tell you how the dog-owning neighbors are trying to pretend it wasn't their dogs. After asking me several times if I saw the dogs who attacked (yes indeed) and if I could recognize them (oh yes) they left their house with no dogs in sight - indoors or out. A little later they returned and all of a sudden their two blonde dogs (boxer?) were in the front yard barking their heads off at me across the street where I'd been hunting under a bush.

As I crossed the street the woman asked me again if I recognized her dogs -"where they THESE dogs?", as the ones who attacked Cisco and I said I sure think SO! She said (finally!), "Oh, it couldn't have been OUR dogs as we never let them out." Right. and accidents never happen. (And I don't have stage 4 cancer).

A bit later the dogs disappeared entirely and didn't come back until late this morning. It appears that the neighbors are going to deny responsibility. How sad is that? Unfortunately for them, the lady had asked me to look at them again to see if I recognized them. By the next week or so I might not have been absloutely positive, but thanks to her showing me the dogs in the evening light, I could see the same one looking at me the same way it had looked at me before. Nuff said.

It's 5pm. At 6pm I can go "visit" Cisco in the hospital. Please say a prayer for his fast recovery. I need my cat to help me with this cancer. He's the only one that makes home, "home".

Anyone ever tell you that you DON'T have Cancer?

One type of cookie down, one chilling in the fridge.

While engaged in these holiday domestic duties I've been reflecting on my current "on hold" status as a cancer "survivor" (Still not entirely comfortable with that term!).

Having a cancer of unknown primary - CUP - is bad enough. If you tell someone you have cancer, invariably you are asked what "kind". Then you have to either go into an explanation of what you don't have, and generally it's more than they wanted to know, or you just say where it is located - in my case, in my liver.

But now I get to compound that issue by being in a no-man's-land state of no growth. So, am I in active treatment? Is this going to last very long? Does it mean I might be "healthy" for a while? What?

It's led a couple of people I know to ask me if I'm SURE I have cancer in the first place. Now how in HECK are you supposed to answer that? Well, they took a biopsy and checked it twice and determined they were "naughty" cells. (Hey, it's the holiday!)

They are "slow growing" so much so that there's been very very little change since they first found the growths. Does that mean that they are not growing at all? Does it mean they are not actually cancerous? Does it mean .... what?

It DOES mean that the two different chemotherapy protocols I've had have NOT appreciably changed anything. OR.... maybe they did! Or maybe one did but we don't know which one.

I can see why some family and friends are wondering if I've gone through the last 4-5 months for nothing! Since I'm "invested" in all the fear and remorse and pain and loss so far, I don't "want" it to be for "Nothing". On the other hand..... I'd love to just turn the clock back to July when I was blissfully ignorant of anything in my liver that didn't belong there.

I see more significance and truth to the hat I purchased from the "Crazy Sexy Cancer" website all the time. The hat is a knit cap totally unremarkable except that embroidered along the front is the phrase "FUCK CANCER"! No kidding.



Note to those who haven't heard of this yet:

Cancer Survivors Kris Carr and Erin Zammett Ruddy

Crazy, sexy…cancer?
It’s quite the feat to laugh in the face of a deadly
disease, but that’s what Kris Carr—the woman behind the new documentary Crazy Sexy Cancer—does every day.

I love this whole interview at http://www.glamour.com/health/articles/2007/08/crazysexycancer also see Erin's Blog at: http://www.glamour.com/lifestyle/blogs/editor

One of the interviewer's (Erin Zammett Ruddy) questions:

ME: What do you do now when cancer gets to you? Buying things I don’t need and can’t exactly afford, like a third pair of Bruno Magli sandals, always helps me.
KRIS: Shopping is often my cure, too! Or I dust glittery powder on my face and dance to hippie music. I also pray, do yoga or dive into an inspirational book. If I let a blue mood run rampant, before I know it I’m obsessing about the color of the satin lining in my coffin—will it match my dress? That’s when I feel like Alice in Cancerland falling down the rabbit hole and just have to stop. Seriously, you should try glitter; it’s incredibly healing.

I may not be in the age group these women target (Under 30 more power to 'em) but I'm right there with the sentiment! (I WAS a hippie!) So I wear the hat even if I cringe sometimes that some little ol' lady at the Cancer Center will be offended. Or that someone will yell at me at the grocery store. OH WELL. Where do I get the glitter? :-)

COOOKIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

I'm baking cookies today!

You KNOW I must be feeling better. I have the day off. Yesterday (Sunday) I prepared the dough and filling for one of mom's classic holiday cookies - Date Nut Pinwheels. DELISH!

You make the dough and filling separately and chill them overnight. Today I rolled out the dough, spread the (very thick) filling and am now freezing them for a bit so they will slice easily.

I've made these a million times, but I had to call my sister Friday night to make sure I had MOM's recipie. Janel was up late packing for her ski trip to Montana, so she wasn't upset with me calling late, and fortunately (such organized sisters) she had it right at hand and it took only three minutes away from her packing. Hope there's a lot of snow in Montana this week!

Yesterday I called my sister-in-law, Carol, to get the recipie for Nut Butter Balls. Others call them Russian Tea Cakes, Mexican Tea Cakes, etc. but I wanted the one that makes real moist, melty butter cookies, not these dry crumbly things most people have. Anyway, Carol had her mom's recipie right to hand and it matched my memory of the proportions my mom used to use, so those are next to put together.

Third will be Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies - my personal lifetime favorite cookie. I hope I can get to them today, but if not, I still have lots of time before I leave for my daughter's place on the 21st. I have to make sure to not eat them all up ahead of time!

Time to slice the pinwheels - more later....

Wow! Guess it's been a while!

I've not blogged for a month! It's hard to believe that cancer has not been SO on my mind that I would not have time to blog!

The fact is, cancer is very much on my mind, but I'm in a "break". I had a CT scan in November that showed NO CHANGE. Nothing shrank and nothing grew.

So my doctor said that I might as well take 6 weeks off from chemo and do another CT scan on January 3rd. I meet with her on the 10th (My daughter's birthday - hope that's a good omen!) and we'll see what has happened.

I do NOT like this current state of affairs, but it is better than to find out things are getting worse, so I've just gone about things and tried not to worry.

I bought a new computer in the meantime. A MAJOR and not really affordable purchase, but more about that later. I'm right now in the process of setting up email, addresses of family and friends and all of that sort of thing.

I will post a "real" post tomorrow.
tata