roller coaster
sunday, january 12, 2020


it seems to have been a theme last year, and it's returning this year: it's been a week.

or maybe a week and a half. first, last weekend. which actually requires some background. i've been regaining some weight (eating to build muscle, not working out to build muscle, and three years of upheaval? no surprise), so when i started feeling some shortness of breath in my regular activities, i chalked it up to, well, not working out + extra weight. it did seem to come on suddenly, but it was also the middle of the christmas baking sprint, so i didn't think about it too hard. and after christmas, i was pretty tired from...christmas. (don't get me wrong: love the holiday, love being with family, but it's exhausting). last thursday i started my lifting. dropped my weights down a few pounds, did maybe 20-30 minutes, kept it fairly simple. by the end of it, i noticed some pain around lower ribs. i figured it was from the core work. but friday, by the time phoenixcat and i were done with grocery shopping, i could barely walk.

so, yea, i went to the e.r. which was a whole different level of drama (they had a trauma come in while i was being seen, so as you can imagine, everyone else in the e.r. was ignored for about 2 hours). i really didn't want to go, but this was impacting my breathing, and since i have asthma, i wasn't going to mess around with it. long and short of it: inflammation of the muscle tissue between/around the ribs, which of course would affect my breathing. also, extraordinarily high blood pressure (highest i've EVER seen it, even when i was 30 pounds heavier than now). they did a lot of other tests, but no blood clots or anything else (other than the obscene blood pressure) to be worried about. we did discuss putting me on a b.p. med, but i declined because i get the med cough with at least 2 or 3 of the most common ones and the last one made my ankles swell and affected my ability to just get through my day. we went with a diuretic. i spent the weekend and most of monday in bed and have been slowly getting back on my feet. i'm currently fairly pain free, but instead of doing total body workouts, i'm doing wither lower body/legs or upper body/arms+chest+shoulders. i've enjoyed it enough to consider going to four days of lifting: two total body, the other two each focused on upper or lower.

and as much as i want to push, i'm being good and sticking to upper and lower for at least another week. we are not going to end up having to take 3 or more months off from working out yet again. just...no.

then we got hit with some bad news regarding hub's job: they were going to have to cut hours. now, to be fair to the job, they were saying it was a "slow season" thing (which we used to see with bold) and they had been scheduling hubs for six days a week since he started. but these guys provide airline meals, so i've been trying to wrap my head around it being "slow." i mean, sure, i wouldn't expect it to be holiday season crazy, but...slow? and it didn't help the timing just sucked: we've had a number of medical emergencies over the last four or five months, most of which hit the paycheck (we're fine, he's fine), and we've been scrambling to catch up. he started panicking (i try to keep him from doing that: my job to worry about keeping things paid up), and it took me awhile to settle him down. once he did, he started contacting people he knows in the industry.

the same day he came in with the news of his hours being cut, i had to tell him that one of our boys (we suspected gambit, but later it looked like it was probably shadow) was having the same issue that finally killed vagner seven years ago. kidney stones are a common problem for male cats, and a real issue because their urethra is smaller than a females. and unfortunately, the only real solution for it costs around $1000, and that's after the vet visit and tests that we can't afford either. gambit has been the least active of the two, but he's also been depressed that we won't let him out (it's been two years, but that outside place is the thing), so he sleeps a lot and acts like his best friend died. shadow hasn't been acting much different, but he's been peeing outside the box and spraying. since gambit has been a sleepy boy, and shadow has been a peeing boy, it's more likely shadow that's in trouble. this would actually fall in line with shadow's history: when he found us, he was seriously injured and peeing blood then. because of our experience with vagner, we were certain he wouldn't live long, especially with the amount of blood. but he survived. hopefully he will again. at the moment, it doesn't look good, but we're hoping.

it's been a rough time for us with cats. we lost vagner in march 2013, logan in february 2015, ororo in november 2017 (there wasn't a post about it; and no, the 2 years between each of these cats is not lost on us), and we've just lost rogue (september 2019). it's too soon for another one. on top of that, between the freshness of rogue's death and the illness involved refreshing my loss of vagner (who i still grieve over), i'm just not up to losing yet another cat so soon.

on an interesting side note: almost one of these losses was preceded or shortly followed by a new addition in the family. our newest kitteh is psylocke, a big tabby girl who someone fixed before dumping her, and she showed up around january 2019).

as for hubs, he ended up with two leads on a new part time job back at fifth group. he never did speak to the second chef, because the first chef offered the perfect position for him: three days a week in the evenings doing prep. and he'll pay hubs $15/hour. hubs is very excited about it. we still have a hump to get over, but the situation is looking better than it was a few days ago. and we may actually end up with more money than if he were doing his six days at eugene.

so, yes, it's been a bit of a roller coaster week, with us still in the middle of one dip (shadowcat). i'm not expecting to return to my old routines easily or smoothly, but this week decided to try to give me a kick back to the curb. i'm not letting it.