The Mouth That Roared

The stress and grief of Pepper's final illness and death have thrown my underlying depression/anxiety disorders spiraling out of control. 

I have had to seek medical support for the anxiety symptoms and have been mostly unable to eat or sleep all week. I've been getting by on diet shakes and gatorade with the occasional cracker because my stomach is so upset.  I will find myself pacing, shivering, or pouring sweat at intervals, with racing pulse and body temps zinging up and down.

I am under a doctor's care, because although I dislike the idea of "drugging myself to cope" the fact of the matter is that I have to be able to function to some level, and begin to build up my reserves to some semblance of balance before I can even begin to grieve.

Company the first night was for frantic sobbing and household help - getting me over the hardest hump of beginning to sort/toss/donate her things.  Lisa, chris, kathy, and fred came to my rescue.  Mags and Tonya and Lisa and Pen and my Cheezfriends - I would be catatonic at this point without you.

Now I mostly need distraction - reasons not to spend all the time at home moping.  People to poke me to remind me to try and eat.  Even company for laundry!  Anyone local who has room for a slightly broken companion for a few hours, for whatever you are already planning to do.  Please.

I know that I have a tendency to push people away - to have lots of "friends" but all of them at one remove, so to speak.  I think I realize where that comes from now, and I intend to try and work on that soon.  But now I have to ask that people forgive that tendency in my and reach out to me when I really need it.  You don't have to "entertain" me - we can watch a vid, or talk movies, or go shopping or something.  I have netflix streaming and a crazy amount of stuff on various Roku channels, or I can tag along with whatever you are doing. 

I have that attitude of "I'm strong enough to do this alone", so there is also a bit of guilt in there for bother people.  It's very hard for me to reach out for help like this.

Please help me. 

My phone numbers (which are already on the net in several places so don't worry) are 773-304-8972 and 312-590-8051

stoopy LJ not letting me post this last night:

I talked to the vet before she left for the evening, and she said that Pepper
still wasn't eating but had started to try and right herself. She was still
very guarded about her prognosis, but I was already on my way there to see if I
would be allowed to visit her.
>
> I got there about 15 minutes later, and they said that I would have to wait a
bit to see her, because she had just started trying to eat on her own! We let
her go on undisturbed while I dealt with paperwork, and then they brought her to
me.
>
> She's horribly tilted, and her upper eye looks awfully clouded. She was lying
limp, with a stalk of parsley sticking half out of her mouth like she was just
too tired to finish chewing.
>
> But when I started to rub her face like she likes it, she started to fuss a
bit. She actually snuggled up against my arm - probably as a support against
rolling but I'll take what I can get. I talked to her, and rubbed her ears, and
ended up sort of holding her between my forearms so that her body at least was
upright and supported, while her face lay on my hand. After a few minutes, she
started trying to eat again. I coaxed her into eating the rest of that parsley
and a bit more than one lettuce leaf. Not a lot, but it's progress - and it
shows that my little bunny-bitch is still fighting!
>
> She's off oxygen (it didn't seem to be doing much) and is on metacam,
antibiotics (i forget which), something-azole for possible e. cunniculi, and
reglan.
>
> So if she can keep this up (and I can find a way to pay for it) she looks to
be hanging on.


Overnight crew reports that she "attacked the syringe" at feeding time, and clearly wanted more.  She's drinking water, turned around in her cage, and even tried to hop!  Still no poop though, which is very worrisome. 

Pepper is refusing to eat, even when fresh hay is actually put in her mouth.  She is in GI stasis, and being force-fed and given IV fluids.  She's not fighting to right herself - just lying there limp.  They've taken her off oxygen - It didn't seem to be doing any good, they had put her on it to reduce any stress she might have from breathing problems, but it looks like she's just breathing fast because she's in pain and scared.  She's getting pain meds, antibiotics, got motility drugs, and will be starting an anti=parasite treatment this afternoon just in case.

But if she doesn't pick up in the next few hours there may not be anything they can do.

She is going to be transferred to my regular vet practice (in the same building) within the hour. 

No real change overnight - she's still on her side and isn't trying to stand or anything, but if you put greens in front of her nose she will eat them "very enthusiastically" and accepted syringe-feeding just as happily.  But they are a ltitle worried because she hasn't pooped.  So for now she's no worse but she's not really better either.

If it's infection-based, I'll do everything I can to help her pull through.  But I've decided that if it's neurological I may let her go.  If there is a chance she'll recover, even partially, then she gets it - she'll adapt to just about anything.  But if there isn't any real prognosis for improvement, I won't force her.

I'll know more in a few hours.

I['ve never been much of a "gamer" - at least not electronic ones.  I don't have the hand-eye coordination for most console games, and I get frustrated easily.  I liked the Myst games because they were "find stuff out" games.  I didn't have a fast enough connection to get on board with WoW when it first hit, and LotR Online was kind of fun but I didn't play often enough to justify paying for it.

I really enjoyed Echo Bazaar, and even played 2 different character of very different types to explore different aspects.  But I'm not going to pay for the extra access and I've gone about as far as I can on that basis.

Which is why it's very strange for me to be referred to as "one of our top players" on Map Of The Floating City.

It's the browser-based game that's leading up to Thomas Dolby's new releases, and has a distinctly Steampunk/Deiselpunk feel to the design.  It was a little hard to work out the mechanics at first, but I'm really enjoying it.  I'm pretty active on the forums - helping out occasionally with research on some of the puzzles, helping out newbies, etc.  I also really like the "patenting" process - where you make up an 'unvention' from the items in your cargo and submit a patent application describing what your invention does.  Many years of Warner Brothers cartoons stand me in good stead there!

One of the metrics you can have it "reputation", and I have been priding myself on regularly ranking in the top 15 in our "tribe" (tribes are assigned geographically based on location of IP address - Poison City is the upper midwest and northeast US).  Last time I checked I was #7.

There was a change in game dynamics last week when 3 of the tribes (mostly from Asia and Australia) formed a continent-wide alliance.  Immediately everyone started talking about making alliances - and we consistently have the highest score on our "Continent".  So the other two groups on our continent want to ally with us, and we were wondering about that, or maybe allying with the strongest tribe on the other remaining continent - 17 Hills, mostly centered around San Francisco.  Debate has raged heavily on the tribe's private forum, and I've actually changed my mind about the idea.

But it was getting annoying, so I actually floated an idea of The UnAllied Alliance, where we and 17Hills would agree not to ally with ANYONE for at least 10 days, so we could get back to, you know, playing the game? (Look at me being all leader-shippy there)   So then people started messaging me about it, and on the forums.  Then I got a message from our #1 player where he "wanted to get an idea of how the top players in the tribe really feel about things".

*blink blink*

"Me?"

still feels weird...

On a whim, I submitted the last round of pics to a reporter query and they decided to feature my little Farm In The Sky on their website/magazine.  Which meant I needed more photos!
( Read more... )

I woke early yesterday and headed over to the Custer Street Fair,  I was just in time to catch the Absinthe Minded Professors show at 12:30 (once I found the well-hidden theatre).  The tales of the Manitcore Club were quite enjoyable, and while the language was a bit over the head of some of the kids in the audience it seemed to go over well.  I do advise second-row seating, though - Josh has a tendency to spray a bit when he's being overbearingly British.

I had neglected my sunscreen and was short of cash so I didn't stay long at the fair.  I made a quick trip round most of the booths, and picked up a tub of plain Shea Butter from one of the African ladies - I like it n various creams and lotions so I thought I'd try the stuff by itself.  It really is GREAT - very moisturizing, absorbs quickly, and I woke up VERY soft this morning.  It has a very slight smoky scent, but otherwise not much of a smell.  I'm definitely a fan, and for only $5 a small tub.

Came home and puttered around the house a bit.  I did some work on the deck garden - splitting out some of the increasingly overcrowded mints and moving some of the hanging baskets to a new configuration.  I think I'll plant out the last two tubs of mesclun greens tomorrow and call it a summer.  I'm really happy with the way things are coming, and since every bit of dirt has to be carried up 3 flights of stairs in 40lb sakcs I'm ready to be done with THAT part at least.

I'm also back on another round of Zpack - When I woke yesterday my lingering cough was suddenly a bit more technicolor than I'd like, so it seemed sensible to pick up the refill.

I'll probably be staying off Facebook and such for most of today.  See, my father hasn't been part of my life since the 1980s, by my choice.  There was an affair and a really ugly 5-year divorce process, during which he tried to use both my brother and I in various emotional and financial games against my mother.  He was required to pay for our college educations, but I had to fight battle after battle to get the bills paid on time, if at all, and at times had to resort to buying textbooks that I did not need (because they showed up as books on the records) and then returning them for cash to buy food.  My brother went through similar problems, and actually ended up paying for his own last semester of college by learning card-counting and going to Vegas.  Neither of us has chosen to have him in our lives - I got the lovely task of explaining this to most of the people at his wedding.  I know that he has no idea where I live or even how old I am (because he had my mother served with papers seeking to cut of her alimony a few years ago on the Friday before Mothers Day, and apparently neither he nor his attorney knows how to Google, because I'm NOT hard to find) and he has never met his grandchildren.  We have all made out peace with our decisions long ago, but there are still soooo many people in this world who insist that they know better, and I get really tired of being lectured about what I "have to" do by people I barely know.  You don't know the story, you don't know the people, and you know what - sometimes there ARE no happy endings.  So to all those judgmental pricks who feel the need to tell me how to run my life - suck it.  Bah Humbug.