Feline Chronic Renal Failure

Thank goodness for a wife who is learning to be a nurse. We've been suffering with a chronically sick cat, who apparently has kidney's that are failing him. It's a painful disease that usually come on older cats, but Rusty has contracted at age 8. Basically, his kidney's are failing to function properly and so he needs lots of water and care to keep him going. There is a whole slough of related issues as well, including constipation, frequent urination, weakness, et cetera, et cetara. It's not nice, and the worst thing is that it hurts him, he's not comfortable and not even his old self.

We know that it may only be a matter of time, maybe not even a long time, and we'll lose him. It's hard when we have nights like last night where he was really sick, and we don't know what to do. The crazy thing is we can't even take him to the vet and get them to do something, because there is very little they can do as well. There are kidney transplants, but that may not do much for him, including even whether he'll make it through the surgery let alone the recovery. That and he'd be on anti-rejection drugs the rest of his life, which is hard for a little cat. So we keep working with him.

Thankfully my wonderful wife is good at giving IV's and force feeding, because we've been doing alot of that lately. Rusty gets sub-cu fluids every day (may be more than that soon) and is right now being syringe fed vet food. He doesn't like it, but it usually makes a difference, and we thought he was picking up again, until last night he turned for the worse. It's so frustrating because there is so little you can do, even though you want to do a whole lot.

So it may mean we may lose our little guy in the near future. I hate the thought of that, because he's been so important to us, and we like to think to him. I guess I care too much, because I've known lots of people who have no problem getting rid of their cats when they move, or because they become inconvenient (ever tried finding a rental that allows pets!!). But I guess I'm not that kind of person, and I've never lost a pet before, so I don't even know how I'm going to deal with it, especially when we have to make the choice about whether to put him down because he's so sick.

Anyways, I know this is a kind of sad post, but I needed to get a bit of it off my chest. I try to be upbeat even when I don't feel that way (well, most of the time) but my Sis-in-law said it's ok sometimes to say what you are really feeling, and I think this is one of those times.

E

Heroes, Top Gear, Rebus and Computer Science

I'm currently sitting in my CPSC 331 class, terribly boring class, explaining why to use a Dynamic List versus a Static list, I actually much prefer a Generics List. It's so much easier to deal with the underlying objects rather than being returned an open ended object you need to cast. Bah, child's play, much to boring.

So, my cultural life has unfortunately taken a turn for the worse. So much for watching the IMDB top 250, lately it's been whatever looks not boring at the video store (and sometimes what is boring). Pulp Fiction is the only recent Top 250 movie, and why it got #6 is beyond me. Tarantino may be brilliant, or he might be an overgrown kid with a desire to make odd, violent, and slightly drug induced movies. If I wanted to see that (less the violent) I would be watching Kevin Smith, fluff I know, but he knows how to make a really funny bad movie. Pulp Fiction (that came out Pulp Function, how can you tell I'm in CPSC!).

So, rather than watch movies we know watch TV shows. It works better scheduling with four people that way. So that means a whole lot of Top Gear. Ah, British Television, so much better than pretty much any of the US networks and by far better than our US copycat Canadian stations. It doesn't hurt either that they talk about cars, all sorts of cars, but typically exotic cars. Though my two favorites so far are the Toyota Hilux (which we can't get new in Canada) and the Tomcat. It's sad but true, the other day we drove by two Ferrari's and I was much more interested in the restored Land Cruiser across the road. If you haven't seen the Top Gear Arctic special, and can put up with the British version of a red neck, you should definitely see it.

So, the only other thing I've seen lately is Heroes, which I'm not sure was worth the 2 hours of TV (getting spoiled by ad removed TV). What can I say, good premise, but it sucks. Chris has even said he's not likely to watch anymore, which I can't say I blame him. So more Top Gear it is!

The only saving grace right now is that I'm reading a Barbara Kingsolver and Ian Rankin book. Kingsolver's series of essays (I'm sorry, can't remember the name of the book!) is quite good, though not at all the escapist novel that I typically like. Fortunately Ian Rankin's "The Black Book" is very escapist and good work. I know the Scots may say it's fluff, but I've read alot of mystery/crime drama and this is night and day from most other books. I can really in many ways relate to Rebus (which I'm not sure is always a good thing!) and he is very human. Sometimes I think the books are more studies on human feelings and characteristics than a crime drama.

So I guess I'm lacking in the culture, though funny enough, anything I've discussed isn't getting funding from Harper's Fat-Cats :-)

Next time I promise I'll edit a bit more, and have a direction to my post. Not just a dump of words!

Cheers,
Eric

University Library

So, this is my 5 or 6th semester of University, depending on whether you count the two courses I took in 2003. I'm not a big university person, to me it's really one of those necessary evils, I have to go to get my degree. I haven't done much university type stuff, being involved with anything, gone to a single frat party (which I'm sure are nothing like Animal House), or any of that. I'm really a very sad example of a university student.

One thing I do use a lot though is the University Library. I spend most of my in between class time here, reading, working, posting a long overdue blog post. About the only thing I don't do is read books, at all, ever. Haven't even cracked one open, and I've probably sat hours in this library.

I think my primary problem is that they don't have enough pictures - which I'm sure again would just describe how much I'm a sad university student. But it's true, I'm a very visual person, I like to see how things work, I like to see how things look, I remember so much better based on pictures then I do words. And if a book has both, well then! Now don't get me wrong, I'm an avid reader (or at least when it's not just textbooks), I've gone through my fair share of books - but never one from the University library.

But I'm here all the time, typically because I find somewhere that I like to sit, and it's so much quieter not listening to people walk by, and talk about their "like horrible" sociology class. My current sitting place is the 6th floor, Southwest corner, where I can watch them build the new Taylor Digital Library. Which I'm hoping will still have lots of nice quiet places to sit, but I'm not holding out on more books with pictures :-)

So, in case my Sis-in-law K is reading this, who I know has read at least 2 full floors of books out of this library and who may argue that there are books with pictures, I promise one day I will look at the books. But until then nobody steal my seat on Friday's 10:00 to 11:00 AM, because I kind of like it, but there is two seats, so if you want to discuss Danish made crane's and the latest XKCD, come join me.

PS > My wonderful wifey has a blog, but I don't know if she wants me to link to it yet, so I might in the near future, and you can read someone who is more eloquent and will probably post more often.