Thursday, April 9, 2009

One Year! No Insulin!

Celebrate, celebrate,
Dance to the muuuusic!




It's an older picture, but one of my favorites. (His eyes are still normal....) It really doesn't seem like it's been a year. I remember how nervous I was, and how at the last minute - just the very end of the two-week OTJ period to make it official - he had some higher than usual numbers. But, we persevered. And here we are.

Congratulations, my sweet Puffer. You did good!

Wednesday, April 8, 2009

Brother, am I sorry I did THAT.......

Today was our 3-month visit with the ophthalmologist. The morning went well, I got hold of Puffer and crammed him in the carrier with no problem, and then, I got lost on the way. Ended up - with only 5 minutes left before the scheduled appointment - making a huge loop and right back to where I'd started out, almost. Every road seemed to be full of potholes and sharp S-curves and right angles. We finally get to the Speciality Hospital, and there is a couple waiting to pick up two yipping white Scottish terriers. And waiting and waiting, yipping all the while because only one dog was brought out to go home; the other one apparently had an unfortunate accident and had to have a last minute bath, according to the technician I was eavesdropping upon. But the waiting room is cavernous, full of hard stone surfaces and nothing at all to absorb sounds, and the dog barking made my ears hurt. Scruffy kept scrooching further and further back into the carrier, trying to escape. It was not felicitous. Then the appointment, where, aside from the paper tapes in the eyes, they really don't do anything unpleasant to him. But he seems to feel obliged to hiss and spit anyway. ScruffyPumpkinPattyFractiousPaws. Eventually we checked out, went home by way of the route I should have taken this morning, and once he was home, he seemed more relaxed. He nibbled at the breakfast that was left.

Purely out of curiousity, because Scruffy was not a cat who ever seemed to exhibit much in the way of vet stress, I thought I'd test his glucose level. Bearing in mind the messy, unpleasant sinus stuff and the difficult two+ hours he'd just been through. And got a 170. One Hundred Seventy. Suffice it to say, my heart fell. My heart plummeted. My heart fell off a cliff into the ocean. Tomorrow's his first anniversary as a diet-controlled, non-insulin dependent cat. And he's got a 170. Is it stress? Is it the cancer in his eye? Is it those awful teeth? Is it illness? Is it falling out of remission? Is it too close to having eaten a little? I have no idea. All I know is, it was very upsetting. SO, now he's been napping on the window ledge in the big fuzzy black pi for the last couple hours, and he's eaten three more times, a little here and there - and he was just 117. Better, I guess. BUT - good enough? Dear God, I HOPE so.

ETA: 83 at 2:30 AM! And we're officially at The Puffer's One Year Anniversary. I still can't quite believe it.