preraphaelitepunk.com

• Hogmanay (Wikipedia)
  “A tall, handsome, and dark-haired man bearing a gift is strongly preferred.” There’s really nothing much more I can add to that. Happy Hogmanay to all.
  (tags: Scotland hogmanay holiday)

The vet just called — yes, at 7:30 on a Saturday night, and they’re only open half days on Saturdays; now that’s service — with the results of Nigel’s bloodwork from yesterday. Basically, everything was normal except for his liver enzymes, which were elevated; this could be from general irritation to his overall digestive system, which would not be surprising considering how nasty colitis can be, or possibly an indication of Cushing’s disease.

Looking at the list of symptoms for Cushing’s, it’s possible, though he certainly hasn’t shown all of them, and those he has (such as increased accidents indoors) have other possible explanations, too. It’s apparently a bastard to detect, given that most or all of the symptoms also occur with normal aging.

They want to repeat the bloodwork on Wednesday or Thursday, giving his digestive system some time to calm down after the colitis. (He’s in much better spirits today and actually has some energy, though he’s still a bit, um, drippy. No cramping, though, and he’s drinking water properly again.) At least Cushing’s is treatable, though not really curable as such; I’m a bit more worried about whether the ultrasound, which will be done on yet another visit to the vet’s, will show bad things about his heart (but at least that’s treatable) or distended stomach (unknown quantity, and thus scarier).

On the up side, I spent the entire day hanging out with Nigel and keeping an eye on him, which meant that I got a bit of clearing out done (necessary to set up my sexy new iPod speaker, which means I can finally listen to music without headphones; also necessary for salvaging what’s left of my own sanity). Also, I got a fair amount of knitting done: two entire repeats of the straight rows on my clapotis, which is a good amount for me:

The whole thing is maybe four, four and a half feet (maybe 1.2 to 1.3 m) long at the moment. With any luck, I hope to have it finished by the New York meeting. Of course, as an added distraction, I just cast on for a blanket, as well, except I’m going to substitute ankhs for the skulls. Or maybe I’ll do two skulls and two ankhs, for balance? Whatever. I’ll figure that out later. (Also, not doing the original pink and black color scheme. I don’t do pink, even with skulls. Burgundy and black, with silver yarn [which I must find soon] for the ankhs and/or skulls.)

Nigel on Ottoman, Ill

He’s doing somewhat better — he’s slept most of the day, but when I take him out for an airing, he seems perkier. He’s also eating and drinking with no apparent ill effects, and hasn’t had any bouts of shaking or whimpering.

I think he’s just worn out. At least, I hope that’s it.

The vet’s verdict is stress-induced colitis; she pumped a significant quantity of subcutaneous fluids into Nigel, which creates an alarming-looking lump on his chest but made him feel so much better. (He’d been lethargic all morning, and after they tried to take a stool sample, his intestines started spasming again, and he was miserable. The poor guy was shaking so hard that the exam table started rocking, and he was actually moaning, which I’ve never heard before.)

May I just say that I hate it when they take him in the back room? I always freak out, but this time I started crying even before they took him, while the vet was still there. I am a wuss, I know. On the other hand, I calmed down a lot when I heard him start barking after a while: it was definitely his, “Hey, you’ve left me behind, what’s up with that?” bark, a sound of vague irritation and not a sound of stress or pain. It sounded just like his bark when I leave at an unexpected time and do not provide enough of a bribe to distract him, and I knew that if he was complaining about being put in an exam-room crate and left alone, then he was certainly feeling somewhat better, and hadn’t had a heart attack or seizure or other health crisis they weren’t telling me about yet.

We’ve now got an antibiotic, and probiotic powder to mix into his food (is it not contradictory to administer both of these simultaneously?), and special food for sensitive stomachs. (Yes, this means no more V-Dog, unfortunately, because it only comes in regular. Even after the cans of prescription EN food run out, he’ll need a special diet formulated for sensitive stomachs.)

Obviously, I will do whatever I need to do to keep Nigel healthy and happy, even if it requires feeding him meat. Let me just say, however, that canned meat-based dog food is almost certainly one of the top 100 most disgusting, foul-smelling items in the known universe, and that if he must continue to eat wet food, I’m going to have to invest in some nose plugs so I don’t gag every time I feed him. He seems to like it, but, then, I’ve seen some of the things he’s tried to eat. . . .

There’s also quite a bit of guilt over supporting the slaughterhouse industry with my dog’s food, and the possibility that the special diet may have been developed not using home tests in which humans volunteer (and supervise) their dogs but in laboratory tests, quite probably on beagles no different from Nigel, with probable “sacrifice” when the tests were over. (It happens.) The consumer site for the samples I was given provides no information about whether the product was developed humanely, and the vet-targeted site is for registered users only, so I can’t find out much directly from the source. I did find this on one site selling prescription diets, though:

To find the answers, scientists at our research and development laboratory explore the problems in ways that may include genetic, molecular, cellular and clinical factors. Diets are then developed and tested at our Pet Care Center, the world’s oldest and largest research facility dedicated to developing pet foods, to be sure the diets provide complete nutrition in a great tasting diet. Clinical evaluations or other research are completed to confirm suitability for the intended use.

A little Googling suggests that both Purina, which made the canned samples, and Hills Science Diet, which makes the delicate-system food recommended for long-term use, are or have been doing laboratory tests that did not have happy endings for their test subjects. I know there’s virtually no way to avoid all animal testing, particularly when one has health problems (after all, I know every time that I take one of the pills the ER prescribed for me, it was produced after extensive animal testing, including on dogs; it makes me sick to think of it, but I don’t know what else to do at this point). I am not about to endanger my dog, but I’m going to see if I can find some special gastroenteric diet that at least was developed using home tests on dogs volunteered by their families, and effectiveness verified through regular vet checkups (you know, the way the diets would be expected to perform in the real world?).

Angst aside, the vet wants to do an ultrasound next week: his heart looks fine-ish, considering his murmur, but they want to double-check it, and also make sure that the distended portion of his stomach was from colitis irritation and not a growth.

The stress makes me worry quite a bit about boarding him in a couple of weeks, when I go to the winter meeting in New York, but at least he’ll be with his vet, and they’ll know what signs to watch for, and he’ll be right there with the vets in case of emergency.

(Sorry for the length. I just freak out when Nigel’s ill. At least he’s eaten something, gross and inhumanely produced as it may be, and he’s had a good drink of water.)

We got back from visiting my parents last night; the visit was a lot of fun, and I shall probably have more to say about it later if I don’t get unaccountably lazy. There were presents, there was food, there was knitting, there was a marathon of “Arrested Development” on DVD.

The important thing at the moment, though, is that Nigel seems out of sorts. While we were at my parents’ house, he seemed fine: interested in what was going on, active, and generally pretty happy to have three people to watch rather than just one boring one. He did tend to neglect his kibble a bit, but I chalked that up to the presence of a lot of really exciting food that he found more interesting and that he might, if he lay down on the floor as flat as he possibly could get and rolled his eyes up at you meaningfully, potentially get to taste. Once all the other human food was put away, he did eventually go to his kibble bowl. That’s pretty standard for him: new and exotic food, particularly if strong-smelling, takes precedence over everyday food. (He did get scraps of pumpkin waffles and crackers and other goodies, but nothing too much — no bigger than a fingernail from each of us — and nothing that was potentially dangerous to dogs, such as onions.) The only odd thing was that he started rubbing the right side of his face with his paw, but I couldn’t find any obvious problems such as wonky teeth or inflamed gums.

Last night, however, he looked decidedly unhappy. At first I thought it was just a standard, “Oh, back to the flat, how boring, and I’m still cranky from being cooped up in the car for hours,” reaction, but then he started sitting by the door looking really miserable. Apparently he was having intestinal cramps and diarrhea — not quite colitis, as far as I could tell, but enough to make him shake, and be reluctant to move. (During one trip outside, he actually stopped halfway down the front steps and just sat there looking unhappy for a while.) He was drinking water, at least. The vet-recommended half-dose of Immodium AD seemed to help with that, but it freaked me out that he refused to eat it when wrapped in peanut butter — I had to stick it down his throat, which did not please him — and also refused the runny white rice porridge that usually settles his stomach and keeps him hydrated when he’s sick. Neither of those things has ever happened before.

This morning, there’s been no diarrhea and no shaking, but he’s lethargic and I haven’t seen him drink any water. No interest in food, which is seriously freaky when it happens to a beagle. He doesn’t seem to be in pain, but just apparently feels generally crappy.

We’ve got an appointment at the vet’s in a little over an hour. Maybe I’m panicking over a passing bug, but I don’t want to take any chances with him.

At the office holiday party of doom, starvation, and unnecessary cheese, we were given $50 gift cards, which was about the only really good thing to come out of the experience.

This was added to our paycheck stubs for tax purposes; fair enough, I suppose. You get taxed on bonuses, overtime, and so on, and I suppose that a gift from your employer falls into the same category.

However, how the hell is it that I wound up paying $21 tax on a $50 gift card? (And why is it listed on my pay stub as being $54.15? Am I paying for the cost of my employer acquiring the gift card, as well, and then being taxed on it? Am I being charged $4.15 for the cost of the be-logo-ed travel mug we also were given? If the latter, may I return the travel mug and get my $4.15 back, please?)

WTF? A nearly 40% tax rate? Why would the rate be higher for a gift card than for regular income? This is ridiculous.

• Governor Huckabee’s son may have hanged a dog | Taste Better
  WTF is up with the Republican candidates? Between this and Romney’s treatment of his dog, are they all sadistic bastards? (Rhetorical question, really.)
  (tags: politics republicans cruelty)

(Yes, another sicky post. Nothing too graphic in this one, though. Really.)

One of the minor things they noticed when doing bloodwork on me at the ER was that my serum levels of protein and calcium were slightly low — not dangerously so, but a tad below the normal range. My guess is that it’s because of the fact that the coughing bug I picked up over Thanksgiving has killed my appetite for the past two weeks, so balanced meals have been few and far between, and I’ve been averaging maybe 1.5 meals (nutritious or otherwise) a day. Yeah, my diet has been crap. It hasn’t been helped by my getting home so late, so that if I prepare a normal meal, I won’t be eating until nearly 8:00, and forget actually preparing a meal to bring with me the next day. Except for the lunch out with my parents on Friday, veggie consumption has dwindled to a handful of baby carrots a day, fruit consumption is maybe a glass of hot cider, and I’ve just stuck some veggie cold cuts or LightLife barbecue on some bread and called myself fed. (Happily, the doctor was perfectly supportive of my veganism, and simply handed me a printout from the Vegetarian Resource Group [incidentally, love it when doctors admit they Google], told me to drink fortified soymilk, and to take my vitamins daily instead of whenever the hell I happened to remember, as has always been my habit up ’til now.)

Anyway, about 1:30 today I realized that I still hadn’t eaten, and that I should probably address that, since the last time I’d had something to eat was about 9:00 Saturday night. (Well, I had a cup of hot chocolate hempmilk Sunday evening; I was just happy that stayed down.) Consequently, I set about preparing an actual, proper meal with veggies and everything: tempeh bacon, and an entire zucchini sliced and sauteed with an entire (but petite) red bell pepper. Beverage: chocolate soymilk, providing 70% of recommended daily calcium and 40% recommended daily protein. Dessert: meds and a vitamin pill.

It was good, but perhaps it was a little overambitious (i.e., large) for the first meal in over 36 hours. I mean, I haven’t been sick at all, but it’s been over three hours and my stomach definitely feels a little odd. Nothing painful or nauseated; just . . . odd. There’s just an awareness of the organ’s existence, which is not normal for me but not really problematic as long as it doesn’t get worse. I can walk upright without pain, but it’s as if I feel my stomach bobbling around as I move (that’s my actual organ-type stomach, not my belly, which I’m sure bobbles around anyway). It’s rather peculiar.

I chose tempeh primarily because it was there and already marinated, and also one serving has 44% of your suggested protein and 15% of your suggested calcium, plus other nutritional goodies. It only now occurs to me that perhaps something that also contains 12 g of fiber (which the package rates at 48% of your daily suggested dose) per serving might not have been quite as delicate on my empty and feeble stomach as I’d like. Erm. This may be interesting.

I think I’ll bow out of tonight’s HOA meeting; I’m downloading OpenOffice again (never got around to it after the Great PC Crash of Aught-Seven) so I can fill out my proxy and deliver it downstairs before the meeting. Bleagh.

In my last post, I referred offhandedly to projectile vomiting. Silly of me, really, because I should know how the universe pays attention to asides like that, and how the universe can have a really twisted sense of humor at times.

Not that what struck me down was projectile, exactly, but it was stomach cramps, vomiting every 30 minutes, alternating sweats and chilled tremors that felt more like I was holding a jackhammer, and, eventually, shoulder cramps from my bad posture while throwing up. (Remember, children: posture is the foundation of good health.) There was a point when I actually wondered whether my peristalsis had started working in reverse, because I had no idea where the stuff was coming from; when it turned olive green, I got really alarmed. (Just bile, though.)

Eventually, after about 12 hours of this, I gave up and went to the emergency room, because there’s only so much WebMDing of your symptoms you can do while huddling on the bathroom floor, dirty laundry cushioning the cold tiles, trying to focus on the screen with blurry eyes, before you finally give up and go for professional help. (Put like that, my lifestyle sounds just so glamorous.)

Anyway, the ER took about a gazillion hours, as it always seems to, but the Emory staff were great and very considerate, and were willing to give explanations of what they were doing and why, which makes a big difference. They checked me out for everything likely, and arrived at a preliminary diagnosis of viral gastritis (i.e., flu, but one unlike I’ve ever had before — even food poisoning wasn’t this much, erm, fun), or, possibly, a peptic ulcer. I’ve got some meds and am supposed to make a follow-up appointment next week after Xmas (fun, fun).

Anyway, I’m feeling hella better than I did this morning, but I’m supposed to take the pills for the next two weeks, and stay home tomorrow. Probably a good thing, because I’m still a bit wonky from all the excitement, and my stomach muscles are sore from their unaccustomed workout. Still, as much fun as it’s been, at least I can now stand upright without moaning, and I don’t have a gall bladder stone or a perforated stomach wall or something equally serious; just a bug or, less likely, a little ulcer-ette. Could’ve been much worse.

(Of course, when I see the bill eventually, I may wind up wishing I’d wound up in a coma so I didn’t have to deal with the cost. Eeep.)

(Please note: In case you haven’t already gathered this from the title of this post, there may be copious swearing in the following. If this offends, please look away now, or possibly substitute the words “asparagus,” “fork,” “fires of elm,” or “muffle-lumping bastinados,” as appropriate.)

Today was the office holiday party, held at the restaurant named in the title. One might think that a restaurant that names itself after a dairy product would not be entirely vegan-friendly, but I have managed to get vegan meals there in the past: walk in the door, plop down, ask the server if the grilled portobello or other veggie-sandwich-type meal can be made vegan, provide any clarification the server requests, spend several years waiting, and then enjoy a quite passable meal. All this, you will note, without advance warning.

Apparently it takes them a month’s notice to really fuck things up royally.

This is not the fault of our social committee at all. They have always been amazingly supportive and very inclusive, even going to the point of buying a megacase of vegan burgers for our summer cookout — and then cooking them on clean grills before the animal burgers, so they would be uncontaminated. For the holiday party, they checked multiple times to ensure that I could get a vegan meal; each time, over the month leading up to the party, they were told that it would be no problem. Grilled eggplant sandwich, easy-peasy.

Foolishly, I thought that people in the restaurant business actually knew what the fuck they were doing.

Firstly, it turned out that “grilled eggplant sandwich” was the only vegan thing they planned. Before the entree, they served egg rolls (not vegan), spinach-cheese dip (not vegan), and Caesar salad (not even freakin’ vegetarian: anchovies in the dressing). There was bread of mysterious provenance, but I wasn’t sure about it and experience has taught me that most restaurants don’t make bread on premises any more and don’t have a clue whether there’s butter, egg, arsenic, or poison sumac in it, so don’t bother asking. Anyway, I got to sit there during all that, drinking my soda and shredding my paper napkin, while the others tried to eat their first two courses off the little, tiny saucers that were all they were provided. (What the hell? At least give them a salad plate, you chintzy CF bastards.)

“Not a big deal,” I thought, though as time wore on I grew increasingly worried that, given that I had skipped breakfast and had been anticipating a largish meal, I might pass out and fall face-first into the remnants of my napkin. “At least I’ve got a nice big vegan sandwich coming!”

. . . except that, in the CF world, “vegan” apparently means “covered in an assload of cheese.” Yes, fucking cheese.

Repeat after me: NOT VEGAN!

Obviously, I sent it back. I was sorely tempted to wave the little placecard the social committee had given me, clearly labeling me in EU-approved, ISO-friendly fashion according to CEN Standard 69-VGN-S-HL-2007, with veggies clearly printed on the label so it would be accessible to those accustomed to non-Roman alphabets:

(Aside: Gosh, I really hope that my face looks funny because I had to flip the shot in iPhoto, and I was grimacing to start with; if I look like that normally, I need more help than I thought.)

Anyway, back to the kitchen it went, and, after a moment’s reflection, I went and had furious hysterics in the bathroom. After all, they’d had a month’s notice: surely that would be enough to prepare one gods-damned meal properly, wouldn’t it?

Apparently not: when it came back, it was sans cheese but (1) with a huge schmear of mayonnaise-based sauce on one bun, (2) what looked like butter on the other side of the toasted bun, and (3) with what I suspect might have been butter on the broccoli, though Christi, who was nice enough to taste it for me, thought it might have just been salt.

My favorite part: when I asked the server about the mayo sauce, he said, “Oh, well, sometimes people say vegan and they just mean vegetarian, and sometimes they mean really strict vegan.” Yeah, I’m sure that happens a lot, because (1) vegans are just seen as so cool and not cranky assholes at all that we have hordes of groupie wannabes following us around pretending that they too live the glamorous lifestyle of driving restaurant staff insane, and (2) “vegan” is the word that automatically pops out of the mouths of the ignorant, not “vegetarian.” Of course.

Also, he wants to see a “really strict vegan”? I’ll show him a really strict vegan; just let me get my pleather cat-o’-nine-tails and the ball gag. . . .

(Kidding. The closest thing I have to a cat-o’-nine-tails is the fringe on my almost-finished Swamp Witch wrap. I could probably put an eye out with that, but that’s another story. It just bugs me when people call you “strict” simply for, well, doing what you do. Fuck strict.)

Anyway, after another short bout of swearing, hyperventilating, and snuffling in the bathroom (I get emotional when my blood sugar drops too far), I wound up eating the slice of raw tomato on the side of my plate. Mmm, mealy winter tomato. Maybe I should’ve risked the broccoli, but quite frankly I didn’t trust them at fucking all by that point, and would rather have passed out than have risked them introducing dairy to my not-dairy-acclimated system. (Well, unless the effects would have been immediate; it might almost have been worth the risk if I knew the slightest touch of dairy would induce, say, projectile vomiting at the table. Almost. At least it would’ve been fun watching their expressions.)

Anyway, that was my meal. I suppose I could’ve sent it back a second time, but by that point everyone else was finished with their entrees and was contemplating the dessert menus, and I would be damned before I sat there munching broccoli as everyone else headed out the door. Also, trust issues again: how many times can you point out that they fucked up before they start spitting (or worse) in your food?

They did offer me strawberries for dessert, but as mentioned, I trusted them just about enough by that point to be somewhat confident, kind of, that they hadn’t put ground cow in the blasted ice cubes, so I was having none of it. The server didn’t seem to believe me that I didn’t want them, so I finally had to tell him flatly that I didn’t trust the kitchen not to put cream on the strawberries. He looked slightly confused, but eventually he buggered off.

The kicker? My colleague sitting next to me did actually order the strawberries — and they came with a splodge of whipped cream bigger than my fist. Happily, by that point I was resigned enough just to laugh and roll my eyes, but if I’d ordered the strawberries (no mention whatsoever was made of cream) and it arrived with that shit all over it, I would have probably started shouting and sobbing and throwing dishes on the floor and just basically scared the pants off the servers. People in white coats would have had to be called, and some sort of heavy-duty tranquilizer injected into a dart and then shot into my ass, and then I’d be trying to edit chapters and annotating galleys while wearing the very latest in straightjacket fashions.

What particularly annoyed me was that they screwed me over when it would have been so easy to get it right — just ask the committee when they booked, or even fucking Google it. Instead, the Cheesecake Factory people lied, bare-faced, repeatedly, and apparently without remorse, about their ability or their willingness to pay the slightest amount of attention to what they were putting on a plate. Thus, I had a miserable time, probably (and unintentionally) made my friends feel bad, and surely gave the impression to others at the table who don’t know me that I am an unreasonable bitch who is never satisfied.

I don’t like being the sulky vegan. For one thing, it’s no fun; for another, it tends to give people the wrong impression about veganism: that it makes you unhappy, when really veganism brings me great satisfaction and joy. It’s just incompetent shitheads running restaurants that bring out the vegan asshole bitch-cunt-whore-from-hell (VABCWfH for short, pronounced “vabkwif”) in me, and make me have hysterics in the bathroom.

If you run a restaurant, please be up front with customers about what you can and will do for them. If I’d been told ahead of time, I would have brought my food, or eaten before the party. (Yes, I should’ve brought emergency backup food, as I usually do; I was indeed foolish.) Knowing there’s nothing for me to eat is fine. If you can and will do vegan food, wonderful! When you’re not fucking me over six ways from Sunday, I am a polite and grateful customer, and generally tip at least 20 to 25% for your efforts.

Otherwise, you will bring on the everlasting wrath of the VABCWfH, and it shall not be pretty. Not that I can do much besides rant to everyone I know or happen to encounter over the next few months, but still, it won’t be pretty. No, sir.

Bastards.