Life in general catch-up

It’s been a wild few weeks around here.  Mostly good, I think.  Although the impending holiday craziness is already starting to creep in, and that has me worried.

The really really good news: Both Erich and Matt are working. Erich has found an IT job with a metro-Boston hospital, and so far is enjoying it. He likes the atmosphere and the people he works with. The commute isn’t great, but that’s fairly normal for us. I’m now commuting most of the way with him, then jumping the subway to finish my commute. I’m not all that sure if I want to do that every day – I honestly miss the peace of the commuter rail (and the personal space), but I’ll split the time with him. It’s a long bitch of a commute alone every day, and unlike me – he has to drive his. We have some friends who currently work there, albeit in a different department, and they seem happy with it. It does really appear to be a good fit for him – so I’m hoping he enjoys it and is able to stay there for quite a while. IT work can be so iffy and out of a person’s control, though.

Matt is working for the gaming store Erich and I have frequented for years. They recently opened up a second location in Plainville, Mass. which is much, much closer to home. We’ve already been there a few times (a couple intentionally to harass the roommate, as is required). It’s a great space – nice and open and bright. I confess that I may like it more than the original. The pizza place next door is fantastic, too.

Both of them seem much happier lately – I think getting out and going to work and not feeling rejected from all of the job application denials is a huge help. I have to admit, I’m not looking forward to shouldering a good chunk of the weekend chore load again, but at the same time – I was annoyed that it really wasn’t getting done how I prefer it to be done. So… *shrug*

The good news: I’m finding a rhythm in my job, and I’m starting to really enjoy the work. I got a good yearly review, which makes me feel much better about things. The difficult part is that due to how crazy it’s been this year, I’m still finding it difficult to catch up on the volume. I’m slowly slogging through backlog, but way WAY too slow for my liking. So I convinced one of the folks I report to that, especially with the normal end-of-year pace of our industry, that I’d really like to borrow a company laptop so I can do some catch-up work on the busy work that’s behind, but honestly could be done quickly if I’m not disturbed for a while. I mean heck, if I’m on the commuter rail – I have nearly three hours of time that I could use to catch up on these little projects (updating status charts and such) that don’t require access to the databases and such.

The bad news: Colley’s been ill. Really ill. He lost a third of his bodyweight sometime between July 4th and the middle of September. He’s been diagnosed with fatty liver disease and a form of hepatitis that essentially translates to “infection and inflammation” of the liver. If left untreated, it’s fatal. Basically, at some point he stopped eating for some reason – and he wasn’t eating long enough that his liver started trying to burn fat to replace the protein he wasn’t taking in. Only problem – cats don’t process fat very well at all, and the fat was building up in his liver. Essentially, his body started eating itself to try to produce the energy he needed, but there wasn’t the protein his obligate carnivore body needed… and that caused the weight loss.

So after a round of blood tests and an ultrasound, he got the fatty liver diagnosis. Medications have included an appetite increaser pill (he’s now off those), two separate antibiotics (liquids), and a bile producer (suspension liquid) to start cleaning out his liver. He was given a few cans of a high protein cat food, although the vet really just encouraged us to get him to eat any protein he’d eat – the protein intake was the important thing. The solution to the problem is to make his liver kick-start into recognizing and burning protein again. And thankfully it seems to be working. He’s not thrilled with the meds at all, but we’re managing to get most of them down him. He’s up about 11 ounces since diagnosis, which is good – and he’s now eating without any medical intervention. So I think we’re now out of the woods with him. The only problem is that for the first two weeks, by necessity, he was being fed on demand – and it’s starting to become a habit. Sooo… yeah. We’ll have to break that out of him eventually and start toning down the extra cans. For now, I just want to know that he’s better. Once he’s finally off the antibiotics, we’ll start cutting back the volume of food a bit. I’m thinking that whatever caused his loss of appetite may have been due to something with the kibble – he used to be an exclusively kibble-interest cat. Now he refuses to touch it, which I find interesting.

Stitcher’s Hideaway is a week away now, and I can’t wait to head to Mystic. Four days of work are between me and my vacation week. And oh, I need it.

There’s some other possible big news on the horizon, but not confirmed yet. I’ll get to that when I can.