- One person who I expected to be there for me in an emergency wasn't. Two people that I didn't really expect were...
- My beloved pets are going to die someday. I will have to continue to live after they do, if only to care for the surviving ones. I need to accept it and I will - but it will be easier to accept if I feel that they've lived long and happy lives. I need to let go of our "pact" - they will not be able to live as long as I do. I can only hope that I can help them to live happy and joyous lives, full of love.
- Certain of my neighbors have become good friends. Sometimes just being friendly turns into true compassion.
- My issues with Ph.D. vs. M.D. expertise (and respect) need to be resolved. I'm not an M.D., nor am I a V.D.M.. I'm intelligent and a good scientist, but I'm not a clinician and I should never think I know how to be one without any training. I've been humbled.
- Love trumps shame.
- Even my mother cannot always be there for me the way I'd like her to be.
- Sometimes I know what I need to do better than my parents. It's time to start trusting myself.
Friday, May 20, 2011
Lessons Learned this Week
Monday, May 16, 2011
My Prayers
I don't pray to God or Goddess. I don't pray to Jesus. I've never met them and I cannot feel a connection to someone(s) or something(s) I don't even know exists for sure. I do, however, have monologues with my sister, Jodi, and my good friend, Abby, who both died at the ages of 19, 18 and 15 years ago, respectively. Mostly, the monologues are in my head but sometimes I accidentally say something out loud. Sometimes it's in a written form, usually in the form of a letter that, of course, never gets sent.
Today I prayed to Abby. Abigail Bates Rinehart. I named my cat, Bates, after her. I got him in 1998, two years after her death. Well, he was born on November 15, 1998. I think I may not have actually gotten him until after the new year, but it was love at first sight/hold. He clearly wanted ME as his mom. I think Abby told him to go with me. Maybe. Who cares if she did or didn't, I'd like to think she did so there. It comforts me. They have a connection in my mind so that's all that really matters. And he's been with me ever since. He is my baby. Bates. My handsome boy-cat - beautiful white long-haired fur with gray tips (it's called "blue point"). He's extremely affectionate and sweet. When I've cried and cried over broken hearts or whatever, he'd come up to me and lick my tears away...(ok, granted, he may have been more interested in the salty flavor, but still...it felt very loving and sweet.)
Bates is at the vet right now. He's not doing so well. They have him on dialysis and are watching him overnight. [update: he was not on dialysis - they were just flushing his system with fluids via IV - dialysis would be $15,000 and they'd have to send him down to San Diego or something!] He has a mixed bacterial/yeast infection in his ears. I gave him approximately 50mg of ibuprofen for the pain cause he seemed to be in a lot of pain over the weekend and then almost immediately afterwards I realized I made a mistake and looked it up online to find that even at small doses, ibuprofen can be toxic to cats! So I brought him to the emergency vet on Saturday. The animal poison control said that the dose (for his weight) was under the kidney failure dose but since he's 12, they wanted to do some blood work to make sure his kidneys were functioning normally and at that time they were. However, they said to bring him back 48 hours later to check again. Well, today, Monday, is 48 hours later and I brought him to another vet emergency and they did more blood work, but this time they said he seemed to be showing signs of toxicity. Also, he has anemia and may have some other chronic issues that could explain his semi-frequent vomiting. So tomorrow they're going to run more tests. It all worries me immensely and of course costs a small fortune. Well, to me, at least. So far it's already at $1350. It's probably going to be another $800 on top of that, if they keep him another night.
I prayed to Abby to have him pull through. I don't even know if she has any way to help but I still prayed to her. I want him to have a full life - I feel like he should have at least 6-8 more years with me! I'm moving to a place with a yard (well, hopefully - it's one of my stipulations) for him! I want him to be able to have his adventures outside that he always seems to be dreaming about! I'm not ready to lose him....not that I'll ever be but it'll be easier to let him go when he's already enjoyed a long, wonderful life!
The night before I found out that Abby died (so it was either the night that she died or the night before she died), I prayed to my sister, Jodi. I also tried praying to Jesus and God if they existed and were listening. I don't really know who they are but I know who my sister is and she's a loving being - always was! I pleaded, I begged. To no avail. But I know it's not my sister's fault Abby died. I don't even care about blaming anyone, though, cause what's the point? She's gone and blaming someone (such as the doctor who may have done her last two radiation treatments too close together, thus frying her lungs) won't bring her back. Anyway, doctors are only human, too. It's just hard to swallow when their fuck-up leads to the death of someone you love. Also, radiation therapy is pretty brutal. It's like taking an axe to a house to kill an ant infestation or something. It's just not very specific - but neither were most of the chemotherapies back then. Although, they're not that much better now, either.
Medicine is a lot less specific than people think - we theorize how specific it should be, but we hardly know what other things than the primary target is being hit and even if the primary target is the primary hit, we also don't completely know if that's specific to the disease, either! Unless we do - unless it's a microbe or parasite or something foreign to the body - but that's not cancer. Cancer is the body gone wrong. Or really, just gone "right" but pushed to the edge of "right". I mean, it's really just micro-evolution. Our cells are just stressed to the level of selection for the fittest in that stressful situation, and then the selection is made - the fittest cell lives longer, at least long enough to have progeny, right? That's the definition of "fitness". But most cells are not supposed to have progeny. Most cells are done dividing and are busy doing stuff. It's when they're pushed to divide for reasons not entirely known - maybe repair - such as in the lungs, repairing the epithelium lining the airways due to the toxins and reactive oxygen species (ROS) in smoke which cause the cells to die. So cells are induced to divide more and then selected for their ability to divide under stressful situations - thus selecting cells with heritable aberrations in the expression of certain genes that may regulate the cell cycle, cell death, cell migration including adhesion, etc. Also, some cancers are, at least partially, due to heritable genetic mutations - but usually only heterozygous mutations cause the homozygous ones probably would not be viable. In any case, that's also just evolution at work - survival of the fittest. Unfortunately, people with those mutations are not as "fit" as people without them. If we step back and look at it from a population's perspective - we want those genes to be selected out of the population! We don't want more people with those genes! But...then in some cases, maybe we do, so they're heterozygous mutations (one allele inherited from one parent has it while the other from the other parent doesn't and may require that the other allele be mutated spontaneous and then, when under selective pressure, it becomes homozygous and thus that cell has a major advantage micro-evolutionarily! Anyway, so that's how cancer happens. It's part genetic and part environmental or sometimes it's almost entirely environmental that changes the readout of the genetic makeup - or even directly mutates it (as in the case with UV light - it causes cross-links in the DNA).
Wow. That was a bit of a tangent. It's so much easier for me to talk about biology than to talk about loss. I really miss my sister and Abby. It's really painful to think about how I can never just hang out with them again. It's also been a long time since they were around so the pain is different. It's just a sadness now. Just memories. It sucks - I would really like to have more, to be able to experience more of them. I don't want to lose Bates. I want more with him. He's my buddy. He's my boy-cat. He makes me feel like a girl sometimes cause he's the only boy in my life on a daily basis - I mean, boy that's close to me. Well, he's a cat and kinda effeminate sometimes although also masculine. I don't know. I really love to cuddle with him and kiss him and he kisses me! (no tongue! Well, not my tongue!)
Anyway, I guess I'm coming full-circle here. I prayed to Abby. I just looked at her yearbook page again to double-check that I spelled her name correctly. She has "Abigail B. Rinehart" in the yearbook. But I know what the B. stands for. It makes me feel kinda special. Even if I'm not. Or ever was to her but I'm pretty sure she knows how special she was to me and maybe that means something to her now. I will have to write the post about why I'm pretty convinced that our consciousness exists even after our body dies. I guess I would say our consciousness is equivalent to our soul. And not only that - well, there's so much about it but really I mean to say that I know that Abby had a life-review when she died and she would've felt how I felt when she saw/felt the parts with me in them. Maybe she would have seen/felt how I felt when I told her I was gay....and she thought I was playing a joke on her cause she's bi but I didn't know that! I had a crush on her! But I was dating April...and she had a boyfriend, too...Greg. Yeah, and he was in a band. I think their band was named "Rail". Yeah, and Abby quoted from a song of theirs in her senior yearbook page quote! I had two U2 quotes but I didn't attribute them to U2 or Bono, per se, I used his real name - Paul Hewson! Aw man, now I'm blanking on Edge's real name - Dave Evans...got it! HA! And I just confirmed it on Google...
Ok, to be fair and honest, I've been getting progressively stoned as I've been writing this. So it may not be the best post ever but now I've decided to conclude it. Essentially I pray to Abby that Bates pulls through and gets better and lives for at least 6-8 more happy years with me!
I prayed to Abby to have him pull through. I don't even know if she has any way to help but I still prayed to her. I want him to have a full life - I feel like he should have at least 6-8 more years with me! I'm moving to a place with a yard (well, hopefully - it's one of my stipulations) for him! I want him to be able to have his adventures outside that he always seems to be dreaming about! I'm not ready to lose him....not that I'll ever be but it'll be easier to let him go when he's already enjoyed a long, wonderful life!
The night before I found out that Abby died (so it was either the night that she died or the night before she died), I prayed to my sister, Jodi. I also tried praying to Jesus and God if they existed and were listening. I don't really know who they are but I know who my sister is and she's a loving being - always was! I pleaded, I begged. To no avail. But I know it's not my sister's fault Abby died. I don't even care about blaming anyone, though, cause what's the point? She's gone and blaming someone (such as the doctor who may have done her last two radiation treatments too close together, thus frying her lungs) won't bring her back. Anyway, doctors are only human, too. It's just hard to swallow when their fuck-up leads to the death of someone you love. Also, radiation therapy is pretty brutal. It's like taking an axe to a house to kill an ant infestation or something. It's just not very specific - but neither were most of the chemotherapies back then. Although, they're not that much better now, either.
Medicine is a lot less specific than people think - we theorize how specific it should be, but we hardly know what other things than the primary target is being hit and even if the primary target is the primary hit, we also don't completely know if that's specific to the disease, either! Unless we do - unless it's a microbe or parasite or something foreign to the body - but that's not cancer. Cancer is the body gone wrong. Or really, just gone "right" but pushed to the edge of "right". I mean, it's really just micro-evolution. Our cells are just stressed to the level of selection for the fittest in that stressful situation, and then the selection is made - the fittest cell lives longer, at least long enough to have progeny, right? That's the definition of "fitness". But most cells are not supposed to have progeny. Most cells are done dividing and are busy doing stuff. It's when they're pushed to divide for reasons not entirely known - maybe repair - such as in the lungs, repairing the epithelium lining the airways due to the toxins and reactive oxygen species (ROS) in smoke which cause the cells to die. So cells are induced to divide more and then selected for their ability to divide under stressful situations - thus selecting cells with heritable aberrations in the expression of certain genes that may regulate the cell cycle, cell death, cell migration including adhesion, etc. Also, some cancers are, at least partially, due to heritable genetic mutations - but usually only heterozygous mutations cause the homozygous ones probably would not be viable. In any case, that's also just evolution at work - survival of the fittest. Unfortunately, people with those mutations are not as "fit" as people without them. If we step back and look at it from a population's perspective - we want those genes to be selected out of the population! We don't want more people with those genes! But...then in some cases, maybe we do, so they're heterozygous mutations (one allele inherited from one parent has it while the other from the other parent doesn't and may require that the other allele be mutated spontaneous and then, when under selective pressure, it becomes homozygous and thus that cell has a major advantage micro-evolutionarily! Anyway, so that's how cancer happens. It's part genetic and part environmental or sometimes it's almost entirely environmental that changes the readout of the genetic makeup - or even directly mutates it (as in the case with UV light - it causes cross-links in the DNA).
Wow. That was a bit of a tangent. It's so much easier for me to talk about biology than to talk about loss. I really miss my sister and Abby. It's really painful to think about how I can never just hang out with them again. It's also been a long time since they were around so the pain is different. It's just a sadness now. Just memories. It sucks - I would really like to have more, to be able to experience more of them. I don't want to lose Bates. I want more with him. He's my buddy. He's my boy-cat. He makes me feel like a girl sometimes cause he's the only boy in my life on a daily basis - I mean, boy that's close to me. Well, he's a cat and kinda effeminate sometimes although also masculine. I don't know. I really love to cuddle with him and kiss him and he kisses me! (no tongue! Well, not my tongue!)
Anyway, I guess I'm coming full-circle here. I prayed to Abby. I just looked at her yearbook page again to double-check that I spelled her name correctly. She has "Abigail B. Rinehart" in the yearbook. But I know what the B. stands for. It makes me feel kinda special. Even if I'm not. Or ever was to her but I'm pretty sure she knows how special she was to me and maybe that means something to her now. I will have to write the post about why I'm pretty convinced that our consciousness exists even after our body dies. I guess I would say our consciousness is equivalent to our soul. And not only that - well, there's so much about it but really I mean to say that I know that Abby had a life-review when she died and she would've felt how I felt when she saw/felt the parts with me in them. Maybe she would have seen/felt how I felt when I told her I was gay....and she thought I was playing a joke on her cause she's bi but I didn't know that! I had a crush on her! But I was dating April...and she had a boyfriend, too...Greg. Yeah, and he was in a band. I think their band was named "Rail". Yeah, and Abby quoted from a song of theirs in her senior yearbook page quote! I had two U2 quotes but I didn't attribute them to U2 or Bono, per se, I used his real name - Paul Hewson! Aw man, now I'm blanking on Edge's real name - Dave Evans...got it! HA! And I just confirmed it on Google...
Ok, to be fair and honest, I've been getting progressively stoned as I've been writing this. So it may not be the best post ever but now I've decided to conclude it. Essentially I pray to Abby that Bates pulls through and gets better and lives for at least 6-8 more happy years with me!
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