ProfessorTomoe

I've reached my like quota for the day, somehow. Consider this post liked.

One of my briefest brushes with fame was on a Southwest Airlines flight. (I suspect flights will make up a good number of items in this thread.) I was sitting on the aisle seat and watching people board. At one point, I noticed an elderly black lady being brought onto the plane in a wheelchair. I didn't recognize her at first, but when I got a second glance at her later on, I realized it was none other than United States Representative Barbara Jordan from Houston! I hadn't realized she was so far along in her life. I didn't get close enough to ask for an autograph or a handshake, but just being on the same plane was an honor.

5:26 a.m. CDT 20170714. Don't expect to go to the bathroom quickly if you're going to sleep without your orthopedic shoe. Just getting your foot past the Velcro straps is a hard enough challenge. BTW, this is the shoe that I'm wearing: http://www.djoglobal.com/products/procare/squared-toe-post-op-shoe Looks easy enough, but they put all of the difficult bits on the side of the picture you don't see. Easy for someone else to manipulate, but for yourself? Not so much. I did have to take the shoe off after waking up from last night's nap in order to "massage" (I'm not sure if that's the right word) the area that's been giving me bullet pain. It didn't hurt as bad as Tuesday, but it hurt plenty bad enough—maybe somewhere between a 7 and an 8, with me on hydrocodone, and it hurt longer. By comparison, the bullet shots didn't hurt as long, but they were *much* more painful—they would have averaged between an 8 and a 9, again with me on hydrocodone. You know, I start off these journalized updates with a time and date, but I don't end with one. That's because they can take so long for me to pull the details out of my brain and put them on the screen. Right now, it's 5:44 a.m. CDT, but I've had long updates take as much as an hour to squeeze out. These and my observations on Loudmouth are replacements for working on my novel while my brain isn't functioning at its normal, un-strong-opiate-medicated pace. I mean, a lot of my typing time on these two threads is spent fixing spelling. It's embarrassing. 5:48 a.m. CDT.

Loudmouth is having gastric problems overall tonight. He barfed up some of his dry food as well. No idea why. Mrs. Prof thinks it could be a sign of his FeLV getting worse. I'm more inclined to think that he went too far between meals without eating anything, thanks to her being gone so long. Fortunately, she doesn't have anything planned for tomorrow night, so that shouldn't be a problem. The Feliway is installed in Loudmouth's room. Here's hoping it helps.

Looks like I'm not the only one in the house with a gastric problem tonight (see the Changing Medications thread). Mrs. Prof fed Loudmouth his wet food and walked out to get everyone's dry food. When she returned, she saw that Loudmouth had thrown up his wet food. She cleaned up and left his dry food. She's going to put his Feliway in his room before she goes to bed. Baker and Mrs. Prof seem to be the only ones who haven't had a food problem tonight. As for Baker, I'm going to suggest a different method of moving his bowl tomorrow morning. I've been the one nudging his tray (with replaceable bowls) from one spot to the next. She's just been picking up the replaceable trays and dealing with them. My suggestion will be that, for the morning feeding, she takes the entire feeding station and loads it up however she plans to load it, then returns it to its new location a few feet closer to Loudmouth's room. Hopefully she won't argue. BTW, Loudmouth got out of his room tonight. He went straight to our back door, with Baker on his tail, sniffing all the way. Mrs. Prof bundled him up and returned him to the cat room. This all happened before he barfed.

10:49 p.m. CDT 20170713. No time to get a Zofran down this time. Mrs. Prof got home late from her pet adoption center volunteer meeting. She brought home Taco Bell, and before the jokes start, I like it and it usually goes down very well. Not this time, though. She bought a grilled burrito for me. About 2/3rd of the way through, I got hit with an overwhelming attack. Like I said, no time for Zofran. Just enough time to make it to the bathroom and aim straight. I went ahead and took a Zofran anyway afterward. I'm going to need its help to keep my pills down when I take them in a little while. I just hope that my 10pm hydrocodone had enough time to make it through my stomach before the attack hit.

I get your point, and I'll leave it at that.

I think we might need a "brush with fame" thread ...

I'd forgotten how weird it was to go from sleeping with a boot/orthoshoe to sleeping without one. Then again, I've been wearing something on my left leg/foot since .... what, March? I really can't remember how long it's been. I don't think I wore my moon boots this long when I broke my ankles.

Yeah, I know, but for us it's any port in a storm. We had them work earlier (although I can't remember if it was on Baker or a previous cat), so we're trying them again. If they work, they work. If they don't, they don't. We aren't holding our breath. And just for the record, I don't buy into homeopathy. I steer Mrs. Prof away from it (she was no chemistry whiz). I'm throwing the dice on something else being in there. If it isn't, then no blindfold and make mine Winston before you give the order to fire.

... and ... Thanks also to both of you, to the same degree, and to anyone else reading this thread. I hate giving off the feeling that I'm whining about my problems, but as I've mentioned before, I've got to have some place to chronicle all of this or I'll go insane. He did mention getting a bone scan done. That might help determine the source of the infection, among other things. There are still other things to try besides continually throwing antibiotics at it. However, if a bone scan is called for, I warned Mrs. Prof that she's not going to like it one bit. It's about a ¾-of-a-day-long procedure, or at least it was when I had one done in the 90s to try and rule out a Sudeck's Atrophy of a broken toe (it ruled it out). It also leaves you slightly radioactive, so no going through TSA screening points for a while. Let's find out. (Removes shoe.) (Replaces shoe.) Getting it on properly is certainly much more difficult than removing it, obviously. As for the likelihood of getting up in the middle of the night, I'd give that a 100% rating. If I had to wake up Mrs. Prof to re-shoe me, I'm sure that she would boot the hell out of me first. I'd better start practicing. In this case, I've got parts of two toes (the second and third metatarsals) that are aimed the wrong way. Shouldn't surprise me, really. It runs in my level of the family. My sister, who was a preemie, had to have her feet broken and re-set because they were pointed the wrong way (left foot aimed right, right foot aimed left), along with other problems that my parents wouldn't tell a five-year-old nosy kid. Me, I had problems when I was in a drum & bugle corps who wanted everyone to stand at attention with their feet parallel. I'm knock-kneed, so the best I could do was a 45° angle. Good thing I was in the pit percussion line, where it didn't matter.

That is interesting. Edward has got to have seen Pandora in her base form (if you can call it that) at some point, hasn't he? Therefore, she would've had to have used a disguised form that Edward hadn't seen before to set the whole affair in motion. However, it's still possible that the whole Adrian bit would have been brought up as a by-product of the failure of her magic dam, and could be unrelated to the "Egg and Hawk" scenario. I could also not know what the fark I'm talking about. I've been out in the Texas sun today. Too much dehydration. Fnord.

While I'd love to blog about both, the end result you suggest would be one I wouldn't be able to take advantage of even if offered. My health is in too bad of a shape to allow me to attend the events.

That is very helpful. You have my deepest gratitude. Seriously.

The Feliway for Loudmouth and the stuff from Jackson Galaxy arrived about ten minutes ago. Weird experience: I have my hearing aids on and was hearing the postman scanning the packages outside. However, I thought it was Mrs. Prof's cell phone or computer making some kind of odd noise—something she couldn't hear. We both figured out what it was when the postman knocked quite loudly on the door. Still no Loudmouth bed pee today (yay!). My fingers are crossed that he won't do it again, and that the above mentioned stuff will help both him (via the Feliway) and Baker (both, actually, via the JG stuff) to get closer to a real introduction. I might see if I can get Mrs. Prof to take a shot of Loudmouth's entire room tonight. Not sure if that'll work, given the limitations of her phone's camera. Loudmouth's going to have a lot more room to deal with when we do a "base camp switch," since the second bedroom (out of three) is much bigger.

4:31 p.m. CDT 20170713. I'm back from the podiatrist, and I've got three immediate things to report: My left big toe is probably infected again. My sesamoid bone is most definitely broken. My bullet pains were not coming from my sesamoid bone. First things first. The podiatrist said my big toe looked somewhat red when I was seated, but much more red and swollen when I was standing on the X-ray machine. Result: Augmentin for 10 days, just in case. Next, I reported the shifting of the bone I felt Monday and the bullet pains from Tuesday. He did a manual inspection of my foot and determined that my sesamoid bone was not the source of my pain. He said that I winced when he pressed between the second and third metatarsals. That's when he took me back for another X-ray and found something interesting: I was apparently born with a deformity ("pigeon toed," he called it), and he was surprised that it hadn't manifested until now. He was also unsure whether I was getting pain from the bones or from the nerves around them. In response, he literally glued a support to my foot. He used some sort of foot adhesion liquid and attached some padding beneath the problem area, then taped all around my foot using more liquid to keep the support in place. It'll all come off at next week's appointment. One good bit of news is that I don't have to wear the orthopedic shoe 24/7 now. I can take it off when I go to bed. However, putting it back on is a big hassle, so I'm not sure what I'm going to do. EDIT: we stopped at a different CVS than usual to get my Augmentin filled. Something between the sweltering Texas heat, the wait for the prescription, and the time spent on my feet waiting to have the entire order re-entered due to something Mrs. Prof didn't like in the original order took all the energy out of me that I had at the time. I've since re-energized slightly with a bit of Crystal Light lemon tea. Now, Mrs. Prof is off to the pet adoption center for a volunteer meeting, so Lord only knows when I'll see her next.

You know, it just occurred to me that it doesn't really matter whether or not Tedd's ever seen Noriko. He wouldn't identify with her anyway when he transforms to f!Tedd. F!Tedd would still identify with f!Tedd, plain and simple. It would be others (e.g., his Father, Sarah(?)) who would make the identification with other people (e.g., Noriko, Nanase). In short, regardless of what Tedd thinks he looks like when he's f!Tedd (even based on those he's seen), he might look way too much like Noriko for Edward's comfort, hence all of Edward's statements.

Well, now that she's awake, Mrs. Prof's got a plan for tonight, but since I'm fading out after waking up so early, I can't remember what the hell it is. I just hope it works.

Mrs. Prof brought up a fair point last night. Prior to her attempts at shifting Baker to wet food, Mrs. Prof had been giving him a "taste" of the wet food that the outside ferals had been getting during their evening feeding. He'd get that first, before she fed the ferals a mix of wet and dry. She'd then give him his dry. Well, we agreed to switch back to this method, since the shift to wet food has been a complete and total failure. This morning, Mrs. Prof did a variation on this. Normally in the morning, she feeds the ferals dry food first, then gives Baker his dry food for the day. Today, she fed the ferals their dry, and instead of giving dry food to the indoor cats, she gave both a serving of Sheba, which is about the same size as the "tastes" she'd given Baker previously at night. She reports that both ate a fair amount of it. That's enough to at least initiate a meet & greet, I believe. I must say, looking at Baker, he does appear more relaxed. He's spread out on the floor at the beginning of the hall, but he's not showing a care in the world. I've tried to get info out of Mrs. Prof as to how she's going to handle tonight, but it's been like pulling teeth out of a pissed-off shark. She just got up, she's on her first cup of coffee, she's only had X hours of sleep, you name it, she's throwing it. There's obviously no plan yet, so I'll have to report later on what she's going to do. It'll probably be a post-event report, since she'll likely bite my hand if I ask her how she plans on handling things. She won't have a plan until after the deed is done, I'm betting.

Yay! No overnight Loudmouth bed pee!

6:07 a.m. CDT 20170713. Up early after a most-of-the-day sleep yesterday, but yawning due to more stomach cramps during the night. I hope I got everything out of my system. I feel like I'm having a game of ping pong going on between my left foot/toe pain and my right back/side/leg pain. No bullet pain in my left foot, thankfully, just good ole' fashioned broken toe and sprained toe/damaged muscle & tendon pain. It's not a fun game, and the hydrocodone which I overslept can't kick in quickly enough to intervene. I also feel like I'm being too negative in this thread lately, chasing people away. @Vorlonagent's warning about not kicking myself was good advice, but it's so hard to follow. Remember the sine waves my health was on? This time my depression is on one, and it's been stuck at the bottom of one for days. I'm not manic depressive, BTW. It's just that my max Y value peaks at zero. I go from meh to bleh and, sometimes, back up to meh again. Right now I'm stuck at major bleh. Not maximum bleh, dear God no. I wouldn't be able to type this if I was at maximum bleh. I'd probably be in a hospital if I were there. I'm just at ... There are many lower levels. Especially on days spent mostly alone, with hardly anyone else online. Like yesterday. So, now I'm waiting for Mrs. Prof to wake up (or to be awakened by Baker), no one else is on line, and I'm typing this missive about how depressed I am. Not the best reading, I know. Sorry. Hopefully I'll do better in the future when I've actually got something to write about. Oh, I know how to wake up Mrs. Prof! (goes off to get a cup of coffee from the Keurig machine ...) EDIT: Yep, it worked.

Well, there was no need to set up the Trail Camera. Loudmouth had already gone on the bedsheets. Again. Before Mrs. Prof got home. All this time of being the perfect little cat, then WHAM! Behavior problem. I'm baffled. The Feliway and the Jackson Galaxy stuff are both due to arrive today. I hope they do some good. Pleeeeease let them do some good.

Too much other crap going on. Baker won't touch what's put down in front of him. How the hell do you do this when you've got to feed four (five?) outdoor ferals first, then him, then Loudmouth? God, this is never going to work! Baker is freaking crazy. Do you have the time To listen to me-ow About this food and that food too All at once I am one of those Melodramatic cats Neurotic to the core No doubt me-ow-t about it (With apologies to Green Day)

10:58 p.m. CDT 20170712. I think I dodged the gunshots through my left foot, mainly by sleeping with my foot elevated for most of the day. Didn't dodge massive stomach cramping about an hour ago, though. Not fun. No spoiler tag needed. I'm currently microwaving a Zatarain's cajun chicken pasta for Mrs. Prof. She's en route home after a long day at the pet adoption center—in fact, she just pulled up and forgot to check the mail as she came in. She's now feeding cats as the pasta cooks. Nothing to do with my health, other than my mental health. I've got my hearing aids in so I can hear the microwave when it goes off, and I get to hear Loudmouth yowl for his food and watch Baker beg for his. Podiatrist appointment is at 3pm tomorrow. We'll see what the big toe diagnosis is, as well as what the bullet pains were.

Correction: Mrs. Prof won't be home until almost 11:00 p.m., if not later. She got stuck out transporting cats in preparation for TNR surgery tomorrow. We have two very hungry cats here. I have a feeling that Baker will eat anywhere that food is placed when Mrs. Prof feeds them.