Now that she's back in the atmosphere
August 31, 2006 at 8:12 pm
Posted by Keiran in : 100 Facts , comments closed Fact 10: I have ADHD.
I have a very very short attention span, and I get bored very easily. My mind wanders at the drop of a hat, and it's hard for me to see thing through to completion. Hence, me already struggling with this meme, and I'm only on fact 10! 
I was diagnosed with ADHD back in mid-1983, and was put on Ritalin. (Back then, I was diagnosed as ADD, but what I have, today, is called ADHD Combined Type.) Yes, I was a Ritalin kid, but that was before it was so commonly over-prescribed like it is now.
I was only on Ritalin for about 9 months, until school ended for the year. My mom, brother, and I were going to England for a month (June 84), and my mom didnt want to mess with the prescription. (If I recall correctly, I would have run out mid-way through the trip, and the pharmacist wouldnt give us an advance on the next refill just because we were going to be out of the country.) I dont remember the reasons, but I went back on Ritalin for another year in 1987. Again, that only lasted the school year.
Like I started to describe at the last paragraph, Im pretty my textbook ADHD. Constantly fidgeting either my legs are bouncing, my feet tapping, hands moving, something. I have to be in constant motion. Im disorganized, cant focus, always restless, rambling, difficulty finishing what I start, and I take on too many projects at once. Im impulsive, hyperactive, …and probably repeating the same things over and over. Chalk that up to my easy distractibility.
I often live in a little fantasy world in my head, because of the ADHD. My mind races through situations, reenacting things, creating ones, jumping from topic to topic and idea to idea. People sometimes have told me I seem standoffish, or like Im on a different planet. (My favorite to visit was always Pluto. Poor little guy.) And my mind already wandered too much to know where I was going with this paragraph. Yes, Im writingthis one kind of the way my mind works, which is jumbled and all over the place. Hah.
When the fear sets in
August 30, 2006 at 11:54 am
Posted by Keiran in : Medical , comments closed MRI is done. Thank god. I almost couldn't do it. That machine is just too damned small. Thankfully I didn't have to go all the way inside of it, but even to about my waist was bad enough. I'm not claustrophobic, per se, but something like that can trigger off the little bit of me that is. It doesn't help any at all that I'm overweight, I know that. That's a big part of why the machine was closing in on me like that.
As soon as I was first put in the MRI machine, I thought to myself "there's no way in hell." But I convinced myself to try. Try to hold out for as long as possible. Even if they were only able to get a few pictures, that would be better than none at all, right? So I closed my eyes tight, balled my hands into fists, and try hard to stay calm and still. I had headphones on, and I did my best to focus on the music, but it was difficult to hear it over the noise of the MRI. I kept making bargains with myself while I was in there: "Get through this song, and then I'll let you press the button and ask to get out." "Okay, you made it through one song. Just one more. You can do it. You can hold out, I know it."
Since the sounds of the MRI itself were louder than the music, I was also trying to pay attention to the placement of the machine. On the set of tests during the 2nd song and commercial break, I knew it had started on my right side, so the bargains I was making were to get me to try to hold out until it got back to about where it started. After what I had guestimated as 10 minutes (but I found out later had actually been 12 minutes - Go me!!), I just couldn't take it any longer — I was starting to have a panic attack and I had to get out of there. I squeezed the button, and when she buzzed I asked to be let out.
Once I was out of the machine and sitting up again, she gave me the info on how far along we were and everything. When I had buzzed to be let out, there had only been 2 seconds more for that set of tests to complete, so she went ahead and left me in there that additional few seconds to finish it before pulling me out. Her reasoning - it was a 3 minute test, and if it wasn't completed, we would have had to start that one over again from the beginning. I didn't notice the delay in getting me out, so I was grateful that she went ahead and finished it; and I was also proud of myself for managing to be almost accurate in guessing when the machine was back to where it started. Haha.
Like I said, I had already been in the machine for 12 minutes. What I had left was 1 test that was 2 minutes long; then I would come out, have contrast injected and go back in for a 5 minute test. I knew if I was able to sit there for a few minutes and could calm down I could probably handle going back in for another 2 minutes, but there was no way I would be able to handle the 5 minute one. The tech was very nice and patient with me, she explained all the tests, and even let me know that the for headaches they don't usually need the tests with the contrast, and if they saw something that made them want the contrast tests, that I could always come back another day and have those done. (And I can have valium next time, if I have to go back for the contrast tests. haha.) So I struck a deal with her, if I could sit and calm down for a few more minutes, I'd go back in for the 2 minute test, and we'd skip the contrast ones. She got me a glass of iced water and sat and chatted with me for roughly about 5 minutes while I got my heart rate back down and was able to get my courage back up to go back inside the machine.
Once I got inside the machine the second time, a new song was starting on the radio. So I was able to tell myself I'd be out of there before the song was over, and I did everything I could to focus on the music. Thankfully the two minutes went by very quickly, and I was out of there before I started to have another panic attack. I'm still having residual mini-attacks, even 2+ hours later. Nothing bad, just my pulse racing, breathing speeding up, and feeling shaky/jittery. I'll settle down for a while, and then one will start back up again. (And of course, writing about it isn't helping with the mini-attacks any. Hah.) After I left the MRI center, I decided to break my diet. I deserved a reward for making it through that, especially since I went back in the machine for a second round after the panic attack. I got a burger on the way in to work. 
But I got a Jr burger, with almost nothing on it, so I tried to be good, while I was allowing myself that reward? Haha. And I'll just adjust the rest of my calories for the day so I don't go over or anything; but I really needed some kind of "comfort food" after that.
Now it's time to pray they find what they need to find on those MRIs, and that I don't have to go back for the contrast ones. Even with 2 valium for only a 5 minute test - I don't wanna do it! Haha.
We are Siamese if you please
August 29, 2006 at 10:33 pm
Posted by Keiran in : 100 Facts, Pets , comments closed I'm a thief, I think we already established that. Okay, I'm only an idea thief, when it comes to facts for this meme. haha.
Fact 9: I'm a cat person.
I LOVE cats. I've had them my entire life. Well, technically, we've always had both cats and dogs, but I like cats more. We had 3 cats when I was a baby and we lived out in the country: Midnight, Rusty, and Tippy. Midnight and Rusty were my babysitters, in a way. At night, the pair of them would sleep at the foot of my crib. If I woke up and started crying in the middle of the night, one of the cats would hop out of the crib and go wake my parents, the other one would move up to me, and gently rub against my cheek to quiet me. The pair of them would also alternate on which one stayed with me, and which one woke mom & dad. Thanks to them, my parents never needed a baby monitor for me. Haha. I don't really remember Midnight and Rusty more than from stories like that and from pictures. I don't know when they left our family. I do know that my parents had bought Rusty while they were living in England, and she got her name because when she meowed, it sounded like a rusty hinge opening or closing.
Tippy was about 9 months older than I was, and we got her from my uncle Bruce. She was a Siamese mix, and an absolutely beautiful cat. I grew up with her as my buddy, the one friend I could count on when everyone else let me down. She was always willing to let me curl up with her (as long as she was petted, of course) and a very loving cat. She was picky about who she liked though. I can recall her attacking my grandma on a couple of occasions when she visited. Tippy lived to be 19 years old, which meant I was 18 at the time. I literally couldn't remember not having her in my life. She was having seizures and some of her organs began shutting down, so we had to have her put to sleep. She'd been with us for so long, she was every bit as much a part of the family as if she'd been human. Both of my parents even had to take a day off work from grief. After she'd been put down, we drove out to my uncle Bruce's property, and buried her at the edge of the woods. (Nov, 1973 - Jan, 1993)
In the summer of 1991, a stray cat showed up on our doorstep. Of course my mom tried to dissuade me from getting attached, but that wasn't going to happen. We had tried to have other cats before, but Tippy always refused to accept others in the house. I left food and water for her on the front porch, and we put up flyers while we tried to find her owners. (I was always taking in strays.) No one ever answered the ads, which was a shame since she was a gorgeous tortoiseshell cat. I was about to have to get a job for the school work program, so it was agreed that if I helped pay for her food and litter, we could keep her, and about a month after she first showed up she was part of our family. Vet visits approximated her at a year old when we adopted her. We named her Dewey — I can't remember the reason now, but I think it was after some actor or singer I liked at the time. Somehow, Dewey managed to win Tippy over, and the two cats actually became buddies. Dewey claimed me as "her" human though, following me around all over the house. When I would get home from work, Dewey would be waiting on the stairs to give me a "kiss" on the cheek, before following me everywhere again. If she did choose to explore other parts of the house, I only had to whistle, and she would come running and jump into my lap to give me more kisses.
When we'd had her about 4 years, she had a MASSIVE hairball that severely blocked her intestines. She wasn't able to eat or drink, and she was becoming severely dehydrated. I was out of town when it initially happened, and I was the one to discover the problem when I returned by realizing she had dropped several pounds in my absence. That lead to vet visits where they would inject saline under her skin to keep her hydrated. I was the only one in the family she would allow to force feed her. Finally, after a few more weeks, the hairball disintegrated and she began eating on her own again and got back to a healthy weight. What we didn't know at the time, though, was that the ordeal had likely done some damage to her kidneys.
Mid-May of 1999, I noticed that within a matter of a week or two, she had suddenly dropped a considerable amount of weight again, and her fur was losing its luster. A trip to the vet revealed she was in severe renal failure. Her prognosis wasn't favorable, even with the most aggressive of treatments. Those treatments we were looking at were regular dialysis and/or a kidney transplant. In her stage of renal failure, the dialysis wouldn't have helped enough, and the transplant was way too expensive; not to mention it wasn't even guaranteed it would be able to save her. If was one hell of a difficult week, coming to the decision that the most humane thing to do was to have her put down. We also took her out to my uncle Bruce's property, burying her next to Tippy. (?, 1990 - May 28, 1999
The oldest of our current cats is Windy. Everyone always thinks there's some sweet story behind the name Windy, but it's actually the contrary. All new cats, when they come into the house, start off in my room since it was the easiest to close them off from the other cats as they got used to each other. When she was a kitten, she was a very gassy thing, and would sleep on my bed, farting all night. And that is how the little ball of white fluff became known as Windy. We adopted her in 1993, after Tippy passed away. We don't really know what breed she is, other than "domestic medium hair".
Number two in the cat family is Gypsy. We adopted her May 2, 1999, about 2 weeks before Dewey began displaying symptoms of being ill. When we adopted her, she looked considerably more like a seal point Siamese, which it's possible she might have some in her blood. Over time she changed colors and now her Tonkinese heritage is more obvious in the shape of her head and body. She is a fat cat - weighing in at 20 lbs. She and our dog Maverick are best buddies, he acts likes a surrogate mom to her, helping her groom, snuggling with her, etc. They're really quite cute together.
The baby of the family is my little baby, Mali. We've guesstimated her birthday as April 1, 2000. She is a tortie point Siamese mix, and an absolute little devil. I think it must be something about the tortie markings, but in attitude, there's something about Mali that reminds me so much of Dewey. She even comes, most of the time, when I whistle for her. haha. She's very skittish and nervous, doesn't like strangers at all, and doesn't like it when I go away for more than part of a day. If she sees the suitcase, she tries to hide inside of it, or makes packing as difficult as possible. She's fiercely loyal to me though. She'll let me medicate her, then stay snuggled up next to me. Anyone else tries, and she takes off and hides, since they're the enemy. She follows me around all over the house, and will often curl up on my chest while I'm leaning back in my computer chair. She used to have her own pillow in the corner of my PC desk to sleep on, until she decided she didn't want it anymore.
The odd thing, though, as much as Mali dislikes people - she seems to be okay with the vet. She will yowl her head off the second she's put in her crate, but once we arrive at the vet's office she quiets down. She will stay still and let the vet and vet tech pet her and touch her without trying to hide. She'll even go quietly back into the crate. But once we leave the office and get outside, the yowling starts up again. I don't think I'm going to understand that one.
Mali is the cat I've mentioned before when talking about vet visits. She potentially has psychogenic neurodermatitis, which doesn't seem to be getting any better after 15 days of meds. Unfortunately for her (and my wallet), this might mean more tests, and now we're getting into ones that could hurt some, like skin scrapings and samples, etc. My poor girl.