Pete is fine. Last week, we were not sure that was going to be the case.
So, to recap a little -- last Monday morning, we were convinced that his trip to the vet, as he could barely move and was so weak and sick -- would be his last one. To be fair, he is turning 18 this month and he has been in slow kidney failure for the past few years.
I've said here before that our vet is the best vet I've ever known; he knows we are very good pet parents (and told us so) and he knows Pete well at this point. He also knows Pete's history and his medical needs, and agreed with the VCA that it was very likely he had some sort of stomach bug, noted that the antibiotics were perfectly fine for us to give him, and told us that he'd run bloodwork. In the interim he prescribed an appetite stimulant gel that we would rub on the inside of Pete's ear once a day, and gave us a couple of days' worth of anti-nausea pills for the poor old man too.
Pete was really not doing well. He was very lethargic and still refusing food. He'd drink water, and a lot of it, if we brought it to him on the couch. He would then get up a bit later and go to pee it out in the pan before returning to his exact spot on the couch. His pee seemed normal. At night, when we both went to bed, he became very clingy with us -- me especially -- and would climb up onto my shoulder/chest as if to hold onto me for dear life. It was a waiting game more than anything else. The bloodwork would tell us what we needed to know.
Early the next morning the vet called us with the results of the bloodwork, and we braced for the worst. The bloodwork confirmed our vet's thoughts -- this was not his kidneys finally shutting down, but a stomach bug. His kidney numbers actually looked better than they looked the last time we'd had him in. However, his thyroid numbers were off the charts high, which was probably contributing to how badly he felt and how actually sick/nauseous he was. We'd stopped all of Pete's medications when he began vomiting and having diarrhea because he couldn't keep his pills, or any food/water, down anyway. Based on the bloodwork it was now fine to restart them as per the usual, and keep monitoring him here at home. We were told to keep an eye on him as it may take him a few days to have a bowel movement because of the nausea medication, but the antibiotic should work to clear out his stomach bug, the probiotic powder that VCA gave us (and which we ordered more of off Amazon) would help him feel better too, and the appetite stimulant gel should get him eating again -- basically, unless he got worse or didn't get better at all, he'd be fine. The vet also said we should bring him in again in about a month, just to recheck the thyroid levels to see if they were looking more normal after he got the medicine back in his system again to see if we needed to adjust dosages or what have you.
Remarkably, and rapidly, he did get better. The appetite stimulant gel turned Pete into what I call a food vacuum -- he became aggressively hungry and ate almost everything he could. Treats, dry food, wet food that normally he would turn his nose up at, Churus, you name it. He would climb up on us while we were eating dinner and try to eat food out of our mouths. He was still a bit weak throughout the week though, and it was clear his muscles and joints were hurting him. This also seemed to fade as we entered the weekend.
For all intents and purposes now, Pete is back to normal. He's eating normally, if not a bit more than he used to, he's drinking water, he's using the pans per the usual, and once again seems like the same Pete we've always known and loved. He spends his days with me, while I'm working downstairs at my new job, on the couch next to me -- just like he did most of the time when I worked overnights. At night, he comes up to bed with us, waits for us, and snuggles in between us or on me as is his custom. Usually Charlie or Mable join him/us as well. To those ends, Daisy and I have been doing everything we can to give him some extra love and make sure he's well-fed and comfortable, and we're thankful this latest crisis now appears to be over for the time being.
So, there's that.
The new job is at times challenging and frustrating. I have, essentially, started over at a new company as a new employee, but I have not done so alone. Multiple colleagues and peers from my old company have done the same with this new employer, and more are coming over between now and...well, basically June. The logistics of this, and the reasoning behind it, I still have to keep you all in the dark here on for at least a little while longer. Suffice it to say that myself and my colleagues are all still cogs in the telecom machine, and that machine is a very large entity with many moving parts. Some parts move slower than others.
I have adjusted now to a life of setting my alarm clock (eew, yes, I know) for 6am -- well before Daisy gets up -- making myself feel somewhat awake, logging onto my work-issued laptop sometime in the 7am hour, and then getting off work sometime between 4 and 5 every day. In the meantime, I have a lunch hour somewhere in there that is an actual lunch hour, I get to see sunlight and daylight again, and in this long transition period I spend my day on group video calls, doing trainings, and generally having a much more relaxed working experience than I ever had on overnights.
Am I eventually going to return to overnights? Likely, but at this point...I don't know. We have to let a lot of dust settle first. I was brought on when I was due to my longevity, expertise in the job, and my overall reliability. I am, as my executive director has told me many times over the years, "abundantly competent" at my job. I have that reputation with multiple client executives as well, and I must do what I can to keep that reputation.
But, I mean, there are pain points in all of this too -- the onboarding process for this new job was positively asinine and incredibly personally intrusive, and even though I've been working there for almost a month (yesterday started my fourth week) it is still not completely done. My W4, for example, is broken and I can't update it in their systems (there's a helpdesk ticket open for this, of course). Our client phone systems don't work for most of us yet. I just got access to client tools four days ago. I was finally able to sign up for health insurance last week, and last I checked, my 401k was still glitching when I accessed the site. Etc. It's a long process. Myself and two other managers were brought over early to become the "test bed" for these systems in order to streamline the process for all other new hires, and while our experiences do tend to help with that, it does mean that we'll experience more pain points than most as we try to get our feet on the ground.
I will say though -- it is not bad at all. I am still working with people I've known for a decade. It's a completely different environment, yes, but essentially it's the same people in the same baseline job -- again, I'll be able to elaborate more on this as time goes by. And, in case I didn't mention it (even if I did, I'm going to say it again), I got a 20% raise. The insurance benefits are great and are inexpensive. And I still don't have to go to an office -- my cats surround me every day while I work, and I can dick around on my phone or listen to a podcast in-between tasks.
I don't know if I mentioned it here before, but Daisy and I are also working to better ourselves outside of any work environment too -- she and I have become volunteers at the Humane Society here in town. We went through orientation two weeks ago, received our badges and shirts, and we start our first official shifts on Saturday morning -- doing laundry for the shelter.
Now, mind you, Daisy doesn't always want to be the laundryperson for the shelter; she's more adventurous than I am and eventually wants to be one of the kitten feeders, cat welfare assistants, etc. -- but, honestly I don't mind it. My time is very valuable and important to me, but with volunteering I know that every little bit helps. And that's all I want to do -- I want to help, I want to give back. Not everything is glamorous. I'll do laundry for the shelter, I'll organize the food stores and donations, I'll do paperwork or clean litter pans or run the front desk or run the cash register in the pet supply store onsite -- I absolutely don't care for the most part. I just want to help. I want to give back to this wonderful shelter who, in the past two years, has provided us with four cats to love -- four cats who have brought so much happiness and love into our home.
So, as laundry shifts are what's available at the moment...laundry it is.
Not too much different than any other Saturday for me, I guess -- the bulk of my weekends are spent doing our own laundry for free, might as well do it while wearing a uniform and help out some animals at the same time.
Being a volunteer gives special access and a few perks/privileges that kick in after awhile. For one, as volunteers we get first pick of the new animals that come in, so if our dream cat does eventually come along, we can attempt to snag it first before it hits the general public. For two, Daisy's job will give the charity of her choice something like $500 a year once she completes so many hours of volunteer work there (and it's a ridiculously low number too, something like eight hours). Plus I guess we get discounts in the on-site store, after a predetermined number of hours (I think 100) we can get $100 off an adoption fee, etc. Just stuff like that. Obviously that's not why we're doing it, of course, but still. I plan to ignore most of the perks until there's something we can actively use, because I just want to help the animals and give something back to the community.
On the wall outside the small volunteers' office, there's a plaque with a long list of brass engraved plates with names and years for "volunteer of the year." Sometimes it's a single person, sometimes it's a couple, and at least one year it was "all volunteers." I told Daisy that there's a primal need in me to have my name on that plaque. She can have whatever goals she wants in volunteering there when it comes to helping out the animals, and I have those goals too, but overall, that's mine -- I just desperately want someone to care and to recognize that yes, I am doing something good. Nobody has to know who I am. I can just be another face in the crowd, but I can't tell you how much I want my name on that plaque.
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