Day late, Dollars short

So here’s my March to date:

Work. Ambivalence, thy name is employment. I hesitate to complain, because I’m grateful this place hired me, I’m grateful that I’ve got some sort of income, I’m grateful that my social horizons now extend beyond a husband and a handful of cats. But I look at life as I know it know and extrapolate the likely path of the next decade and I feel screwed. My supervisor fails to provide a schedule further in advance than a week (today is Thursday and I still don’t know when I’m working next week). My co-workers see me as the go-to person when they need to switch shifts, which is becoming a weekly thing, so I can’t even count on the schedule remaining hard and fast even after it is produced. The Prof chides me because I don’t have to switch shifts when asked, but my plans usually pale in the face of other people’s college exams or doctor’s appointments. In fact, this week I traded two shifts and worked six extra hours to cover for others, and still got two other requests to fill in that I had to turn down because our supervisor will not allow any overtime (I’m at 38 hours this week at this point). I keep telling myself that I’m building credit for when I need someone to switch with me, but we’ll see how that plays out when the time comes.

I’ve kept in touch with a woman who was hired the week after I was, and then quit after three weeks because of the stress and frustration. She and I have a lot in common – same age group, same undergraduate school, both having a hard time finding full time work even though we have advanced professional degrees (she’s got a masters in microbiology and lab sciences). We got together for breakfast yesterday at a local bakery/cafe I like to frequent, and we ended up comparing horror stories about trying to get hired (she’s re-entering the work force after raising two children, one of whom is autistic). During the course of the conversation we were discussing our mutual disgust with my current employer, and she made the comment that they expected us to do this stressful, complex job for only $13/hr. It was a kick in the gut – I’m only making $12/hr. There are days I really want to quit too, but so far I’ve always talked sense into myself before doing something stupid.

Still, the plan is to stick it out there for a full two years, hopefully advancing to full-time at some point along the way. After two years I’ll have established that I’m still capable of holding down a job for a prolonged period of time and that should help me move on, if I still need to at that point. Of course, all bets are off if a worthy chance of employment should pop up in the meantime, but considering that didn’t happen in the past two years I ain’t holding my breath now. Which doesn’t mean I’m not looking; it just means that I no longer approach the job classifieds with an air of breathless anticipation.

Cats. I’m up to five cats at the moment – the three family members plus two fosters. One foster had been adopted from the rescue group I work with years ago; her elderly owner had a stroke and is unable to care for her any more (although she still occasionally asks for updates on how her cat is doing). The cat was diagnosed as diabetic at about the same time her owner had a stroke, which is why she’s at my place. A week ago I was asked if I could take in a second foster – a cat who was surrendered to our rescue along with it’s house mate. It’s housemate was a nice, healthy cat, but this guy (who I will christen as “Tanker” for purposes of the diary) weighs in at 23lbs 15ozs. And no, the preceding “2” is not a typo. The damned thing weighs more than any two other cats in the house combined. Tanker has been turned over to me for “Biggest Loser” treatment. Tanker is an absolutely wonderful cat (other than the weight issue), who adores being groomed and still lap-sits even though it cuts the circulation off in my legs. I suspect he likes being combed so much because he can’t really reach around to groom himself, although his coat is still in fine condition. Because of his “food issues”, the diabetic foster is now an “upstairs” cat, and has integrated nicely with the rest of the pride.

Cat life has been further complicated by the recent diagnosis of yet another diabetic cat in the herd. LBlS has been slowly losing weight over the past six weeks or so. She started hanging out at the water bowl, and began refusing her food. I now have three cats to do blood testing and injections for twice a day. Two cats need pills/meds twice a day. Five cats, four separate diets. And don’t even get me started about doing glucose curves. LBlS is the Prof’s cat, and he’s been more than willing to start assuming some of the diabetic care, especially for his cat, which will help. I’m still feeling overwhelmed though. I love the cats, and I really don’t mind doing whatever it is they require to live long, healthy lives, but I never anticipated all this.

The whole cat medication/injection schedule is continually thrown off by my work schedule. While most of my shifts are 3:30 – midnight, every week includes several shifts that start at 10:00am or even 7:00am (sometimes the 7:00am comes immediately after a midnight shift). Insulin shots must be given as close to 12 hours apart as possible, which is not a possibility several times a week. At least once a week I need to completely skip an injection because I won’t be home anywhere near the time I need to be to give the shot. The cats health and my mental well-being are both suffering from this.

Because this cake needs icing, LBlS’s bloodwork from her initial diabetes appointment came back yesterday with normal results except an elevated calcium level. While it may mean nothing, it can also be something called “paraneoplastic syndrome”. Yes, as in that “neoplastic”. It’s too early to tell for sure, and it may just be a single test aberration, but the spector of that is going haunt us for a few weeks until we can repeat bloodwork.

History. And speaking of spectors, let us not forget that yesterday was March 21st. This was the fifteenth anniversary of my more-than-a-brush with death when I collapsed in vet school from idiopathic viral cardiomyopathy. No point in linking back to my first entry on that ten years ago, like I’ve done for the last eight years. It’s like beating a dead horse, except it doesn’t eventualy decompose into fertilizer. I’ve gotten to the point where I mostly just wonder where my life would have gone had that not happened. Would I have gotten a more conventional veterinary job and still been employed as a vet? Would I have developed Budd-Chiarri and required a liver transplant? Would I have ever gotten any pets (my husband at the time was dead set against any animals in the house). Would I have even met The Prof? Good things/bad things. I don’t wish away the good things, but I’d sure as hell trade the bad things off in a second. Pity the two can’t be separated.

The day I collapsed at school was a Friday. My first husband and I were still married, and he was going to meet me in the Big Shitty after I was done school to celebrate his birthday. I’d gotten dressed up for the occasion, and wore a one-piece pants suit (tan slacks with white shirt, with matching studded vest) to school rather than my regular jeans and t-shirt. It was the only time I got to wear the outfit; they cut it off of me at the hospital, and the only thing left intact was the studded vest, which didn’t match a single other thing I owned. Funny, I hadn’t thought about that for years till it popped unbidden into my head yesterday.

I still keep in occasional touch with the ex, usually exchanging Christmas and birthday greetings. I shot off a quick email to him yesterday with birthday wishes, briefly catching him up on the things I wanted him to know (working for a medium sized pharmacy, doing well health wise) while by-passing the rest (working part-time for $12/hr and not using the damned vet license). He wrote back to catch me up with his life, and told me about a break-in that happened at the old homestead where I used to live and where he still lives. Apparently Christmas week (a week he is traditionally away visiting friends in North Carolina), the front door was kicked in and the house ransacked. The thieves took nearly everything of value. They left checks, computer stuff, other financial things, but took just about everything else including the silverplate we’d been given as a wedding present, his great-grandfather’s Franco-Prussian war medals, my father’s antique camera collection that was given to my ex, my grandfather’s engineering tool box (also given to the ex), and the ex’s passport, among other things. Apparently the local Staties busted a couple of guys nearby a week or so ago who had the same MO and a huge stash of stuff at their place; the ex is hoping that he may be able to find and claim some of what was lost. Knowing about the incident makes me wistful; while I have no one to leave this stuff to and didn’t mind the ex having it, it bothers me that these could end up in the hands of someone who doesn’t know their history. It isn’t the items that are of value to me, just their story, which now may be lost forever. The story chain always breaks eventually, but it’s still sad to see it happen.