Cat Scratch Fever

$744.12

That's how much my cancer kitty cost me today. Sheesh. And she didn't even have chemo.

China hasn't been eating right since she stopped Sucralfate two weeks ago, which she was taking to coat her esophagus three times a day after taking Vibramycin twice a day and possibly getting some erosion of the esophagus or ulcers somewhere else in her digestive system. She seems to be hungry but she eats a few bites of food and then seems to find it hard to get down, and she has started up her habit of carrying food around in her mouth and dropping it places she likes to sleep (like, my bed.)

So, I called the oncologist hoping to be able to renew her Sucralfate prescription over the phone, but was instead referred to internal medicine to make an appointment to bring her in ASAP. Drat! I knew that would probably mean some expensive tests, but I was HOPING that maybe I'd get out of there for $200 or something.

Nope, $744.12.

One cool thing today, the doctor came in with China's file...the thing is the size of a big hardcover dictionary! It sounded like this woman had never seen a file so large for a cat. Heck, I have my own file on China and it's not THAT big. She was like "well, I started looking over China's file but there's too much information for me to go over everything." Haha yeah...considering she'd probably charge me for her time if she did. The consultation was $120...imagine if she'd had to read a whole dictionary of info first?

Anyway, they suspect that China may have Bartonella henselae, a bacteria that isn't usually tested for because it doesn't seem to affect cats in any way, it only means that they could perhaps give a human Cat Scratch Fever if they scratch you or lick an open sore you have or something and THAT isn't even very risky unless you have an auto-immune disease like HIV/Aids. So, it's not that likely and the test is expensive , and cats don't usually seem to be affected by having it, therefore it isn't usually tested for. However, more recently it has been found that cats CAN be negatively affected by Bartonella henselae if they have some sort of thing wrong with them like oh...say....cancer????!!! And if maybe they are taking oh...chemo drugs and different antibiotics and steroids that may weaken their immune system? Gee...I wonder what very expensive cancer kitty that sounds like...

And I also wonder...I get scratched by China when trying to give her medication ALL THE TIME. Could I have Cat Scratch Fever????

TED NUGENT - Cat Scratch Fever , 1978

Ermmm...does Ted Nugent have a TAIL????

I'm all a-twitter part two

Last time I posted was about how I signed up for twitter to better keep people abreast of when I have ThereBucks in stock. I also sent emails out to all my tbux club members and past purchasers of ThereBucks that contained specific instructions on how to use twitter for ThereBucks updates, but for those who may not have received the email...for instance for future members/purchasers, as well as for those with over-enthusiastic spam filters or WhereMail problems, here are the instructions again...
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Tired of spending your time searching for discounted ThereBucks? Just want to know when they are in stock without wasting your time? Sign up for twitter.com (if you don't already have an account) and then add "therebucks" (that's me!) as someone you are "following". http://twitter.com/therebucks

In case you are unfamiliar with how twitter works, I'll explain it a little along with giving you instructions for getting alerts as to when I'm selling via your favorite IM client OR via your cellphone!

Once you are signed up for twitter and you are following "therebucks", you should go into your account settings, click on "devices" and from there you can set up your IM and/or your Cell phone to receive alerts (and you can set a few more options like to not send you alerts in the middle of the night, etc). Once you've done that and confimed it with twitter, you still aren't going to get any mobile alerts until you go to the page of someone you are following (http://twitter.com/therebucks) and click on "device updates off" to turn device updates "on".

Once you've set it to start getting alerts on the IM client or cellular phone of your choice, you can always go to http://twitter.com/therebucks to stop receiving the alerts (like maybe you don't want to know several times a day that ThereBucks are in stock once you've purchased a pile of them) and if you are getting alerts via text message you can just text twitter the message "off" and you will stop getting them. Then, once you've spent all your ThereBucks, you can text "on" and you will get the alerts again. Pretty cool, huh?

I just figured no-one wants to waste a bunch of time trying to find discounted ThereBucks in stock if they don't have to. Why not let twitter do the work for you? Plus sometimes someone visits http://jinx.tv and if I'm not selling seems to get the idea that I just simply don't sell ThereBucks any more when ACTUALLY I tend to get ThereBucks in stock several times a day, and now I can prove it! If you have any questions or problems, please let me know. I'm pretty new to twitter myself, but I will certainly try to help.

I'm all a-twitter

I've known about twitter.com for a while but couldn't really think of a good reason to use it until now.

Then, after using twitter to track when Wiis are in stock at various Internet stores I thought "EUREKA! I can use twitter to help people find out when ThereBucks are in stock!"

This isn't something I've been too concerned about for a while, I have had Therebucks in stock since December...haven't sold out once during that time and even carried a tbux balance as high as 12 million. Now that's all changed, the economy has evened out and even though I am buying/selling more Therebucks than ever, the demand is back to its normal state of being greater than the supply.

So, if you're looking for discounted ThereBucks on my site, http://jinx.tv, and I seem to be sold out all the time, try following me on Twitter...get alerts via cellular text, IM or email about when I am in stock and be the first one there to snag 'em!

http://twitter.com/therebucks

The China Study

I've been listening to a lot of podcasts from Compassionate Cooks lately, and I must say that it's really made me stare my own vegetarianism in the face. I've been a vegetarian for about 20 years, and the main reason is because I don't want animals to suffer because of me and I don't want to eat them. Still, I buy leather shoes, I eat eggs and dairy (and you know by eating dairy products you are supporting the veal industry, right?) and I haven't given much thought for quite a while to the fact that worcestershire sauce and ceasar dressing contain anchovies and have just in general been very lax in paying attention to whether what I am doing is causing animal suffering or not.

The truth is, it's pretty hard to be vegan. It's an inconvenience to those around you in this meat-obsessed culture we live in, people tend to regard you with suspicion or perhaps fear you're going to judge them or maybe that you belong to some weird cult or something. Also, while it's somewhat challenging to find something to eat at some restaurants as a vegetarian, it's ever-so-much-more challenging as a vegan.

My boyfriend has known from the time he met me that I was vegetarian, and he's always been very supportive about it. We go to restaurants and I order something vegetarian and he...sometimes orders vegetarian as well, but he sometimes orders the lamb or the duck or some seafood. He made me feel so comfortable that, along with a little reading of Michael Pollan his proposal to fly a friend of his in from Texas to cook us some barbeque (made from whatever meat I liked, raised in any way that appealed to me...grass-fed, humanely slaughtered, organic, etc) if I would actually eat some of it sounded appealing to me for a while and I was incredibly close to saying "yes, let's do it."

Or at least I was incredibly close except for these podcasts I had somewhat randomly subscribed to on iTunes. Once I subscribed, I ended up with quite a few of them on my iPod and when I'd set it to shuffle it seems like they came up a rather disproportionate amount of the time in relation to the amount of content actually on this device.

Colleen from Compassionate Cooks talks about every reason under the sun to become vegan. Really, she has a reason for everyone, ranging from compassion (of course) to world hunger to health. She also teaches cooking classes right in the Bay Area, and has a vegan baking book and a vegan cooking dvd. The first time I said the word "vegan" to my bf, he visibly flinched, but he has enjoyed other cooking classes we have taken so much that when I mentioned these classes he said "I'd love to!" I also got him a copy of her baking book and he said he'd love to make us some of the recipes.

Still, for all his enthusiasm for baking, whether vegan or not, my bf seemed terrified that I might stop eating cheese.

Noooooo...not...cheeeeese!!!!!!

When he found out that I was eating vegan when I was cooking for myself at home, and realized that everything I had been making for him to take to work for his lunch was vegan as well, he was rather unsettled, but somewhat reassured that I WAS still eating cheese and butter and eggs in other situations. However, when I refused to order anything with dairy or eggs in a local restaurant and then burst out crying when he said he was going to be barbecuing not just beef but also pig and lamb at his daughter's birthday party, it looked like we might be headed for a major conflict.

Now, I don't know what was going through his head at that time, but I do know what was going through mine. I was wondering if there was some way to convince my bf that a vegan diet was a GOOD thing. I knew he wasn't going to switch the way he ate because some animals were suffering. He might be persuaded to seek out more humane sources, and he might be persuaded to eat less meat, but compassion wasn't going to be enough. Now, health on the other hand...I knew he cared about health. I knew he worried about one day getting heart disease or kidney disease and I knew (know) that he cares a lot about his health and that of his loved ones. I took a stab at throwing some facts his way...like, today's factory farmed chickens contain more fat than they do protein, stuff like that. It was too random, though.


professor T. Colin Campbell (author of "The China Study") discusses his decades of NIH-funded research which show that meat and dairy promote cancer growth and a plant-based (vegan) diet can prevent and even reverse cancer.

Finally, I found my perfect weapon. The China Study. This book explains in a clear and very detailed and carefully researched way exactly why you should remove animal protein and fat from your diet. How animal fat and protein CAUSE cancer, heart disease, diabetes and a lot of other diseases known to afflict mostly those in affluent nations. It's a scary book and a very eye opening book, and it's very persuasive, too. After relaying the facts presented in the book to my boyfriend, miracle of miracles he has gone from flinching at the very word "vegan" to agreeing to try and become a vegan! Really I don't know how anyone could read the facts presented in this book and NOT become vegan. I wish they would...if more people were vegan not only would national health care costs go way down but it would make it a lot easier to find a great restaurant to eat delicious vegan food at.

Of course after agreeing to become vegan and then telling some of his customers and business associates about it, he went out to dinner with them and had a steak.

Baby steps...

Life behind bars