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Colette's Diary

One Year and Counting!

It's a red-letter date. It's just about this time last year when I was diagnosed with my breast cancer.

I had my lumpectomy on December 22nd or 23rd, so right now, a year ago, I was waiting to be scheduled for surgery.

Then I started my chemo treatments the first week of January. My last treatment was in June.

By early August, they found a small nodule along my original scar line--so I had my radical resection surgery in mid-August.

And you know what? I'm still here! And I'm doing well! Mom just made an appointment for my one-year follow up with Doc Josh. We go to see him on December 18th.

I'm now officially a one-year cancer survivor. Yippeee!

Mom would toast me with champagne, but I don't think either of us would feel very good afterwards. She says I can have another duck and goose patty, and she'll stick to her coffee. Giggles.

Happy Thanksgiving Effurybody!

We hope everyfur and their pawrents had a really nice holiday.

It was quiet around here—well sort of. Mom sort of took a break from the ‘puter today. She spent less than an hour on it this morning. Us ‘girls’, Samsara and I, could see she was really tired and she had another migraine, but she was trying to rush around anyway. That’s ‘cause she still needed to make a pie to bring to our Auntie Joany for Thanksgiving dinner. She was way too tired by the end of the day so she didn’t get to make it yesterday.

We pretty much stayed out of her hair this morning and then she left us alone all evening. When she came back she plopped a shopping bag on the floor and darned if it didn’t have a box in it that smelled like the most delicious ‘burd’ we ever smelled! No sooner did we get into the bag than SHE TOOK THE BOX AWAY! :(

Oh well…. I’m not sure what Samsara got for supper, but Mom made it up to me. I’ve been liking my kibble less and less lately. Mom says I have to eat something and she finally found something that she thinks I can tolerate. She’s been crumbling a little of the Stella & Chewy’s ‘Duck Duck Goose’ doggy raw patties over my kibble. I love it! Don’t tell anybody. Our vet would not be happy with Mom if she found out.

My IBD has been a lot better ever since I started my chemo treatments. Mom decided she preferred to err on the side of getting me to eat. In other words, she found two new ‘novel protein’ sources my body hasn’t rejected—duck and goose—the food I’ve been getting is based on pork. I’ve been eating my food mixed with the doggy patties for over a week now and they haven’t upset my system. The problem we had with the kitty foods was probably because they have trace amounts of fish oil in them. The doggy patties don’t have that ingredient. Yayyyyy!

We’re still not quite back on Catster. Would you believe it? After all the help that Samsara and I have been giving Mom you would think….

I even keep trying to distract her every night by sinking my claws into her calf while she’s working at the computer. (That’s a good way to get attention. You just keep it up until they get the hint and pick you up and put you in their lap. Make sure they can only type with one hand. If that doesn’t work, headbonk the notebook across the table.)

We know, we still haven’t answered your p-mails or thanked for gifts. We weren’t around for Misha’s Bridge Day last week. Mom was thinking about him a lot. She remembered all the funny stuff he did and thought a lot about what a great cat he was. She says she misses him and his mischief terribly. If he had lived this long he would have been 22 years old.

Anyway, we have an important announcement to make. It will still take us a few weeks before Mom has completed everything she needs to do, but the most important stuff is done. We can’t advertise here in the Catster diaries, so we’re going to have to keep this to a minimum. Mom sent out her pawtography business launch announcement to over 150 e-mail addresses early yesterday afternoon and posted one to FaceBook as well. WE ARE OPEN FOR BUSINESS! We’re called ‘Friends FurrEver, Pet Portrait Photography’ and we have our own web site now!

We posted a few of the photos of me here on Catster, but there are lots more on our web site. Mom didn’t have the time to change Samsara’s photos on Catster, but there are lots and lots new photos of her too. I have to admit, she looks like a real beauty.

There are also tons of photos of all the doggies Mom has been photographing since early spring, including doggy lady’s doggy, Misty. (You know something? Samsara hasn’t been smacking her lately!) Anyway, there are also photos of some of the pet pawrents, and ones from Mom’s travels, and stuff she’s photographed in and around New York.

We just thought of something funny—if we have a pawtography business and Mom has been taking pictures of doggies, does that mean she’s been pawtographing them?

Come see us, and if you have a FaceBook account, please be sure to ‘Like’ us.

Friends FurrEver Pet Portrait Photography


Okay, back to putting holes in Mom’s leg. She’s been working entirely too hard.

Headbonks….

COTD!

Sniffs around.

Gee, I think I’ve been here before.

It smells familiar…..

Woo hoo! It’s Catster, it’s Catster, it’s Catster! Yaaaaay!

And, and they made me COTD yesterday. Yaaaaay. That’s why Mom said we could come back for a little while.

I’ve missed effurybody. And effurybody, thank you for the prezzies. You know, I’ve really missed effurybody!

It’s been too lonely here with just Mom and Samsara, and with Mom with her camera in my face all the time.

It’s going to be a little bit longer before we can stay back. Yeah, we got mad at HQ but we didn’t mean to be gone altogether. It just happened that way.

Mom has been trying to put together her pawtography business. You might remember that she got a new camera back in May. In the meantime she also got new editing software and a new lens, and she’s been working in overdrive trying to learn how to work with all the new stuff. And she was out and about for much of the summer taking pictures of (gasp) doggies! to add to a pawtfolio. She says what a journey it’s been for her. And she still thinks she’s got an awfully long way to go.

Our web site is just about done. It took about 2 months for Mom to build it herself and put up all the pictures. And now, since we have new ones we want to switch out some of them. Then we’re going to buy our domain name. Once that’s done, we’re going to announce it and give effurybody our web address so you can come visit us. Mom thinks it’ll be one more week before we’re open for business.

Okay, so what about me and Samsara? We’re both doing well.

Some of you who’ve been on FaceBook know about my operation over the summer. I finished my chemo treatments in June and we thought I’d graduated with flying colors. Then, in August, Doc Josh found a small nodule growing along the scar line of the lumpectomy I had last December.

That’s when he ordered something called a radical resection. (I didn’t know that I could be resectioned, but that’s what happened to me.) Seriously, what that means is I had an operation to remove all of my mammary ducts just in case there was some of that nasty cancer hiding out there. I had the operation in mid-August. They sliced me open all the way from my arm pit down to my leg pit. I had to stay in the hospital for 2 nights. Then, at the end of it, they lost my sections somewhere on the way to a biopsy. (Seriously.) Well, knowing would have been lagniappe anyway. It’s not like there would be anything more they could do for me if it turned out that the tissue was malignant. Mom says sometimes ignorance is truly bliss.

I was really doped up at the hospital, but not doped up enough not to know that I hated it. Stacy Ann, my vet tech, even told Mom how unhappy I was. OMC, I wouldn’t let anybody go near me. I was growling and hissing. They didn’t want to upset me any further so they didn’t try to clean up the drool from the pain killer they gave me. But the vet watching over us intensive care patients started laughing when Mom came to visit. I quieted right down and started purring for Mom.

Mom says she got back one grungy kitty when she took me home. (Tee hee—this time she couldn’t give me a bath because of the wound from the operation. She tried pet wiping me down. It took the next two to three weeks till I stopped smelling like the nasty pain killer and till she had all the mats either cut or brushed out of my coat.)

Then, the next couple of days were kind of touch-and-go. Who knows what happened. Mom took me back to the ER ‘cause I was running a really high fever. Well, by the time we got there, Mom was standing there with the (human’s) oral thermometer she slipped under my arm pit, trying to prove I even had the fever. (Another caveat—they cracked up when they saw the thermometer. It’s one of those old glass contraptions that work on how much the mercury inside expands.)

Anyway, I went back for my one-month follow-up and Doc Josh said I looked great! (But of course I do. I’m Colette, right?)

Now we’ve got another thing going on: my kibble. We think Hills must have changed the formula for the w/d. It spoils too quickly and it just doesn’t taste good. Mom’s pulling her hair out ‘cause neither Samsara nor I want to eat it. She’s been doctoring it up so it tastes better. Mom called our regular vet to talk about that. Mom says that we kitties are putting her in the position of having to choose between keeping us eating by giving us the wrong things or having us starve ourselves ‘cause we won’t eat the right things. I heard Mom say that she’s choosing in favor of us eating. Giggles.

Okay, so what else? We weren’t around for my Birthday or my Gotcha Day, and some of the paw’s Moms and Dads reminded Mom about both, but that didn’t stop Mom from realizing just how far I’ve come in 4 years.

I have a couple of confessions to make. Actually, they’re not confessions ‘cause I’m liking these things too much to be embarrassed about them. I love my brushies. Mom walks into the bathroom effury morning and so do I. I’m there, front and center, trying to get her to notice me and hoping she’ll remember my brushies. Wow—why did I ever hate them??!!!!

And, every night, while Mom is working on the ‘puter, I’m right there, raking my claw down her leg (see, she can’t ignore that. She might get mad, but she knows that the only way to get rid of me is to give in. Tee hee. She doesn’t get rid of me, she just gets a temporary respite from the pain.) You know what I want???? Lap time! I am turning into a lap kitty. I have my own style for this—I do. I will not work for it. I work hard enough with my claws—does she really expect me to jump too??? Uh, uh. The proper way to go about this is that you get your human to pick you up. I’m not jumping! Do I look like a kangaroo or something???!!! Next, I will not lay down. Even when I sit up, I spill over onto the pillow on the ‘puter chair. (There’s not enough lap :( .) I also don't want Mom working too hard so I headbonk the notebook across the table.

And the weather? We got our share of Hurricane Sandy, but we didn’t get even half of the grief that nearby areas got. We had a couple of trees come down in our neighborhood—that’s it. There wasn’t that much rain and since there was so much wind, it dried up almost as soon as it hit the ground. We live a bit farther inland. The awful flooding you saw was the result of the tidal surges. The area where we live doesn’t get anywhere near where we would have to worry about that. Ditto with regard to what happened to so many families having to go without electricity. Our neighborhood had power throughout. Our Auntie Joany wasn’t so lucky. She lives inland on Long Island. She didn’t get the flooding, but her neighborhood is prone to power outages. When Mom called her tonight she still didn’t have power. (Auntie has been charging her cell phone at work.) She’s been doing okay though. They’re buying wood for the fireplace, storing their frozen food at the food service place next to where Auntie works, and washing at the gym. Their house is dark and cold except for the room where they have the fireplace. So, they’re doing something they haven’t done in years, we suspect: spending time together as a family. Mom said it sounded like they were making the best of things and actually enjoying their time together.

And now winter snuck up on us. It was pretty warm here until Hurricane Sandy hit. Then the temperature dropped. Today we had the noreaster and it’s 32 degrees out there. It’s way too early for this kind of cold and snow in our area—and yet we’re getting between 2 and 3 inches accumulation. Again, there was no problem for our neighborhood. We heard that a lot of the families who had their power restored last week are in the dark again. Sigh. At least the storm waited until the day after Election Day. I would have pitied the poor humans who would have had to stand out there in the snow and cold if the storm would have come one day sooner.

Anyway, thank you again, effurybody. We’ll try not to be strangers. Hopefurrly, my new pics will be up tonight and maybe one or two for Samsara, then Mom will put up some more new ones for Samsara later.

Sorry we’ve been away this long.

Headbonks and huggies,