Sunday May 25, 2008 7:31 PM

Aiy yai yai....where to begin.

I've been feeling pretty lousy lately....developed some kind of cold or allergy....I don't know what. I was coughing up phelgm like crazy for the past couple of weeks and could tell I was getting bronchial. I treated myself with Zithromax and started feeling better, but as soon as I got off the Zithromax I was sick again. So I've been using prednisone, Zithromax again, Mucinex, Vicks cough medicine, and doing two nebulizer treatments a day. I'm starting to feel a little better as of today but if I'm not a lot better by Tuesday I guess I'll have to break down and go to the doctor. I hate going to my primary care physician. She's a nice lady but it's a total meat market in there. Plus then you wind up sitting next to someone sicker than you and you catch something worse than what you already have. I almost wish I could have a bronchoscopy like Jim had and finally suck this crap out of my lungs for good.

Last Sunday night my cat Rocky died. He had gone downhill fast from what was most likely cancer. I rushed him to the vet for an emergency visit but there was nothing that could be done, and I wound up having to put him down. The next morning I didn't want to tell Jimmy because there's no time in the morning....what was I going to do? "Jimmy....Rocky didn't make it, now get dressed, eat your breakfast, and get on the schoolbus...." No, I couldn't handle it that way. That afternoon my mother and Joe came down from Bloomfield to take him to his Little League game. When they got to the field, Jimmy was told by his friends there that he had been thrown out of Little League. AND NO ONE HAD CALLED TO TELL ME THIS!!!! Can you believe that shit? Those people are something else, boy. I'm almost relieved because I have no use for them. This year Little League has been very unpleasant. Last year everyone was jovial and got along. This year the crew I got stuck with is very stand-offish and the only time the head coach ever spoke to me other than to rag on me for something was when she asked to borrow a pen. So the crew came home with Jimmy and we're all sitting around eating dinner. I still hadn't told Jimmy about the cat. Then Jimmy says, "Rocky is really sick. Mommy thinks he might not make it, but I hope he does!" We all sat in silence looking at each other, and now I had to come out with it...."Jimmy...Rocky didn't make it last night. He's in kitty heaven." You can imagine how the rest went.

Wednesday night I took Jimmy to the pound in Philly to get another cat. We picked a gorgeous tabby with tons of personality, which Jimmy proceeded to name Rocky, after our dead cat. I dropped Jimmy back home and took the cat to the vet to get tested for Feline Leukemia and FIV. Our two cats at home are both negative, so any new animal we bring in has got to be negative too or else we'd risk the health of the two we already have. Well, guess what? The new cat was FIV positive. Now we had to tell Jimmy that he can't keep this cat. I felt awful. I had to keep the cat isolated in my bathroom overnight, and the next day Jim and I took the afternoon off to bring it back to the pound....BEFORE Jimmy got home from school. Now I was afraid to get another cat from this same pound because if the other animals there were exposed to this one for any period of time ALL of the cats there were now at risk, and I couldn't go through this again, so we stopped at a different pound and got a kitten. He's a little orange tabby which Jimmy named "Sammy" after a cat we had that died of cancer four years ago.

Remember how in my last post I had mentioned going to an endocrinologist in Philly last month? I had gone because I had all the symptoms of an underactive thyroid, and I was having a hell of a time convincing a doctor of this because my TSH levels were still technically in the normal range. The last straw was when I put on ten pounds in two weeks back in February. People don't just put on 10 lbs in two weeks....unless they've had a really good time with the cheesecake or something. The guy in Philly wanted to test me for other stuff, but didn't think I had a thyroid problem, so I went to another guy in Cherry Hill about a week ago. He had looked over my labs and drew more blood in his office and said he would call me with the results. Can you believe he actually called me today? On a Sunday, and over Memorial Day weekend? Turns out I was right. I have auto-immune thyroiditis, or Hashimoto's disease, so he called in a prescription for synthetic thyroid for me. THANK GOD! I start taking it tomorrow. I'm hoping that in a few weeks I may start to feel better.