I didn't think I would write again today, but it turns out I need to. I also need to go to bed, but I sort of don't give a shit at the moment.
I like the word grief. I prefer it to "mourning." Grief sounds more visceral, and that fits better with how I feel.
Grief is strange. I'm finding that going through the motions of just continuing a normal life without Gink is essentially easy. And that makes me sort of mad, because part of me doesn't want a single thing about this to be easy. It also makes me feel a strange sort of guilt, like I should be noticing his absence every time I turn around. But at the same time, I'm not completely mad or strongly guilty because even when I'm not "noticing" his absence I'm feeling it. For the first couple of days the feeling came and went in waves. I really didn't think of him when I was busy, because I wouldn't have been thinking about him if he'd still been here. He would have spent most of that time sitting in the windows or sleeping somewhere while I worked. But today, even though I was busy, I just felt an unhappy undercurrent all day long. Heart starting to race a little, my throat getting tight. That could have been in part because some of what I was doing was either generally related to the cats or more directly related to Gink being gone: changing the set up for the food bowls, finally washing his dry food bowl, taking the litter trash out, removing the protective strips I'd put on the door frames to keep him from destroying them even more than he already had, throwing out old cat supplies and ones they never used.
But, even when I wasn't working on cat-related things my brain seemed stuck on feeling guilty, regretting decisions, and trying to reason with myself.
I should have noticed that he was peeing more than normal for a cat?
How was I supposed to know that was too much? Was it really?
Now I know why he was peeing outside of the box again.
But you didn't know that was a bad sign. He'd done it before.
Yeah, but maybe if we'd had blood work done before we could have caught it in time to do something about it.
We have to have had some blood work done at some point and no one gave you the idea anything serious was going on.
I just checked; we didn't get a full blood test done in January because you didn't want to have to pay for it.
But the doctor didn't stress that it was important, and the antibiotic shot appeared to have worked. Besides, he was always a cranky boy, and he was getting older. How was I supposed to know what was abnormal until it was too late?
You could have had the full blood test done in January, or at last year's physical.
And then again maybe that wouldn't have found anything. Or maybe it would have found enough to know that he was already dying and probably only had a few months to live, and then we would have been suffering for months knowing this was coming. We wouldn't have been less upset in the end, would we?
It also could have just been a general vibe around the house today. Gytha didn't even touch her wet food today, and only nibbled at her dry food. Tim didn't seem to have much enthusiasm or energy. Everyone in our house just seemed kind of subdued.
I don't want to go back to work tomorrow, but I don't know just what I would do if I was home all day. I still have work to do, but it's supposed to be cloudy and rainy, and at least if I'm at work where I can't really see outside much it might not affect me. I'm a little worried about having to tell people and deal with people tomorrow and having to keep my shit together while I'm at work, but I'm also worried that if I was at home it would be like today again. Maybe work will be a good distraction and change of atmosphere. But maybe I'll be worried about Gytha so much that I'll be struggling not to cry or have a panic attack. It's probably not going to come to that, but I know myself and it's not impossible. Plus I ate more today than I have since Friday, and what I've eaten seems to be upsetting my stomach. So it feels like I'm going right back to work with the same physical problems that caused me to take Friday off in the first place. Four days off and I'm in even worse shape mentally and physically. Joy. I'm just so damn looking forward to tomorrow now.
Monday, May 26, 2014
Sunday, May 25, 2014
Grief Triggers and Another Day of Living
I'm not very good at sleeping in anymore. Waking up around 4 a.m. on weekdays seems to have reset my clock. It's probably partly a side effect of gardening and/or of becoming more of a "responsible adult": once it starts to get light outside, I don't want to go back to sleep because there are things I could be/need to be doing. It is also often forced upon me by Gytha doing naughty things to wake me up, presumably so I will go ahead and get up to do the morning feeding "since I'm already up." Both cats' appetites tended to decrease as the weather gets warmer, so I had noticed in recent weeks that they weren't pestering me on those early weekend mornings, and I was really rather happy to be able to just stay in bed and fall back to sleep.
Gink was never really one to pester me to get up for feeding time, though. He was often sleeping at my feet and took my predawn stirring as a sign that it was time for him to come snuggle. I would roll over on my back, and that was when he would move up to drape himself over my chest, or to snuggle between my arm and my body, or sometimes get up in my face and rub his chin against mine.
These early morning hours are one of the hard times for me right now.
I figured there would be certain times that would trigger the grieving pains, and I was right. Yesterday afternoon when I realized I hadn't fed Gytha her wet food yet, my heart started beating a little faster and my stomach tightened a little. I was trying to be very casual and matter-of-fact about it as I apologized to her for not realizing it was late, but when I took a single bowl from the dish drainer my chest squeezed a bit more and as I measured out the laxative powder that gets mixed with the wet food my hand shook just a tiny bit as I realized I was doing just the one dose now.
My physical reaction wasn't as strong when I did Gytha's evening dry food feeding, but that doesn't involve any prep time, so it was over much faster. I still haven't removed Gink's dry food bowl, and I saw her eating out of it yesterday afternoon. That gave me a little pang, but also made me kind of happy at the same time. They both often ate out of all four bowls interchangeably, and I had forgotten about that in my morose concerns about "his" bowls. Her not seeing it as "his" food bowl was reassuring in a way.
Still, I do think I need to change how their...her feeding area is set up. It was designed to fit four different bowls for two cats. Now the empty side will be a constant reminder of what's missing, and I don't want to have to deal with that. I want to reduce any triggers that I can, because there are many that I cannot.
Like bedtime, which is (so far) thankfully not as bad as the early mornings. Last night I was tired out from working in the garden all afternoon (and not having slept well the night before), so I had a brief moment when I looked at the edge of the bed where he sometimes laid by my side while I read or did crossword puzzles. I was relieved to not feel any pain at the thought. Gytha also settled in between the pillows more easily last night, which I realize now was a great help. Friday night she was very, very demanding of attention when we went to bed and kept sitting up and looking at the bedroom doorway as if she was expecting Gink to come in for their nightly routine of negotiating sleeping spots. Even after I'd turned out the lights I could see her checking the door and waiting in the dark. Very, very hard for me.
One of the most distressing triggers is the spare bedroom. For at least the last six months, if not more like a year, Gink had taken to sleeping on the twin bed in that room. I joked when my Dad came to visit recently that he was stealing "Gink's bed." In a way, this makes bedtime easier in general, because it wasn't unusual for Gink to go back to his own bed after a little cuddle time or during the night. Him not being in the bed with me when I go to sleep or when I wake up during the night is not a completely foreign feeling. But walking past that room and seeing the empty bed has been causing my insides to clench. It is ten times worse right now because we hurriedly shoved half of the contents of another room into the spare bedroom Monday night and Tuesday afternoon to make room for "new" chairs we're babysitting for some friends. That kind of clutter gnaws at me to begin with, and with all that mess and the painful Gink associations all rammed into one tiny place in such a short time, the room exudes unhappiness, especially in the dark. And you can't go anywhere on the second floor without walking by that door. I can deal with it if it is day time, the lights are on, and I'm working on getting rid of the mess. Focused, purposeful energy cancels out the negative stuff. So that's part of what I want to get taken care of this weekend. I thought about closing the door, but that just bottles up the bad aura and makes it seem even more menacing.
Night and darkness in general have become harder for me. I suddenly find it hard to be in any dark room at all, and even dim lighting depresses me. I was so relieved that the sun ended up being at least partially out for much of the day yesterday. But as night fell, I realized my relative calm was starting to dissipate. And today and tomorrow are supposed to be mostly cloudy. So far this morning has been the kind of dull, gray morning I dislike anyway. If the sun doesn't come out at all, today may be a struggle.
Then there are the noises and the visual misperceptions. Ours is an old house, and wood creaking isn't anything strange. But the attic steps creaked yesterday while I was in the spare bedroom (where the door to the attic is) and they keep creaking today, and it reminds me of cats going up and down those stairs. At night I'll hear a random noise from one of the other bedrooms and, though it isn't even the kind of noise the cats would make, it reminds me of Gink. At least two or three times yesterday I caught something out of the corner of my eye and thought it looked like a black and white cat shape. Each time everything clenched inside for a split second. Actually, I almost had a mini panic attack at one point because I was seeing something at a distance that was triggering a mental image of Gink, and it took me a few seconds to figure out what I was actually seeing. For those few seconds I was getting incredibly upset that I couldn't figure out what it was, and I was struggling to stay calm so I could see the real thing instead and stop seeing Gink. That was a tiny bit intense.
I also can't get away from the litterboxes. The upstairs one in particular is a trigger for me, since it has a lot of Gink associations of all types. He had been rather lackadaisical about peeing for a couple of years, just jumping in the box and going without looking, which was often right up against the edge and sometimes over it. Because of his "outside the box" issues, I had to move the upstairs box out of the closet and into the bathroom and get a new super large box with high sides. That's the one Gink used most and had used the day he died. I seriously didn't want to clean up his last pee clumps. I avoided cleaning it all day yesterday until right before bedtime, and even then I almost couldn't finish it. I'm not sure Gytha needs such a large box, and the old smaller ones are still in the basement. But just thinking about all of this is making my chest hurt. Just cleaning the litter box is going to be difficult for awhile no matter what I do, and I don't want to make too many changes in Gytha's environment too fast.
Dealing with Gytha has been slightly distressing. She doesn't seem to miss Gink exactly, but she's been needing more attention and cuddling. Having to pay attention to her is a consolation that I still have my little girl and that she needs me even more right now. She needs me to reassure her of my love for her, and I need to focus on taking care of what I still have, of reminding myself that the rest of my heart is still there and needs attention. But she's also a constant reminder of what I've lost. We didn't have two separate cats. Regardless of whether or not they cared about one another, in my mind they were a pair. The dynamic has suddenly changed significantly. We are now cat parents of an "only cat." I've never had an "only cat." Gytha has never been an "only cat." This will take some getting used to for all of us.
Part of the reason I kind of wish she didn't need me so much right now is that my instinct is to draw away from interaction with others when I'm upset. This is not necessarily the best thing for me to do, since I know that being alone often makes any mental or emotional problem I'm dealing with worse for me. It allows me to ruminate and dwell, which is another reason why those early morning hours are so tough. Those were already times when I would lie in bed and think until I either fell asleep again or gave in and got up. Yesterday morning I woke up around 4 and had to get up and play on the computer for awhile before I could get back to sleep for another hour or so. At least this morning I slept in until about 5:30. But I needed to have another good cry, and it's even harder to breathe with a crying snot nose when you're lying down. So I decided it was a better idea to get up and write all those thoughts down instead. There aren't many people in my daily life that I can really "do" things with, and much of my social interaction is online. But even if no one reads this, I've always used writing as a way of trying to move things from inside to outside of my own head in order to give both the thoughts and my brain more open space. It serves as both a way for me to communicate with my own self, and maybe to share those thoughts with other people.
The one person I do have in my daily life (besides Gytha) is Tim, and he's the ultimate comfort. I'm definitely happier and calmer when Tim & I are together than when I'm sitting alone. We're both grieving for Gink, but together we can carry on our normal routines and that helps me feel more like things are "normal." Even though our version of "normal" tends to be sitting in the same room working on separate laptops, it's nothing like sitting alone in a room working on a laptop.
So, what's helping me so far is to keep busy and to stick to doing things I know I like to do. I'm happier and calmer when I'm working outside in the garden, which is an immense relief. Friday night I was looking outside at all my plants and didn't really care. The idea that the loss of Gink would steal happiness from other areas of my life was even more heartbreaking. But as soon as the sun peeked out Saturday morning I felt compelled to go outside, and as I walked around looking at all my plants my energy level started rising and my heart started feeling lighter.
Presumably I'll be fine when I'm back at work, although I'm wondering if I'll end up needing to take a half day or two off. I'm a little worried about Gytha. Being completely alone all day every day is different than doing your own thing in a house where another living being is doing its own thing. It occurred to me that Gink had the house to himself for a few days when Radioactive Gytha was in the hospital having her thyroid treatment, and I don't remember him behaving all that differently. Maybe some of Gytha's reactions right now are to our grief more than her own. But we're making sure she knows that when we leave we're coming back. We're probably going to go see a movie today or tomorrow, and we're going to make sure we both leave the house at some point on both days to try to prepare her for being alone all day after that. We're supposed to go to Dad's for Father's Day weekend, and I don't want to leave her. Even though we'd be gone for less than a day and a half, at this point I can't bear the thought of leaving her alone overnight.
I'm really glad the windows can be open now, partly because it gives Gytha something to do (birdwatching, nature study, etc.) and partly because I feel sort of claustrophobic being in the house. I also don't want to go up to the 3rd floor, probably because of that sense of oppression. It is where I found Gink hiding Friday morning, laying in the dirty, hidden space behind the door that separates the finished part of the attic from the unfinished room. But that's not really why it bothers me. He spent most of his time up there this winter when he was sick, so the couch up there is half covered in his fur. Which is part of why I really need to clean up there, but also not really why I don't want to go up there. It's rather dark, but there are lights. It's kind of small, but not terribly so. And I need to start taking crap up there to clear out the spare bedroom. But I don't want to go up there.
Maybe I will once I get done with this, get dressed, eat a little bit, get myself started on working through another day. Throwing things away and cleaning seems to be vital to my healing process as well as a good way to stay busy and something I wanted to be doing with my weekends anyway. So I really need to get myself working up on the third floor. Maybe music will help. There isn't much for me to do in the garden today. Not much on the internet or the rest of the world is of much interest to me right now. I have ingredients for a recipe that I was going to make on the grill, but I don't really care all that much about food right now, and I'm not sure the rain will make grilling feasible this weekend. I feel like maybe going for a walk even though it's still looking utterly dreary outside. Anything would be better than sitting around worrying that the tightness in my chest and gut will return. Crying again this morning felt helpful for my insides (not so much the "outside" with the puffy eyes, aching face, gums, jaw, ...), but a certain kind of numbness seems preferable as a general rule. I don't know if this is a form of the "denial stage" you hear so much about. I don't care about stages. I'm just going to deal with whatever I have to however I can.
Gink was never really one to pester me to get up for feeding time, though. He was often sleeping at my feet and took my predawn stirring as a sign that it was time for him to come snuggle. I would roll over on my back, and that was when he would move up to drape himself over my chest, or to snuggle between my arm and my body, or sometimes get up in my face and rub his chin against mine.
These early morning hours are one of the hard times for me right now.
I figured there would be certain times that would trigger the grieving pains, and I was right. Yesterday afternoon when I realized I hadn't fed Gytha her wet food yet, my heart started beating a little faster and my stomach tightened a little. I was trying to be very casual and matter-of-fact about it as I apologized to her for not realizing it was late, but when I took a single bowl from the dish drainer my chest squeezed a bit more and as I measured out the laxative powder that gets mixed with the wet food my hand shook just a tiny bit as I realized I was doing just the one dose now.
My physical reaction wasn't as strong when I did Gytha's evening dry food feeding, but that doesn't involve any prep time, so it was over much faster. I still haven't removed Gink's dry food bowl, and I saw her eating out of it yesterday afternoon. That gave me a little pang, but also made me kind of happy at the same time. They both often ate out of all four bowls interchangeably, and I had forgotten about that in my morose concerns about "his" bowls. Her not seeing it as "his" food bowl was reassuring in a way.
Still, I do think I need to change how their...her feeding area is set up. It was designed to fit four different bowls for two cats. Now the empty side will be a constant reminder of what's missing, and I don't want to have to deal with that. I want to reduce any triggers that I can, because there are many that I cannot.
Like bedtime, which is (so far) thankfully not as bad as the early mornings. Last night I was tired out from working in the garden all afternoon (and not having slept well the night before), so I had a brief moment when I looked at the edge of the bed where he sometimes laid by my side while I read or did crossword puzzles. I was relieved to not feel any pain at the thought. Gytha also settled in between the pillows more easily last night, which I realize now was a great help. Friday night she was very, very demanding of attention when we went to bed and kept sitting up and looking at the bedroom doorway as if she was expecting Gink to come in for their nightly routine of negotiating sleeping spots. Even after I'd turned out the lights I could see her checking the door and waiting in the dark. Very, very hard for me.
One of the most distressing triggers is the spare bedroom. For at least the last six months, if not more like a year, Gink had taken to sleeping on the twin bed in that room. I joked when my Dad came to visit recently that he was stealing "Gink's bed." In a way, this makes bedtime easier in general, because it wasn't unusual for Gink to go back to his own bed after a little cuddle time or during the night. Him not being in the bed with me when I go to sleep or when I wake up during the night is not a completely foreign feeling. But walking past that room and seeing the empty bed has been causing my insides to clench. It is ten times worse right now because we hurriedly shoved half of the contents of another room into the spare bedroom Monday night and Tuesday afternoon to make room for "new" chairs we're babysitting for some friends. That kind of clutter gnaws at me to begin with, and with all that mess and the painful Gink associations all rammed into one tiny place in such a short time, the room exudes unhappiness, especially in the dark. And you can't go anywhere on the second floor without walking by that door. I can deal with it if it is day time, the lights are on, and I'm working on getting rid of the mess. Focused, purposeful energy cancels out the negative stuff. So that's part of what I want to get taken care of this weekend. I thought about closing the door, but that just bottles up the bad aura and makes it seem even more menacing.
Night and darkness in general have become harder for me. I suddenly find it hard to be in any dark room at all, and even dim lighting depresses me. I was so relieved that the sun ended up being at least partially out for much of the day yesterday. But as night fell, I realized my relative calm was starting to dissipate. And today and tomorrow are supposed to be mostly cloudy. So far this morning has been the kind of dull, gray morning I dislike anyway. If the sun doesn't come out at all, today may be a struggle.
Then there are the noises and the visual misperceptions. Ours is an old house, and wood creaking isn't anything strange. But the attic steps creaked yesterday while I was in the spare bedroom (where the door to the attic is) and they keep creaking today, and it reminds me of cats going up and down those stairs. At night I'll hear a random noise from one of the other bedrooms and, though it isn't even the kind of noise the cats would make, it reminds me of Gink. At least two or three times yesterday I caught something out of the corner of my eye and thought it looked like a black and white cat shape. Each time everything clenched inside for a split second. Actually, I almost had a mini panic attack at one point because I was seeing something at a distance that was triggering a mental image of Gink, and it took me a few seconds to figure out what I was actually seeing. For those few seconds I was getting incredibly upset that I couldn't figure out what it was, and I was struggling to stay calm so I could see the real thing instead and stop seeing Gink. That was a tiny bit intense.
I also can't get away from the litterboxes. The upstairs one in particular is a trigger for me, since it has a lot of Gink associations of all types. He had been rather lackadaisical about peeing for a couple of years, just jumping in the box and going without looking, which was often right up against the edge and sometimes over it. Because of his "outside the box" issues, I had to move the upstairs box out of the closet and into the bathroom and get a new super large box with high sides. That's the one Gink used most and had used the day he died. I seriously didn't want to clean up his last pee clumps. I avoided cleaning it all day yesterday until right before bedtime, and even then I almost couldn't finish it. I'm not sure Gytha needs such a large box, and the old smaller ones are still in the basement. But just thinking about all of this is making my chest hurt. Just cleaning the litter box is going to be difficult for awhile no matter what I do, and I don't want to make too many changes in Gytha's environment too fast.
Dealing with Gytha has been slightly distressing. She doesn't seem to miss Gink exactly, but she's been needing more attention and cuddling. Having to pay attention to her is a consolation that I still have my little girl and that she needs me even more right now. She needs me to reassure her of my love for her, and I need to focus on taking care of what I still have, of reminding myself that the rest of my heart is still there and needs attention. But she's also a constant reminder of what I've lost. We didn't have two separate cats. Regardless of whether or not they cared about one another, in my mind they were a pair. The dynamic has suddenly changed significantly. We are now cat parents of an "only cat." I've never had an "only cat." Gytha has never been an "only cat." This will take some getting used to for all of us.
Part of the reason I kind of wish she didn't need me so much right now is that my instinct is to draw away from interaction with others when I'm upset. This is not necessarily the best thing for me to do, since I know that being alone often makes any mental or emotional problem I'm dealing with worse for me. It allows me to ruminate and dwell, which is another reason why those early morning hours are so tough. Those were already times when I would lie in bed and think until I either fell asleep again or gave in and got up. Yesterday morning I woke up around 4 and had to get up and play on the computer for awhile before I could get back to sleep for another hour or so. At least this morning I slept in until about 5:30. But I needed to have another good cry, and it's even harder to breathe with a crying snot nose when you're lying down. So I decided it was a better idea to get up and write all those thoughts down instead. There aren't many people in my daily life that I can really "do" things with, and much of my social interaction is online. But even if no one reads this, I've always used writing as a way of trying to move things from inside to outside of my own head in order to give both the thoughts and my brain more open space. It serves as both a way for me to communicate with my own self, and maybe to share those thoughts with other people.
The one person I do have in my daily life (besides Gytha) is Tim, and he's the ultimate comfort. I'm definitely happier and calmer when Tim & I are together than when I'm sitting alone. We're both grieving for Gink, but together we can carry on our normal routines and that helps me feel more like things are "normal." Even though our version of "normal" tends to be sitting in the same room working on separate laptops, it's nothing like sitting alone in a room working on a laptop.
So, what's helping me so far is to keep busy and to stick to doing things I know I like to do. I'm happier and calmer when I'm working outside in the garden, which is an immense relief. Friday night I was looking outside at all my plants and didn't really care. The idea that the loss of Gink would steal happiness from other areas of my life was even more heartbreaking. But as soon as the sun peeked out Saturday morning I felt compelled to go outside, and as I walked around looking at all my plants my energy level started rising and my heart started feeling lighter.
Presumably I'll be fine when I'm back at work, although I'm wondering if I'll end up needing to take a half day or two off. I'm a little worried about Gytha. Being completely alone all day every day is different than doing your own thing in a house where another living being is doing its own thing. It occurred to me that Gink had the house to himself for a few days when Radioactive Gytha was in the hospital having her thyroid treatment, and I don't remember him behaving all that differently. Maybe some of Gytha's reactions right now are to our grief more than her own. But we're making sure she knows that when we leave we're coming back. We're probably going to go see a movie today or tomorrow, and we're going to make sure we both leave the house at some point on both days to try to prepare her for being alone all day after that. We're supposed to go to Dad's for Father's Day weekend, and I don't want to leave her. Even though we'd be gone for less than a day and a half, at this point I can't bear the thought of leaving her alone overnight.
I'm really glad the windows can be open now, partly because it gives Gytha something to do (birdwatching, nature study, etc.) and partly because I feel sort of claustrophobic being in the house. I also don't want to go up to the 3rd floor, probably because of that sense of oppression. It is where I found Gink hiding Friday morning, laying in the dirty, hidden space behind the door that separates the finished part of the attic from the unfinished room. But that's not really why it bothers me. He spent most of his time up there this winter when he was sick, so the couch up there is half covered in his fur. Which is part of why I really need to clean up there, but also not really why I don't want to go up there. It's rather dark, but there are lights. It's kind of small, but not terribly so. And I need to start taking crap up there to clear out the spare bedroom. But I don't want to go up there.
Maybe I will once I get done with this, get dressed, eat a little bit, get myself started on working through another day. Throwing things away and cleaning seems to be vital to my healing process as well as a good way to stay busy and something I wanted to be doing with my weekends anyway. So I really need to get myself working up on the third floor. Maybe music will help. There isn't much for me to do in the garden today. Not much on the internet or the rest of the world is of much interest to me right now. I have ingredients for a recipe that I was going to make on the grill, but I don't really care all that much about food right now, and I'm not sure the rain will make grilling feasible this weekend. I feel like maybe going for a walk even though it's still looking utterly dreary outside. Anything would be better than sitting around worrying that the tightness in my chest and gut will return. Crying again this morning felt helpful for my insides (not so much the "outside" with the puffy eyes, aching face, gums, jaw, ...), but a certain kind of numbness seems preferable as a general rule. I don't know if this is a form of the "denial stage" you hear so much about. I don't care about stages. I'm just going to deal with whatever I have to however I can.
Friday, May 23, 2014
Grieving for Gink
I'm the kind of person who tries to pre-deal with difficult experiences, as if somehow imagining what you'll do when your spouse dies or your parents die or your pets die will somehow make it easier. My creative abilities only seem to work when my anxieties manage to take over and induce imaginary trauma. It doesn't work: pre-crying doesn't reduce the amount of crying that comes with the actual event. Now that I've lost my boy furbaby, I can verify that for sure.
And, man, is my face sore. My eyes are almost swollen shut. I've been crying on and off for about 9 hours now. I'm glad I had about 5 hours between getting the call from the vet and the appointment. I was able to cycle through crying jags to calm periods that allowed me to still do mundane things like go pick up my prescription refill that I'd called in and fill up the car's gas tank. It also allowed me to just cry whenever I needed to and as much as I needed to.
I'm glad we decided to be with him when they gave him the injection. It was so fast and so peaceful, so there was nothing to cause me any concern, and he got to fall asleep forever with my hand on him. Seeing it happen, so calmly and easily, is a comfort to me.
Now I can really let myself think about the things that kept crossing my mind during the hours I was waiting for the appointment but were making his impending death more painful. I tried to force myself to wait until he was actually gone to let myself grieve for what we've lost.
We're never going to hear the kthunk-kthunk-kthunk of him carrying his wand toys up and down the stairs again. If there were any special toys or things that were his, it was the wands. Should I even keep them? Probably not, but I'll have to wait until it feels right to throw them away. Now I understand how "too soon" feels.
We now have eight food bowls for one cat. How long is it going to be before feeding time stops making my heart ache as I feed just one baby? I don't want to touch his dry food bowl. I don't want to remove it and leave an empty space or to wash away the traces of his face.
I'm never going to see Gink & Gytha together in the two sunroom windows, as they watch the birds or stare out into the night seeing things I can't see. It already seemed weird to see just Gytha up there when Gink was sick. They were not true siblings and were never close. But one of the few things they did "together" was to sit in those open windows for hours sometimes.
He's never going to startle me again as he leaps and scrabbles at the front window, trying to catch dead leaves as they whip around outside.
I've even thought of a few "positive" things about Gink being gone: no more scratching up the door frames, no more having to keep all plastic and tape where he can't get to it, no more pissing on the front porch, half the cat food bill, less cat litter and hair to clean up. But then I find myself thinking, "I'd give anything to keep dealing with those things if I could have him back."
But that's just not the way life works. And I'm sometimes okay with that. Yet, there's this ache in my chest and now that he's really gone I'm getting a queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach thinking about these things. I'm starting to feel the hole in my life, and the hole feels bigger than the cat whose death has created it.
I've dreaded this day. I've found myself trying to plan for it as I laid in bed at night trying to sleep and tearing up instead. I've forced myself not to dwell on it. And that's what I'm going to have to do now. Keep busy, let life keep moving. It was probably the best possible experience we could have had for what it was. And I'm deeply, so deeply, grateful for that. But it still hurts like hell.
Gink would have been 14 next month, and for all but a few months of that time I was his Cat Mommy. I was closely bonded with both of my cat babies --they both usually slept with us, liked laps, followed me around the house when I was home. Gink would always follow me upstairs when I got home from work, jump up on the bed, roll over on his back, and yell at me until I paid attention to him. He was the one who would lay across my back if I was laying on my stomach, or snuggle up under my arm when I was laying on my back. Sometimes he would rub his face on my face. He was Sexy Cat, Ginky Boy, Whiny Butt. There will never be another cat like him, and I will always love him.
And, man, is my face sore. My eyes are almost swollen shut. I've been crying on and off for about 9 hours now. I'm glad I had about 5 hours between getting the call from the vet and the appointment. I was able to cycle through crying jags to calm periods that allowed me to still do mundane things like go pick up my prescription refill that I'd called in and fill up the car's gas tank. It also allowed me to just cry whenever I needed to and as much as I needed to.
I'm glad we decided to be with him when they gave him the injection. It was so fast and so peaceful, so there was nothing to cause me any concern, and he got to fall asleep forever with my hand on him. Seeing it happen, so calmly and easily, is a comfort to me.
Now I can really let myself think about the things that kept crossing my mind during the hours I was waiting for the appointment but were making his impending death more painful. I tried to force myself to wait until he was actually gone to let myself grieve for what we've lost.
We're never going to hear the kthunk-kthunk-kthunk of him carrying his wand toys up and down the stairs again. If there were any special toys or things that were his, it was the wands. Should I even keep them? Probably not, but I'll have to wait until it feels right to throw them away. Now I understand how "too soon" feels.
We now have eight food bowls for one cat. How long is it going to be before feeding time stops making my heart ache as I feed just one baby? I don't want to touch his dry food bowl. I don't want to remove it and leave an empty space or to wash away the traces of his face.
I'm never going to see Gink & Gytha together in the two sunroom windows, as they watch the birds or stare out into the night seeing things I can't see. It already seemed weird to see just Gytha up there when Gink was sick. They were not true siblings and were never close. But one of the few things they did "together" was to sit in those open windows for hours sometimes.
He's never going to startle me again as he leaps and scrabbles at the front window, trying to catch dead leaves as they whip around outside.
I've even thought of a few "positive" things about Gink being gone: no more scratching up the door frames, no more having to keep all plastic and tape where he can't get to it, no more pissing on the front porch, half the cat food bill, less cat litter and hair to clean up. But then I find myself thinking, "I'd give anything to keep dealing with those things if I could have him back."
But that's just not the way life works. And I'm sometimes okay with that. Yet, there's this ache in my chest and now that he's really gone I'm getting a queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach thinking about these things. I'm starting to feel the hole in my life, and the hole feels bigger than the cat whose death has created it.
I've dreaded this day. I've found myself trying to plan for it as I laid in bed at night trying to sleep and tearing up instead. I've forced myself not to dwell on it. And that's what I'm going to have to do now. Keep busy, let life keep moving. It was probably the best possible experience we could have had for what it was. And I'm deeply, so deeply, grateful for that. But it still hurts like hell.
Gink would have been 14 next month, and for all but a few months of that time I was his Cat Mommy. I was closely bonded with both of my cat babies --they both usually slept with us, liked laps, followed me around the house when I was home. Gink would always follow me upstairs when I got home from work, jump up on the bed, roll over on his back, and yell at me until I paid attention to him. He was the one who would lay across my back if I was laying on my stomach, or snuggle up under my arm when I was laying on my back. Sometimes he would rub his face on my face. He was Sexy Cat, Ginky Boy, Whiny Butt. There will never be another cat like him, and I will always love him.
Wednesday, May 14, 2014
The Dangers of Rapid Weight Loss
I figured this was the best way to share some information related to my recent Facebook post lambasting The Biggest Loser for using obscenely excessive methods to produce dangerously rapid weight loss and producing ridiculously unrealistic expectations.
Many people seem to think that being fat is the worst threat possible to a person's health. This is not a given; it is not necessarily true for every person; excess body fat does not mean the same thing for everyone. So, while I will concede that extremely obese people who weigh half a ton are probably in greater danger by not doing anything at all, people need to understand that when they lose weight using drastic methods they may just be trading off one kind of medical problem for another.
Here is a sampling of information I found on the interwebz:
"In addition to potentially damaging the gallbladder, says [Christine] Gerbstadt, other risks of losing too much too fast include kidney failure, thyroid problems, osteoporosis (especially in young men), increased estrogen production, lessening of sexual functions, heart irregularity and changes in blood pressure. It can also be the start of an eating disorder (and no, you aren’t accidentally reading a story for young women)."
[This is apparently an article specifically aimed at men.]
from a Weight Watchers article
"Severely slashing calories may lead to weight loss, but the lost weight includes precious muscle and lowers metabolism. Drastic calorie restriction also causes a shift toward a higher percentage of body fat, which increases the risk for metabolic syndrome and type 2 diabetes."
and
"Extreme exercise may make for good reality television. But in the real world, it can cause grave problems. It causes severe wear and tear; increases the risk for injury, dehydration, and electrolyte imbalance; and psychologically turns exercise into punishment for eating, May says."
from a webmd.com article
"When you gain or lose weight, your heart must adjust to accommodate more or less body weight. Since your heart is a muscle, rapid weight loss or constantly losing and then gaining weight can place a lot of stress on your heart. As your weight changes so does your blood pressure and heart rate. You may also experience irregular heart rhythms and eventually heart failure. It is actually better for your heart to maintain a set weight then to continually gain and lose weight."
from a livestrong.com article
Then there's this blog entry from an obesity doctor:
http://www.weightymatters.ca/2012/04/biggest-loser-destroys-participants.html
And yet another piece criticizing the show:
http://www.livescience.com/9820-biggest-loser-big-problems-health-experts.html
I've spent about 35 years dealing with fat-shaming, researching, debating, fighting with myself and with the rest of the world about obesity, and trying to find The Right Answer in regards to body fat and health. There isn't one. But if there was, it wouldn't have a single thing in common with The Biggest Loser.
Many people seem to think that being fat is the worst threat possible to a person's health. This is not a given; it is not necessarily true for every person; excess body fat does not mean the same thing for everyone. So, while I will concede that extremely obese people who weigh half a ton are probably in greater danger by not doing anything at all, people need to understand that when they lose weight using drastic methods they may just be trading off one kind of medical problem for another.
Here is a sampling of information I found on the interwebz:
"In addition to potentially damaging the gallbladder, says [Christine] Gerbstadt, other risks of losing too much too fast include kidney failure, thyroid problems, osteoporosis (especially in young men), increased estrogen production, lessening of sexual functions, heart irregularity and changes in blood pressure. It can also be the start of an eating disorder (and no, you aren’t accidentally reading a story for young women)."
[This is apparently an article specifically aimed at men.]
from a Weight Watchers article
"Severely slashing calories may lead to weight loss, but the lost weight includes precious muscle and lowers metabolism. Drastic calorie restriction also causes a shift toward a higher percentage of body fat, which increases the risk for metabolic syndrome and type 2 diabetes."
and
"Extreme exercise may make for good reality television. But in the real world, it can cause grave problems. It causes severe wear and tear; increases the risk for injury, dehydration, and electrolyte imbalance; and psychologically turns exercise into punishment for eating, May says."
from a webmd.com article
"When you gain or lose weight, your heart must adjust to accommodate more or less body weight. Since your heart is a muscle, rapid weight loss or constantly losing and then gaining weight can place a lot of stress on your heart. As your weight changes so does your blood pressure and heart rate. You may also experience irregular heart rhythms and eventually heart failure. It is actually better for your heart to maintain a set weight then to continually gain and lose weight."
from a livestrong.com article
Then there's this blog entry from an obesity doctor:
http://www.weightymatters.ca/2012/04/biggest-loser-destroys-participants.html
And yet another piece criticizing the show:
http://www.livescience.com/9820-biggest-loser-big-problems-health-experts.html
I've spent about 35 years dealing with fat-shaming, researching, debating, fighting with myself and with the rest of the world about obesity, and trying to find The Right Answer in regards to body fat and health. There isn't one. But if there was, it wouldn't have a single thing in common with The Biggest Loser.
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