Bugsy update

     Have nothing new to report about young Bugsy. Visited him at about 3:00 today—stayed with him for about an hour. Sweet kid. He was very nervous, responding to every sound in the damned place, including jet noise (the hospital is under the JW Airport flightpath). I got him to relax and sleep in my arms.
     Talked to a vet who explained that we still haven’t received results from the recent test. Later tonight, they’ll check his red blood cell count, and hopefully it will be up.
     More tomorrow.

     UPDATE (Tuesday): it's been a frustrating day. Played telephone tag with the doctor all day. Finally, I just went to the hospital to talk to the doctor, but she was unavailable. So I visited with Bugsy for an hour and a half. I got him to relax, sleep. That's about as good as it gets, I figure. No worries, Little Man. Just sleep.
     For Bugsy, these fine sessions are sandwiched, naturally, by journeys between his intensive care cage and the visiting room, a gauntlet guaranteed to induce fear and trembling in tiny creatures.
     Late tonight, I finally heard from the doctor, who rattled off complex points about inconclusive tests and offered some alarming and difficult mutterings about the Bugster's bone marrow failing completely to produce what it needs to produce. Maybe. Or maybe not.
     Somehow, the upshot of it all was the suggestion that, if his numbers remain stable tomorrow morning, he'll be sent home.
     Could this be?!
     Just now, a nurse called explaining again that, if, tomorrow, Bugsy's numbers remain stable (he's slipped down from 19 to 17, whatever that means, but never mind that), he'll be sent home in the morning.
     Whatever else is true, I do hope that happens. A hospital is no place for a sweet, tiny, hornless unicorn. Such creatures need to be home and free, even if their time is short.

Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene

     Jim Gardner has a blog/column in the Lake Forest Patch. Today, he posted about Jolene Fuentes, Tom’s widow, and the odd circumstances surrounding a recent vote, taken among Lake Forest officials (the mayor and two city councilmembers) to place her on the Planning Commission vacated by Tim Hughes.
     Evidently, Jolene was less qualified than other candidates who didn't get the nod. (Sound familiar? See links below.)
     Gardner notes some other worrisome circumstances involving possible Brown Act violations and the influence of campaign contributors.
     Check it out:

The Fuentes Shock. Part 1. Collusion or Confusion (Lake Forest Patch)

See also:

• Maybe it’s Jolene - May 13, 2012
• "Unseemly" May meeting of the SOCCCD BOT: board will appoint Fuentes' replacement! - May 21, 2012
• Predictably, Mickadeit attacks the BOT - June 25, 2012
• Special "trustee replacement" board meeting, live and direct! (CONTROVERSY, WRIGHT GETS NOD) - June 25, 2012
• More misplaced righteous indignation (on behalf of Jolene Fuentes) - July 1, 2012

The Bugsy watch

Friday, after class, I visited my folks and found young Bugsy to be looking pretty unkempt. His eyes weren’t quite right. I announced, “I’m taking him to the vet.” "It's just the heat," said pop. (Typical; an old story.)

"Don't think so," I said. I called the vet's office and found that he was due anyway for a comprehensive check-up, and so I dropped him off for this hours-long process early Saturday morning.

By mid-morning, I got a call from the vet: he looks pretty anemic, she said. I agreed to some special testing.

An hour or so later I was told that I must move Bugsy to another hospital immediately so that he can get a blood transfusion: it turned out that his red blood count was down to 7 (it’s supposed to be 35 or so).

Did that. I was focused, man. Took no shit from nobody. Got there fast, ready to go.

It eventually became clear that Bugsy needed “whole blood,” and so I volunteered my pal Teddy the Cat for that job. Ran home, got ‘em, brought him to the expensive emergency place deep in Irvine. He was very good about the whole thing. "Sorry bud," I said. "But it's gotta be." Turned out he had the right blood type and so we got the green light.

Eventually, by the evening, Bugsy’s red blood count was up to 14, and the little guy felt much better. Annie and I visited him. He was just two or three cages down from young Teddy, that big, strapping, healthy guy, who meowed loudly as we entered the emergency care area. “Hey, Teddy, we’ll be with you in a minute!”

Took Teddy home. He was our hero. Got him special junk food.

On Sunday, we waited for results for the bone-marrow biopsy (I think that’s what it was). Meanwhile, we kept tabs on ‘im. My folks found their way to the hospital (good Lord) to visit their little Buster as I waited by the phone for some word from the vet (one of the specialists). It sounds as though my folks’ visit went very well.

Later, Annie and I visited the boy. Took off that damned Elizabethan collar to get at ‘im. He got normal and kinda OK pretty fast. Stayed with him nearly an hour. What a drag though. He was down to 3 or 4 pounds.

It was by then clear that his bone marrow wasn’t producing red blood cells, and that’s seriously bad. Is it feline leukemia? The test said no, but that could be wrong. Is it some more exotic condition? Don’t know. Was he poisoned—ate the wrong plants or got into my folks numerous medicines? Not likely.

This morning, after my first class, I talked to “the vet” (one of ‘em), who said Bugsy’s red blood count was up to 20, which was great news. If it stays up there, we’ll be able to take him home (probably). If not, he’ll get another transfusion. Can’t use Teddy for that but we’ll make arrangements if need be.

So we’re still waiting for the test results. Don’t know. But I’m more hopeful now than I’ve been since mid-Saturday. I think my folks are visiting Bugsy this morning. Hope so. Hope they get there. (You have no idea.)

Sheesh. Such an innocent little guy.

Good fucking grief.

Rebel Girl's Poetry Corner: "the work is hard"

Transcendentalism

- Lucia Perillo

The professor stabbed his chest with his hands curled like forks
before coughing up the question
that had dogged him since he first read Emerson:
Why am I “I”? Like musk oxen we hunkered
while his lecture drifted against us like snow.
If we could, we would have turned our backs into the wind.

I felt bad about his class’s being such a snoozefest, though peaceful too,
a quiet little interlude from everyone outside
rooting up the corpse of literature
for being too Caucasian. There was a simple answer
to my own question (how come no one loved me,
stomping on the pedals of my little bicycle):

I was insufferable. So, too, was Emerson I bet,
though I liked If the red slayer think he slays—
the professor drew a giant eyeball to depict the Over-soul.
Then he read a chapter from his own book:
naptime.
He didn’t care if our heads tipped forward on their stalks.

When spring came, he even threw us a picnic in his yard
where dogwood bloomed despire a few last
dirty bergs of snow. He was a wounded animal
being chased across the tundra by those wolves,
the postmodernists. At any moment
you expected to see blood come dripping through his clothes.

And I am I who never understood his question,
though he let me climb to take a seat
aboard the wooden scow he’d been building in the shade
of thirty-odd years. How I ever rowed it
from his yard, into my life—remains a mystery.
The work is hard because the eyeball’s heavy, riding in the bow.

*