I ATEN'T DEAD
Tuesday, 19 March 2024 05:15 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
freckles_and_doubtRight, so, I lost a cat yesterday (Pandora, kidney failure, not yet up to talking about it), and my house is empty and there is no-one for me to talk to, and apparently I am driven back into the embrace of blogging because Teh Internets may or may not substitute for the largely one-sided conversations one has with a kitty underfoot. I have no idea if anyone is still reading Dreamwidth, I suspect not, but I am a bit of a mess and need to string words together as a coping mechanism.
This is the first time I have ever lost a cat who was my only cat; in all other previous losses I have been able to come home and hug the other cat to fill the void. And I can't, and the void is horrible. I have tried to round up all Pandy's stuff to stash in a cupboard where I won't keep seeing it, but keep running across something I've forgotten, and it triggers a new round of helpless crying. So this is a thicket of words between me and the absence. I think the loss is worse because I'm pretty much alone at home, not working, and have consequently had a fairly close and intense relationship with Pandy over the last six months or so.
The Granny Weatherwax subject line is valid, but I cannot say I've been at full health and vigor over the last year, my inner Granny Weatherwax has been somewhat subdued. I think I blogged the COVID bout I had at the end of 2022, which was, significantly enough, around the time that my blogword reservoirs dried up and I vanished from haunts of blog. That's because I ended up with long COVID, which has rendered the last year or so increasingly difficult. I have been at home for the last four months, not working at all beyond answering the occasional WhatsApp plea from a desperate person trying to fill my complicated shoes at short notice; over the second half of last year I was working mostly from home, with breaks of several weeks when my lovely doctor booked me off, in a desperate attempt to rest and address the fatigue. I'm now formally on disability, having wrestled various insurance companies finally into submission.
Long COVID is a horrible beast, as well as being a diagnosis one arrives at by elimination, after testing for everything else. It's hit me mainly with cognitive issues, with a side order of surprise!diabetes, although there's some physical fatigue. I cannot handle crowds, restaurants or background noise; I cannot do more than one thing in a day, which cannot take any longer than an hour or two; I cannot sit at my desk for longer than about half an hour. I am typing this from my armchair, my feet up, with my computer plugged into the TV screen and the keyboard on my lap. Things I have learned to do in the last few months: persuade PC games to work with a controller. Challenging, because the brain fog is horrible. I can also only play games I have played before, and I have to dial the difficulty down to the minimum, because strategically and in terms of co-ordination, I suck. This is causing shame to my gamer's soul.
My short term memory is shot, my executive function is non-existent. I haven't trusted myself to check a student transcript in about eight months. I am losing nouns in conversation at a horrible rate for someone of my literary proclivities and training; if you give me one of those cognitive tests where you have to list all the words you can think of starting with a particular letter in a minute, I manage about five, slowly, and then blank. I am an English PhD grad with a ridiculously large vocabulary, so this is, to say the least, terrifying.
Oh, and my emotional regulation is also extremely iffy. I will burst into tears at the slightest provocation, or lose my temper when minimal things go wrong. I am on disability at least partially because I should not be around students at this stage of my health crisis, the slightest hint of the average student post-adolescent narcissim and I'll infallibly bite someone's head off and spit out the skull with a genteel "ptooey" before collapsing in a sobbing heap on the corpse. Not, shall we say, professional.
I miss Pandy so much. The house is so empty. My state of fatigue has been emotionally muffling me a bit over the last few months, I haven't had the energy for, e.g., guilt at letting people other than me toss themselves into the crater of the orientation/registration volcano god, but this is the worst cat loss I have ever experienced, it's almost physical pain. I may have to go and find another cat almost immediately because apparently being a home-bound crazy cat lady without a cat leaves only the crazy.
This is the first time I have ever lost a cat who was my only cat; in all other previous losses I have been able to come home and hug the other cat to fill the void. And I can't, and the void is horrible. I have tried to round up all Pandy's stuff to stash in a cupboard where I won't keep seeing it, but keep running across something I've forgotten, and it triggers a new round of helpless crying. So this is a thicket of words between me and the absence. I think the loss is worse because I'm pretty much alone at home, not working, and have consequently had a fairly close and intense relationship with Pandy over the last six months or so.
The Granny Weatherwax subject line is valid, but I cannot say I've been at full health and vigor over the last year, my inner Granny Weatherwax has been somewhat subdued. I think I blogged the COVID bout I had at the end of 2022, which was, significantly enough, around the time that my blogword reservoirs dried up and I vanished from haunts of blog. That's because I ended up with long COVID, which has rendered the last year or so increasingly difficult. I have been at home for the last four months, not working at all beyond answering the occasional WhatsApp plea from a desperate person trying to fill my complicated shoes at short notice; over the second half of last year I was working mostly from home, with breaks of several weeks when my lovely doctor booked me off, in a desperate attempt to rest and address the fatigue. I'm now formally on disability, having wrestled various insurance companies finally into submission.
Long COVID is a horrible beast, as well as being a diagnosis one arrives at by elimination, after testing for everything else. It's hit me mainly with cognitive issues, with a side order of surprise!diabetes, although there's some physical fatigue. I cannot handle crowds, restaurants or background noise; I cannot do more than one thing in a day, which cannot take any longer than an hour or two; I cannot sit at my desk for longer than about half an hour. I am typing this from my armchair, my feet up, with my computer plugged into the TV screen and the keyboard on my lap. Things I have learned to do in the last few months: persuade PC games to work with a controller. Challenging, because the brain fog is horrible. I can also only play games I have played before, and I have to dial the difficulty down to the minimum, because strategically and in terms of co-ordination, I suck. This is causing shame to my gamer's soul.
My short term memory is shot, my executive function is non-existent. I haven't trusted myself to check a student transcript in about eight months. I am losing nouns in conversation at a horrible rate for someone of my literary proclivities and training; if you give me one of those cognitive tests where you have to list all the words you can think of starting with a particular letter in a minute, I manage about five, slowly, and then blank. I am an English PhD grad with a ridiculously large vocabulary, so this is, to say the least, terrifying.
Oh, and my emotional regulation is also extremely iffy. I will burst into tears at the slightest provocation, or lose my temper when minimal things go wrong. I am on disability at least partially because I should not be around students at this stage of my health crisis, the slightest hint of the average student post-adolescent narcissim and I'll infallibly bite someone's head off and spit out the skull with a genteel "ptooey" before collapsing in a sobbing heap on the corpse. Not, shall we say, professional.
I miss Pandy so much. The house is so empty. My state of fatigue has been emotionally muffling me a bit over the last few months, I haven't had the energy for, e.g., guilt at letting people other than me toss themselves into the crater of the orientation/registration volcano god, but this is the worst cat loss I have ever experienced, it's almost physical pain. I may have to go and find another cat almost immediately because apparently being a home-bound crazy cat lady without a cat leaves only the crazy.
no subject
Date: Wednesday, 20 March 2024 01:47 pm (UTC)I had my own bout with Covid (first Christmas present I've wanted to return in decades), but managed to dodge Long Covid. Between you and the Baroness, I'm counting my lucky stars.
no subject
Date: Thursday, 21 March 2024 09:41 am (UTC)I have spent the last day doing web searches on local animal shelters and cat-proof window screens, so evidence suggests another kitty is likely to happen fairly fast. Apparently it's integral to my mental health.
no subject
Date: Wednesday, 20 March 2024 02:20 pm (UTC)I second giving another kitty a home.
no subject
Date: Thursday, 21 March 2024 09:46 am (UTC)Also, apparently, fundamentally designed to exist symbiotically with a feline. I think at this point the next kitty is inevitable, by basic crazy cat lady mathematics. This house is now weird and cold and lonely.
no subject
Date: Monday, 25 March 2024 06:49 pm (UTC)