So nice to be able to see.

I had been getting a ton of fearsome headaches and tried everything to make them go away. Finally, after my daughter said she was having problems focusing up close (and getting headaches herself), I decided to make us both eye doctor appointments. Hers was easy – same prescription in both eyes, handled with off-the-rack drugstore cheaters. Me? My prescription has changed significantly in two years. Astigmatism worse, myopia better.

It had been a few years since I last had contacts, and I never tried extended wear, so I got a trial pair. Which didn’t work. So I got another trial pair, which also didn’t work. And so on. I tried every single brand of extended wear toric contacts there are, and finally when I got to the last option available, Purevision Toric, I found one that worked. I can wear them for days (technically 30) at a time. Cool. They were $70/box at the doctor, or $37/box online. Combine with a $50 rebate and I get a year supply for $100.

But one of the main reasons I’d been putting off going to the doctor is that my last pair of glasses was over $350. Welcome to presbyopia! Then tack on $100 or more for prescription sunglasses, and it’s no wonder I don’t want to go back every year. This time was different, though. Based on recommendations from Ask Metafilter and elsewhere, I took a whole bunch of measurements of my current frames and headed over to Zenni Optical to order some specs. I decided on this pair for regular and this one for sunglasses. My progressive lenses with anti-glare coating and a pair of polarized sun shade clip-ons cost $61.85. My sunglasses cost $14.90 (I paid more for non-RX sunglasses at Walgreens last week). I got both pairs less than 2 weeks after ordering.

I haven’t taken them in to get them checked for accuracy, but they feel pretty right to my eyes. The only problem I’ve had so far is a nose pad breaking, but that was my own stupid fault. One should not attempt to adjust the nose pad angle by grabbing on the nose pad and yanking. I called Zenni to see if I could order replacements and they said they would send me three pairs of pads, screws, and a tool to put them in with, all for free.

So, to sum up – between Zenni Optical and ContactLens.com, I got a year’s supply of contacts and two pairs of glasses (one progressive) for $175.

Icey wasn’t looking quite as pink and plucky this week, so we took her in for a blood check.

I haven’t updated with the previous news, which was that her red blood cell count was up in the 30s and the vet was very pleased with her progress. I thought that I might jinx it by putting the words here. Maybe I should have anyway.

Her red blood count was down a little bit, to 28. Not too bad. Her white count was high though – the vet wanted to send the blood sample to the lab. She called back the next day. “I have terrible news,” she said, and the world sank. Icey has acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Her white count was 150,000 – 130,000 of which were cancer cells. She does not recommend treatment.

“Acute lymphocytic leukemia is treated with the same protocol as lymphoma, but only ~25% of cats obtain remission. For those that obtain remission, the average length is 7 mo.” The Merck Veterinary Manual.

We just have a few weeks, if that, left with our kitty. She’s six years old and looks at least twice that. Her muscles have wasted away all over – behind her eyes, along her spine, even on her nose. A friend who hadn’t seen her in a couple of weeks was shocked at her appearance. But she’s still lying here at my side, one paw stretched out to touch me as she sleeps. I’m really going to miss her.

Quick note to say that Icey is hanging in there. The vet was more optimistic about her PCV last week (18%), and in fact thought she was doing well enough to start treatment (Atopica, a.k.a. cyclosporine) to knock down her immune system, which will keep it from attacking her bone marrow. That might giver her a chance to regenerate marrow and blood cells. As with our dog, a relapse could come at any time, so we’re treating each day as a gift. So she’s taking 6 different pills every day, and every day I get more ventilated, but that’s okay!

On the other hand, Max ended up getting up getting some sort of stomach ailment and had to spend the night on an IV at the vet getting meds and fluids. Another $700 dollars, kasplat. He had a little relapse yesterday but not as bad. What the hell did I do to anger the cat gods?

Here’s the tribute that Michelle Senderhauf and I did at this year’s ARGFest:

I spent a long day at the vet office today. It’s a specialty hospital, meaning the regular cases don’t normally go there, only the stuff that everyday vets can’t treat. Icey’s condition – aplastic anemia – certainly qualifies.

I didn’t have a good feeling going in. Icey felt feverish and she was lethargic. In the carrier she was hiding, when normally she would be wanting to see out. Maybe that’s why, despite repeating “1:30″ to myself all morning as a reminder of the appointment time, I ended up thinking at the last minute that the appointment was for 2. I ended up getting there at 1:45 – not really late, huh?

But I waited a long time. And waited some more, my dread building. I knew the test results were going to suck. When I brought her home on Monday, her PCV (packed cell volume) was 25% (normal is at least 35%) and had been stable overnight. I thought to myself, as long as it was over 20%, things would be okay. Deep down, I didn’t think it would be.

A woman came in, holding her limp Shih-Tzu. Screaming that it was an emergency. They rushed the dog to the back. The woman was in hysterics, sobbing, stomping her feet, begging her son over the phone not to tell her husband. She’d left the dog outside in the sun in the 100+ degree heat for almost an hour, and it had heatstroke. I was still waiting to see the doctor, over an hour past the original appointment time.

They walked out a yellow lab, his front legs shaved where they had had IVs and blood drawn, his side shaved where there was a wound. What a similarity there was to Cuervo, when he was sick and got attacked by a deer. The vet spoke with the dog’s owner in a hushed voice in the corner of the room. The woman quietly cried. My head pounded. Someone was calling my name, once, twice. Finally I heard. It was the doctor.

She took Icey back to draw blood. I waited again. I was getting good at this, the waiting. The sick, sour feeling in my stomach almost felt normal. I didn’t think it would take this long for a simple blood draw. Managed to play a game on my phone. Did a couple of laps around the room. Developed supernatural hearing skills to listen for steps coming down the hall. The doctor was quiet, but I heard her before she opened the door. “I can’t get any blood out of your cat,” she told me. Icey was fighting them at every turn, biting and scratching. Totally uncharacteristic of her. She was running a fever. The best thing to do would be to put her in a tank with gas for sedation. While they were at it, they could do the bone marrow aspiration we thought about doing over the weekend and get an IV catheter ready in case she needed another blood transfusion. Transfusion number three. I agreed. Left her there.

The call came when I was playing Guitar Hero with my daughter. Two different doctors tried six times to get bone marrow. She had no marrow to get. Her body had attacked it all, killed it all. Her PCV was down to 14%. Her chance of survival, even with several weeks of very aggressive treatment, is under 15%. The vet was very sorry.

They’re doing one last transfusion so Icey will feel better for a little while, and I’ll bring her home tomorrow. When she starts to feel bad again, it will be time to end her suffering.

The worst part is that I feel like I could have avoided all this if I had done more research about pet vaccination. Why didn’t I, after my dog died? The study is right there. Why do we only do one round of shots for our kids, but we vaccinate pets yearly? Studies have shown that pet vaccinations last for years. I thought that Icey just had a little granuloma from her Rabies vaccination, but that was the herald of something horrible for her and for my family. Not to mention the cost – well over $3000 so far (and over $5000 for Cuervo’s treatment).

Fighting the system in place that declares yearly vaccinations to be right and necessary is David vs. Goliath. So I’ll just comfort my kids and my other kitty and when Icey is gone, miss that funny cat who would always try to clean up messes and who would jump on the bed every night with a happy chirp.

This morning Icey was under my daughter’s bed, on her side, unmoving. My husband thought she was dead, and she nearly was. I rushed her to the emergency vet. Temperature was 90 – normal 101. Hematocrit of 4.8%, normal is 35%. Every number in her CBC is FUBAR.

They think she’s developed an autoimmune blood disorder, or she had one that was exacerbated, due to the vaccines she received earlier this month.

The exact same thing happened to my dog in 2007. He fought bravely and lost.

This is making me question the safety and sanity of pet vaccines. I’ve not even brought up the fact that I lost four cats to kidney failure in four years – and there’s a link there, too. So what’s the lesser of two evils?

Spare a thought for a sweet little kitty who likes things tidy and always keeps my elbow warm.

I have a dream every few months in which I’m sitting in an airplane. The plane always has an unusual seating configuration, not always identical, but it is wide across, and only a few rows, in a full sized plane. After we take off, there’s always trouble, from flight gear problems to full fledged crash. What on earth does that mean?

Last night I was in a plane that had maybe 10-15 people sitting across, but only about 10 rows. It was mostly empty. I was happy because I was in a bulkhead row, so I had a ton of leg room. I stuck my bag under the seat caddy corner to the left of me. The flight attendant then came on and said she needed to add a row, so she swung one into position right in front of me. We took off and developed engine trouble right after – had to land immediately. I wondered if I had accidentally left my cell phone on and caused the issue. Resolved to turn it off as subtly as possible so that nobody would arrest me.

I wasn’t really surprised when it happened. After all, I’d been having the dreams for years. A slow drift up, a kicking off, and I was afloat. Like air was water. Like I was on the moon.

Most people, when they have flying dreams, imagine themselves zipping high through the air, looking down at the ant-like specks of people below. Zooming, like a jet. Targeted. Ballistic. Not me. I dream-fly in lazy, languid arcs, a casual flick off whatever stationary object is nearby used to change my trajectory. More a low-gravity leap than flight, really.

And so the day after the night of a week’s culmination of insomniac tossings and turnings in bed, my consciousness itself was drifting in one of those lazy arcs. I felt caught between the tasks of the day and the siren song of the snippet of dream from the night before (or was it two nights ago?) – I was arm in arm with a friend, and we were skipping in long, powerful leaps across the — oops?

As I daydreamed, I tripped. As I tripped, my dream memory took over and I instinctively leapt. As I leapt, I stayed afloat in the air, wide eyed, afraid to look down in fear that I would encounter Wile E. Coyote Syndrome and reality would come, literally, crashing around my ears.

I extended a leg. Pointed it earthwards. Came drifting gracefully, if a bit wobbly, down. Looked around. Nobody notices anything in this damned city. I’m undetected for now.

So now what? I can float through the air. What sort of heroic incredible power is that? What am I supposed to use it for? I mean, something like this, I should be wearing a cape and have a fancy pseudonym and join a consortium of similarly-enhanced individuals, right? Because to be honest, all I want to do is go out on a moonlit night to the park and jump, and jump, and jump.

What’s this all about? Visit My Super First Day to find out.