many cats

Stanley finally got his CAT scan on Monday. Dr. Gagne’s office sent him on Friday for a blood test at Norwalk Hospital. On Monday, just before 2 p.m., we showed up at Norwalk Hospital’s Radiology Department for his test, which was a CT Angio with and without contrast of his left lower extremity ... scan with die in his left lower leg in humanspeak. Only, he wasn’t on the list.

On Friday, I heard “Norwalk Radiology” and assumed it was Norwalk Hospital Radiology. No, it was Norwalk Radiology, as in the one on East Avenue. It never occurred to me, or Stanley, that it wasn’t at the hospital, especially since Norwalk Radiology handles all the radiology at Norwalk Hospital (we’ve certainly paid them enough money to know this!) It’s a common error, I would imagine. Norwalk Radiology waited for us and took Stanley right in—we were out of there in less than 30 minutes.

Now we’re trying to find out what the results are, whether Dr. Gagne has even read the scan, and most importantly, when Stanley can get the clot removed. He cannot go back to work until it is and he’s so weary of not being able to walk without intense pain—he needs it to be taken care of this week. He regrets not insisting that it be taken care of while he was in Bridgeport Hospital—we didn’t know they wouldn’t until the evening before discharge. If we would have foreseen how difficult it would be to get it done, there’s no way Stanley would’ve left the hospital without it being fixed. We should know something on Thursday.

So much for that cat.

The past couple of days have been more like August than late June. Very hot and muggy. Very difficult to move. Even the cats didn’t move much (click the photos to enlarge them):

Slink silhouette by Lee Fleming

It was so very weird to see a cat lying on his back, legs up in the air. Slink is kind of a strange cat anyway. He’s like a tank; he doesn’t lay down, he drops. When he closes his eyes, he’s sound asleep and that could be anywhere. He makes the dishes rattle when he jumps down—a solid thump. He steals the dog’s treats and leaves Pupperoni crumbs all over my side of the bed. Twitch spent most of the day atop the Hoosier cupboard. Slink hasn’t figured out (yet) how to get up there, so Twitch can relax and keep track of everything unmolested.

Twitch on the cupboard by Lee Fleming

And here’s another photo of Slink in the window, stretching. I expected him to fall off the windowsill, but he managed not to. I’ve seen him stretch and turn and fall off the bed, a chair, the counter ...

image

There was a fairly wild storm around 9 p.m. or so, and Ginger vanished under the desk. She shook so hard she exhausted herself. Here are a couple more photos I’ve been meaning to put up. They’re from Stanley’s stay at Bridgeport Hospital. The first is of the flowers in his room—peonies and irises from my garden and a beautiful bouquet Claudia sent him. The next one is the view from his hospital room. (They’re not bars—they are blind slats.) And the third one is of Stanley on the day before he was discharged. His chest looked like there was a zipper in it.

Rx: Flowers

View from Bridgeport Hospital Telemetry room

Stanley on aortic valve 2, May 31, 2007

Right now, I’m not doing so well. I got some very bad news about a loved one’s health and it’s taking me a while to deal with it. On Monday, while I was waiting for Stanley to finish his CAT scan, I read the Lives column is the Sunday New York Times, Diminishing Returns, and it hurt to read it because I recognized the pain the author wrote about, even though she wrote about her husband and my fears were about a close relative. And the next day, my fears were confirmed. I have to write about it. But I can’t just yet—the pain is still too searing.

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