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Artemis, it’s decision time…

12 January 2011 in Artemis Medical Fund, Human Nature, Personal by Stilgherrian | 66 comments

Thanks to today’s X-rays and ultrasound, we have some answers. Sadly for Artemis, the answers are not good. Not good at all.

Artermis’ left kidney is quite small, only 2.8cm long. A normal cat kidney might be 3.5 to 4.5cm. Perhaps she was born with it small, perhaps it’s been damaged later. Kidneys do shrink with some chronic problems. But either way, it’s clearly dodgy.

The right kidney is bigger, but there’s a kidney stone. It’s only 1.5mm in diameter, but we’re talking about a cat not a human. That stone is currently blocking the urethra, and perhaps a back-up of urine is inflating that kidney. It’s possible the stone has only just moved there, which could explain the reversal of Artemis’ blood results over the past few days.

“I would have thought she wouldn’t have recovered as well as she did initially with that stone there,” Dr Emily Payne at Pet Vets told me this afternoon.

Now if this were simply a kidney stone, we’d just operate and remove it. “If it was just that one kidney, the prognosis wouldn’t be too bad,” Dr Payne said. But with the other kidney clearly not right? “The outlook isn’t that great.”

Since so many people now have a stake in Artemis’ future, I’ll present the options and ask for your advice.

Read the rest of this entry »

Artemis’ kidneys are not responding

11 January 2011 in Artemis Medical Fund, Human Nature, Personal by Stilgherrian | 7 comments

Well that’s not good. With intravenous fluids reduced to 1.5x maintenance levels for two days, Artemis’ blood test results headed in the wrong direction. We now need to discover if there’s some reason for the kidneys not working other than, well, failed kidneys.

Dr Meredith Gibbs from Pet Vets phoned through the results a short time ago. Compared with the positive signs 48 hours ago, it’s “disappointing”.

Creatin levels climbed back to 690. Urea was back up to 22.7, although that’s not the worst it’s been. Red blood cell count is still low, in the mid-20s instead of the 30+ it should be in a cat — although that’s possibly just a symptom of the high fluid levels. Electrolytes are still a bit whacky.

So Artemis goes back on the 2x maintenance levels of intravenous fluids — the poor man’s dialysis — until we figure out what’s going on.

And yet, Artemis has reportedly been “even more feisty” than she was on Sunday. She’s been eating overnight, she’s interacting with staff, and she’s showing all the signs of simply being frustrated with having to be in a cage.

After consultations with a specialist at the University of Sydney, a plan has been agreed upon. Ultrasound, X-rays and attempts to culture potential infectious agents to see if there’s some treatable cause of the kidneys not working. That’ll begin tomorrow and we’ll have news of the ultrasound and X-rays around 24 hours from now.

If none of those procedures reveal anything treatable, then we’re looking at untreatable kidney failure. It may not be that. But it’s a distinct possibility, despite Artemis’ apparent external health.

As for exploring the options, there is a veterinary surgeon in Melbourne who does kidney transplants. Enquiries have been made, and we’ll see what the requirements are, but… you know… We’ll see.

Artemis’ promising blood results

09 January 2011 in Artemis Medical Fund, Human Nature, Politics by Stilgherrian | 1 comment

Artemis’ latest blood results have just been phoned through. Creatin has continued to drop, from 416 to 376, slowly moving towards the normal maximum of 212. Urea is down from 36 to 19.5, again moving steadily towards the target 12.9. Phosphorus and calcium have stabilised. Her red blood cell count is low, but that’s possibly just because she’s on such a high rate of fluids.

The decision has been made to reduce the flow of intravenous fluids down to 1.5x maintenance levels, rather than the 2x she’s been on, and see what happens over the next 48 hours. For the background to that, see the post from earlier today.

“We’re looking at the possibility we could get [her] through it,” says Dr Meredith Gibbs.

Artemis improves, but it’s early days yet

09 January 2011 in Artemis Medical Fund, Human Nature, Personal by Stilgherrian | 3 comments

I’ve just spent half an hour with Artemis, and here’s a picture. While she’s showing marked improvement, she’s still on fluids at twice the normal maintenance level to flush out any toxins — think of it as poor man’s dialysis — and it’ll still be some days yet before we really know what’s going on.

First the good news. Artemis has been eating. While she was obviously annoyed at still being connected to the drip, she was exhibiting her normal behaviours. I’m friendly, but don’t touch me. Yes, I want attention, but don’t pick me up. How can I escape from this table? How can I get my leg out of this uncomfortable bandage? This is a great sign.

However she needs to stay in this stable state without being on intravenous fluids.

As I mentioned earlier, the blood tests done on Friday afternoon showed that the enzymes associated with kidney problems had been declining, although they were still way above normal levels. Urea levels, for example, had dropped from 113 during the crisis night to 36, but they should be below 12.9. Creatin levels were at 416 on Friday, when they should be below 212. On crisis night they were so high that the measurement technique didn’t even work, even with the blood sample being diluted.

Curiously, certain blood tests showed indications of acute kidney problems, but others were associated with chronic problems.

In brief, as I discussed with Dr Meredith Gibbs today, Artemis was so profoundly ill — so near death! — that everything was very different from normal. We shouldn’t read too much into any of this, but simply take everything one step at a time.

And the next step is further blood tests this afternoon, 48 hours after the last batch. If all these enzyme levels are returning to normal, then the intravenous fluids will be reduced slowly to see what happens — to see whether Artemis’ kidneys can now sustain their function or not. If the blood tests are not showing sufficient movement towards normal today, well, she stays on the high-level fluids for another 48 hours. And then we try again.

So what’s the longer-term view?

Read the rest of this entry »

Just a quick note to say that I’ll have a full report on Artemis’ health once I’ve visited her at Pet Vets at midday Sydney time. That’s in about an hour, and I’ll post something perhaps an hour or two after that.

There was brief news from Dr Emily Payne on Friday night to say that various kidney-related enzyme levels were still high but reducing relatively quickly, which indicates both that the suspicions regarding liver disease could well be correct and that the issues may not be severe in the long term. The plan then was to keep her on fluids for another 48 hours and update the plan, which of course brings us to now. Please stand by.

09 January 2011 by Stilgherrian | No comments

About 7.30pm this evening Dr Emily Payne from Pet Vets left a voicemail with an update about Artemis: “She’s drinking a bit of water for us, and she has eaten a very small amount of food as well, so that’s good. And she’s purring when she gets a pat.”

06 January 2011 by Stilgherrian | 2 comments

Artemis is stable, diagnosis unknown

06 January 2011 in Artemis Medical Fund, Human Nature, Personal by Stilgherrian | 14 comments

“I’m so glad she’s doing well, I really didn’t know if she’d make the night,” said our vet Glen Kolenc a short time ago. And yet Artemis did make it through the night, thanks to interns Dr Helsa Teh and Dr Dharshinee Rajkumar and their team at the Sydney After-hours Veterinary Emergency Service.

“On presentation Artemis was collapsed and her gum colour was slightly muddy,” says the discharge statement. “She was given oxygen by mask and started on shock rates of intravenous fluids. Her blood pressure improved afterwards.” Artemis then spent the night in hospital on the drip, with methodone for pain relief.

While there is a lesion in her mouth which, as I explained yesterday, “could be a tumour”, the report also says that “her small kidneys and very dilute urine despite being dehydrated is suggestive of kidney disease”.

This morning, thanks to James Neave providing transport and Kate Carruthers covering the bills for now, Artemis was transferred back to our regular vets at Pet Vets, Petersham. She’s back on the drip and at the start of a few more days in hospital while tests are run and diagnoses reached.

At lunchtime Dr Emily Payne called from Pet Vets to say the first of the blood results were back. They show very marked kidney disease going on, “all kidney-related enzymes high”, “this all relates to kidneys”. And if it is kidney disease, well, it’s generally manageable long-term. It could even explain the mouth lesions: ulceration. We’ll find out more over the next few days.

However for the time being it’s mostly a matter of getting Artemis her strength back and then figuring out what’s going on. There will be uncertainty for a while, but she’s alive and now in no immediate danger.

My especial thanks to the many, many people who’ve given support, both personal and financial.

Donations have now well exceeded $2000, and this will probably cover the emergency treatment, hospitalisation and diagnoses currently scheduled. Whether further treatment is needed remains to be seen.

Of course if the mouth lesions do turn out to be cancer then we’re in for a bumpy ride. But it may not be that, and Dr Payne emphasised that at this stage we simply don’t know.

Thank you, everyone.

Right now I’m mentally exhausted, and I didn’t get much sleep last night. I will respond properly to comments in the next instalment. But for now, I’m taking a nap.

[Photo: Artemis, 30 May 2004.]

Artemis is gravely ill, generosity astounds

05 January 2011 in Artemis Medical Fund, Human Nature, Personal by Stilgherrian | 13 comments

What a week! If you were following my Twitter stream this evening, you’d already know that one of the cats, Artemis, is gravely ill tonight. She is in hospital. My cashflows are thoroughly depleted. And I am severely stressed. But I am also astounded by people’s generosity of spirit.

In writing all this, I run the risk of alienating those who want to see a supposed-professional’s website full of serious things like my media work and serious commentary, or at least mildly amusing satire, not that supposedly lowest-of-low, “cat blogging”. My good friend Nick Hodge has already written this week about professional versus personal social media projections and the risks of letting them intermingle.

But you know what? Fuck all that!

If I am to be an honest human — and I would like to think I strive to be one — then what I write about should be what is on my mind. And this is what dominates my mind today. If you don’t like it, well, stop reading now and pop back another time. Maybe next week.

And if you think less of me for writing about the personal issues that happen to be dominating my life, well, fuck you too.

So, to Artemis…

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Fine posts for 2010

31 December 2010 in Blogging, Human Nature, Politics by Stilgherrian | No comments

Since the list of most popular posts for 2010 was pretty disappointing, here’s my personal selection of eight more timeless posts for this year — listed in chronological order. Happy reading!

As usual, this does not include the material I wrote elsewhere, for Crikey, ZDNet.com.au and ABC Online. That’s all listed on my Media Output page.

  1. 50 to 50 #1: Born in Gawler, the first of what was intended to be a series of 50 posts leading up to my 50th birthday. Well, I got a few done, and you can find them in the 50 to 50 category.
  2. Internet hosting: the cost of support, the first in a series of three articles to help people understand how internet hosting services work from a small business perspective.
  3. Internet hosting: the cost of reliability. The second. Alas, the third article has not yet appeared.
  4. Why I’ve deleted my Facebook account, which is self-explanatory.
  5. Jetstar, Powderfinger to exploit fan’s enthusiasm, one of my rants against the evils of “crowdsourcing” that’s really just unpaid labour.
  6. Homophobic beat-up by Sun-Herald’s Heath Aston. Sometimes the popular stories are also the good ones.
  7. Return of the Hallucinating Goldfish: Help! Another brief piece about my little metaphor for government.
  8. Problematising the discourse: clear communication fail. A stumbled across an unfamiliar word while reading newmatilda.com, and that triggered an essay on choosing appropriate vocabulary for your audience.

You might also like to check out my personal favourites from 2009 and 2008.

Most popular posts of 2010

31 December 2010 in Blogging, Human Nature, Politics by Stilgherrian | No comments

As the first of my new-year posts, here’s a list of the most-read posts from 2010.

  1. HTC Desire to OS X tethering via USB. Hardly the most general article, but it shoes how you can attract website traffic if you have useful how-to information. Of course this article is irrelevant now that the HTC Desire runs Android 2.2, which has tethering as a built-in function.
  2. Cheap fake tan and fat thighs? Snooki! This is embarrassing, really, but I get traffic to this post because Google Images lists it as one of the first few results for “snooki fat”.
  3. ICT Election Forum: what questions? This one puzzles me. The post just mentions that the pre-election forum was happening, and I asked people to suggest questions. Maybe they’re really looking for something else.
  4. Why I’ve deleted my Facebook account, which is self-explanatory.
  5. Homophobic beat-up by Sun-Herald’s Heath Aston, about a very grubby tabloid attempt to smear a politician.
  6. Senate to re-open Bloggers versus Journalists. When I write about journalism, it usually gets retweeted heavily through media circles. It certainly makes a difference to website traffic.
  7. Jetstar, Powderfinger to exploit fan’s enthusiasm, one of my rants against the evils of “crowdsourcing” that’s really just unpaid labour.
  8. Adam Schwab’s NBN reply, which is Mr Schwab’s response to my article Adam Schwab’s NBN “analysis” arsehattery.
  9. Time to dump 20th Century “leadership”?. The main point is that you can’t just bolt some sort of “government 2.0 module” onto steam-era bureaucracies and magically bring them into the 21st Century.
  10. Selling the NBN: couldn’t you do better?. I have no idea why this, of all the things I’ve written about the National Broadband Network, was one of the most-read. It’s certainly not the best.

Just like last year, many older posts also continued to be popular. Indeed, as I worked down the website traffic report, I filled all ten slots in the non-2010 list while managing to find only two stories from the current year. Yet more proof that the more material you have on your website the more visits you’ll get. Don’t delete your old material, people!

However something that worries me is that so many of the items are listed not because people were reading the posts, but because other internet users had hot-linked to the images — that is, included them on another website — or robots attempting to post spam in the comments.

OK, the Top 10 posts of 2010 that weren’t written in 2010.

  1. 67 Australian SAS captured airbase defended by 1000 (March 2008). I think this one only makes the list because the photo keeps getting embedded in various military geek forums.
  2. Live Blog: Internet censorship forum, which is only in the list because for some reason or other it was hit heavily by the spambots. Who would read a live blog from a forum back in 2008?
  3. Julie, I want to make you a star (in a Samantha Fox kind of way) (September 2007) My ode to Julie Bishop, popular because of its photograph of Samantha Fox.
  4. Hello Kitty, you’re dead, and other surprise products (October 2007) People link to the (fake) photo of the Hello Kitty AK-47. Few seem to realise it’s a joke.
  5. Apple iPhone parodies (January 2007). Another embedded photo, I reckon. I must make sure my traffic reports filter out that stuff.
  6. Spaceport America, designed by Foster+Partners (October 2007). I’m puzzled why this one is on the list. Maybe people linking to the photos again?
  7. Live Blog: Politics & Technology Forum 2009 (February 2009). Another artefact of the spam robits, I think.
  8. The Madness of Corey Worthington Delaney (January 2008), proving once more that the lowest common denominator wins.
  9. My new hero: Hideki Moronuki (January 2008). Whenever the work of Sea Shepherd is in the news, people stumble across this post and discover that — shock horror! — I’m no a fan of that organisation.
  10. Oz soldiers design own recruitment ads (April 2007).

None of that surprises me. The most common searches which brought visitors to my website were “steve irwin jokes”, “stilgherrian”, “heath ledger jokes”, “julia gillard”, “hideki moronuki”, “snooki fat”, “sas”, “fisting”, “snooki is fat” and “hello kitty ak 47″.

You might also like to check out my own selection for what I think were the best posts from 2010, plus the lists for previous years:

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