Sunday, November 14, 2021

CoViD-19: UK Kids' Surges Are Warning To US, CA | Why Thieves Are After Your Catalytic Converter | Fans Come Through For Rick Lyons | Acknowledging Mortality |

 

African Gray Parrot at San Diego Zoo (Taken 11.14.21)

For the greater part of the past two years, we've all been confronted with death in one way or another. Some of us lost people to COVID-19, some of us lost loved ones or friends to other causes and couldn't attend in-person funerals, the music scene certainly lost some giants, or maybe you've just seen or heard or read a story that hit you especially hard, besides all the coverage in our average news cycle. At the moment, my dad is in hospice, but also had a long stint of non-COVID illness leading to this moment when we couldn't visit at all. I currently have three acquaintances with terminal cancer. Death sometimes feels like it's all around us. 

And so yesterday when I read that Petra Mayer- the books editor of NPR- died, it just hit me. I mean, I don't have a radio anywhere in my house and we have SiriusXM in the car so we almost never even listen to terrestrial radio. I was not familiar with her work or writing, at least not by name. But here's this woman -- my age or close -- who three days before dying was geeking out on Twitter about Doctor Who; two weeks before, she's out at a Monkees concert; a month and a half she's celebrating a new union contract, a new podcast, pictures of her cat. And now, she's dead.

Whenever I stumble across a death, I'm a doom scroller. I want to know how or why someone died, particularly for what can be considered a premature death. According to NPR, her death was due to a pulmonary embolism. Causes can include birth control, smoking, high blood pressure, surgery, heart disease, but are actually pretty common. As many as 1-2/1,000 people a year develop blood clots. And can they happen from vaccines? 

Dr. DeSancho stresses that your risk of developing a vaccine-related blood clot is no greater than the general population’s overall blood clot risk. “The risk of getting a blood clot either venous or arterial from the COVID-19 vaccines is very minimal compared to the risk in the general population,” she says...among the more than 7 million recipients of the Johnson & Johnson/Janssen vaccine, there were just six possible cases of blood clots in the brain, she explains. “The risk of complication is extremely low,” she says. - Weill Cornell Medicine (7.14.21)

So it's sad, and we have to look ourselves in the mirror. We truly never know when we're living our last day. But I'm certainly not going to waste the time I have on some jackhole calling me a fat ugly hoe on Facebook as much as he was trying to antagonize and bait me. 

Instead, I'll tell you that Darren and I had a lovely afternoon. One of our kittens had a little cyst or something that we could tell was bothering her for about a week and it was growing and she was at the point of crying if we touched her at all, so we had to take her to B Street Veterinary Hospital. They were super busy and took her in (we called first), but told us it would be more than an hour before seeing her. To kill time, he and I picked up lunch at Giorgino's, pulled out our beach mat and had a picnic at 28th Street Park. When we finished and still hadn't heard from the vets, we decided to go to the San Diego Zoo to kill time. Shortly after we arrived (scoring the very first space in the very closest row to the entrance), we got a call from the doctor. We had to talk her through where the abscess was, she told me the treatment protocol, quoted me a price. The Zoo closed at 5, and right about then she called us for pickup, saying that she found the problem, drained it, gave Magnolia some light anesthesia, an antibiotic to clear up any residual infection, and $234 later, our kitty is clearly feeling much better and sleeping off her drugs, and we can rest easy knowing that she's no longer in pain. 

I know that vets are affected by the pandemic; if you just count the sheer amounts of pandemic adoptions, business is busier than ever, but the all women's practice at B Street has now come through for us twice this summer. I never mentioned it, but shortly after we put Kiwi down, we got a condolence card from their office with her paw prints on it. They have signs on the door asking people to be patient and think about the kind of vibes they bring into the office and I really hope people take heed. We have been so pleased with the care our furry babies have been given. Appointments are backlogged for weeks, but they leave flexibility in their schedules for emergent care. And I appreciate there are no surprises after treatment. Another expense we hadn't planned for but our babies are well worth it. 

Stay safe out there. 


Posted by Rosemary Bystrak at Sunday, November 14, 2021
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