Can someone please get this black cloud away from me? We have not been having a good week.

Two days before James' asthma attack, I twisted my ankle. It was still bothering me, so I went to the doctor yesterday. Nothing is cracked or broken, but he told me to stay off of it and ice it twice a day. Yeah, right.

On Sunday, right after writing the message here, I ended up taking the cat to the vet. He had to have emergency surgery for a blocked urinary passage. The next day, I took him to my regular vet, who took the catheter out and charged me $300 to watch him. Then, he let me take him home in the afternoon, but said he wasn't sure the cat was better. The next day, my vet was only in for half a day and obviously didn't want to deal with my cat, as he kept putting me off and saying to just watch him and if he wasn't better by afternoon, I needed to take him to a different vet. So, by 4:00pm, my poor kitty was again at the vet, who felt his abdomen and said, "Oh yeah, he's gonna be with us for a few days."

Last night, James had another attack. I took him to an after-hours clinic which was able to get it under control, but I was not happy with the time they made him wait until starting a breathing treatment. They kept checking his oxygen levels, and since those were technically okay, they just let him wait until the dr was done with another patient. I had to ask if I should just take him to the ER before they took it seriously enough to get the doctor in to see him.

This morning, I had to take him to our regular doctor for a follow up. I told the doctor about last night, and he assured me that that was not proper protocol and he would be having "a little talk" with them! Anyway, they upped the dose of orapred he's taking and gave him another inhaled medicine to take. Hopefully, we can get his lungs back to normal soon. I know both of us are getting tired of this!

On the way home from the doctor, I was going to pick Striper up from the vet, only he called as we were leaving the dr, and said Striper is blocked again, and he would have to do another surgery, maybe two. When I got to the vet's office, he showed me on the x-rays what he would be doing. He really didn't think the first procedure would work, but he would try that first, then if it didn't work he would go ahead and essentially make Striper look like a girl kitty in order to make his urethra bigger so he can pass any more stones he might make. The good news that the vet gave us was that he wouldn't charge us any more money for either surgery.

So, have I had any time to put my foot up and ice my ankle? I was able to do it once so far!