I've moved to wordpress and you can find me there at ASD, BPD and Me.
Ka Kite
Monday, 8 April 2019
Thursday, 28 March 2019
Diagnostic process
I have been feeling like I need to write for the last week or two but I have been putting it off because I have been unable to sort through the tangle of thoughts that are in my head. My mind feels like it is cluttered with so much going on but it can't focus on any one thing. Part of that is going back to work after my injury, but part is also going through the diagnostic process for ASD and what that means in relation to my past and my future, and who I am as a person.
At the beginning of December I had an accident where I fell off some rocks (boulder) while holding a child, straight on to another large boulder. My leg got trapped in the space between the two large boulders and I hit my buttock and lower back directly on the rock surface without breaking my fall as I didn't let go of the child I was holding. Unfortunately this accident led to a sprained ankle and knee, a severe hematoma stretching from lower back to upper thigh, various bruises and scrapes and a fractured spine. I spent three weeks in bed, including all through Christmas, and only went back to work on reduced hours after 12 weeks. I am four weeks in to my back to work plan now, with another week to go. Then I should be cleared for full time work again. I'm still in some pain, and still find sitting uncomfortable, but I had a cortisone injection in my spine earlier this week which seems to have helped.
All this time off, particularly the enforced bed rest, has given me a lot of time to think and reflect, to learn (mostly through pod casts as it was hard to lie in certain positions to read or watch TV) and to question. My psychologist and I had talked about ASD diagnosis for me in the past, but I had dismissed it for several reasons. I was scared that I would not get a diagnosis and the part of me that identifies with the autistic community would be squashed again. I was scared of digging in to my background, analyzing my personality and family relationships, examining who I am. I know this is what I am doing in therapy anyway, but the diagnostic process is a more intense look, particularly at childhood and particularly at what other people's impressions of your development were. I didn't want my fledgling identity destroyed by other people's ideas of who I am. I have worked hard to try and figure out who I am and I felt the skeleton I had begun to flesh out might be crushed.
However....the more I thought and learned about personal identities of all types, psychological and neurobiological theory, history - world history as well as biography of all types of people, the more I wondered about who I am and what my personal history meant. I wanted to know. I wanted confirmation, almost permission, to view myself through the lense of autism. To reframe experiences and experience 'ah-ha' moments - that's why that happened and that's why I do that. I wanted to find my community and not feel so alone anymore.
And so the diagnostic progress began. Luckily I still had almost all of my old school reports and my Plunket book (Plunket book = child development record book) which my mum filled out until I was 9 or 10 plus a couple of sporadic updates. So those went to my psychologist. Then questionaires for me - AQ and EQ which I'd done before - and RAADS-R plus the PAI, MCMI-III and TSI-2. Some of these are aimed at autism diagnosis, some at personality, trauma or clinical syndromes. My parents then filled out the RQ and we both filled out some questionaires aimed at diagnosis of females with autism. All of the results so far have showed that I am well over the threshold for diagnosis with ASD.
Then it was on to the WAIS-IV which measures cognitive ability in specific domains of intelligence. This showed my areas of strength to be vocabulary, arithmetic, and general knowledge, and my main area of weakness to be digit span, followed by letter-number sequencing. From what I can gather this means my knowledge, verbal comprehension and expression are good, but my working memory, auditory processing and attention are not so good. Interestingly enough, apart from arithmetic, my strengths and weaknesses are the same as Little G's.
Because this process has taken place over a series of weeks, and is not over yet (more information gathering, plus a developmental history appointment with my parents next week, I have been feeling rather worked up about whether I was going to receive a diagnosis and what all the test results were saying. Last week I was getting agitated towards the end of my session with my psychologist and he asked me why. I explained I was nervous about the testing and felt on edge, he said for him the ASD diagnosis was never in question, it was just that we needed to go through the process and gather all the evidence to support it. The relief that simple sentence gave me was unbelievable. But also ....there was a sadness I hadn't expected.
In the week or so since I have been doing a lot of thinking and re framing. I feel a little sad and sometimes a lot sad. Sometimes I feel like it explains all my weirdness and I can be free to be myself. But sometimes I just feel lonely and bereft and like nothing will ever get better because how can it when my brain wiring is what makes me different.
In my last session with my psychologist he gave me some further feedback from the MCMI-lll. The picture it paints is not pretty. Depressive, anxious, avoidant, aloof (schzoid), negativistic (passive-agressive), self defeating (masochistic) and extreme (borderline). Patterns of behavior I have adopted to make sense of my world and my experiences. Things I do or ways I act due to some of the things that have happened to me. These also make me feel very sad, and very defeated by life. But I understand more now about why I feel the way I do - ASD and sensory issues, plus what looks to me like some attachment problems, causing maladaptive behavioural patterns. I'll admit, there are more maladaptive behaviours than I had imagined, and they confirm my picture of myself as someone damaged, broken, unworthy. But I guess knowing is the first step to improving my psychological state, and accepting myself as someone with autism. And in some ways it feels like validation for the shit that goes on in my head and my struggle to cope with "normal" life.
It feels like I am a long way from a place of peace but at least I can see there is a road now.
Ka Kite
At the beginning of December I had an accident where I fell off some rocks (boulder) while holding a child, straight on to another large boulder. My leg got trapped in the space between the two large boulders and I hit my buttock and lower back directly on the rock surface without breaking my fall as I didn't let go of the child I was holding. Unfortunately this accident led to a sprained ankle and knee, a severe hematoma stretching from lower back to upper thigh, various bruises and scrapes and a fractured spine. I spent three weeks in bed, including all through Christmas, and only went back to work on reduced hours after 12 weeks. I am four weeks in to my back to work plan now, with another week to go. Then I should be cleared for full time work again. I'm still in some pain, and still find sitting uncomfortable, but I had a cortisone injection in my spine earlier this week which seems to have helped.
All this time off, particularly the enforced bed rest, has given me a lot of time to think and reflect, to learn (mostly through pod casts as it was hard to lie in certain positions to read or watch TV) and to question. My psychologist and I had talked about ASD diagnosis for me in the past, but I had dismissed it for several reasons. I was scared that I would not get a diagnosis and the part of me that identifies with the autistic community would be squashed again. I was scared of digging in to my background, analyzing my personality and family relationships, examining who I am. I know this is what I am doing in therapy anyway, but the diagnostic process is a more intense look, particularly at childhood and particularly at what other people's impressions of your development were. I didn't want my fledgling identity destroyed by other people's ideas of who I am. I have worked hard to try and figure out who I am and I felt the skeleton I had begun to flesh out might be crushed.
However....the more I thought and learned about personal identities of all types, psychological and neurobiological theory, history - world history as well as biography of all types of people, the more I wondered about who I am and what my personal history meant. I wanted to know. I wanted confirmation, almost permission, to view myself through the lense of autism. To reframe experiences and experience 'ah-ha' moments - that's why that happened and that's why I do that. I wanted to find my community and not feel so alone anymore.
And so the diagnostic progress began. Luckily I still had almost all of my old school reports and my Plunket book (Plunket book = child development record book) which my mum filled out until I was 9 or 10 plus a couple of sporadic updates. So those went to my psychologist. Then questionaires for me - AQ and EQ which I'd done before - and RAADS-R plus the PAI, MCMI-III and TSI-2. Some of these are aimed at autism diagnosis, some at personality, trauma or clinical syndromes. My parents then filled out the RQ and we both filled out some questionaires aimed at diagnosis of females with autism. All of the results so far have showed that I am well over the threshold for diagnosis with ASD.
Then it was on to the WAIS-IV which measures cognitive ability in specific domains of intelligence. This showed my areas of strength to be vocabulary, arithmetic, and general knowledge, and my main area of weakness to be digit span, followed by letter-number sequencing. From what I can gather this means my knowledge, verbal comprehension and expression are good, but my working memory, auditory processing and attention are not so good. Interestingly enough, apart from arithmetic, my strengths and weaknesses are the same as Little G's.
Because this process has taken place over a series of weeks, and is not over yet (more information gathering, plus a developmental history appointment with my parents next week, I have been feeling rather worked up about whether I was going to receive a diagnosis and what all the test results were saying. Last week I was getting agitated towards the end of my session with my psychologist and he asked me why. I explained I was nervous about the testing and felt on edge, he said for him the ASD diagnosis was never in question, it was just that we needed to go through the process and gather all the evidence to support it. The relief that simple sentence gave me was unbelievable. But also ....there was a sadness I hadn't expected.
In the week or so since I have been doing a lot of thinking and re framing. I feel a little sad and sometimes a lot sad. Sometimes I feel like it explains all my weirdness and I can be free to be myself. But sometimes I just feel lonely and bereft and like nothing will ever get better because how can it when my brain wiring is what makes me different.
In my last session with my psychologist he gave me some further feedback from the MCMI-lll. The picture it paints is not pretty. Depressive, anxious, avoidant, aloof (schzoid), negativistic (passive-agressive), self defeating (masochistic) and extreme (borderline). Patterns of behavior I have adopted to make sense of my world and my experiences. Things I do or ways I act due to some of the things that have happened to me. These also make me feel very sad, and very defeated by life. But I understand more now about why I feel the way I do - ASD and sensory issues, plus what looks to me like some attachment problems, causing maladaptive behavioural patterns. I'll admit, there are more maladaptive behaviours than I had imagined, and they confirm my picture of myself as someone damaged, broken, unworthy. But I guess knowing is the first step to improving my psychological state, and accepting myself as someone with autism. And in some ways it feels like validation for the shit that goes on in my head and my struggle to cope with "normal" life.
It feels like I am a long way from a place of peace but at least I can see there is a road now.
Ka Kite
Tuesday, 12 March 2019
Searching for Meaning
I have been off work for 3 months following an accident in early December where I fractured my spine, sprained my ankle and knee, and ended up with a severe hematoma from my lower back to my upper thigh. While I've been off work I've listened to a lot of pod casts on all sorts of topics, as especially initially it was one of the only things I could do while lying down that didn't cause me discomfort. This has led to a lot of thinking and reflecting on my life and who I am, and what I want from being here. I feel like I am searching for something but I don't know what it is which makes it very hard to find! It's like there's something floating around in the ether, just out of my view but every time I try to focus on it, it slips away.
One of the topics I have approached from many directions is the idea of meaning, and that if you focus on the meaning in life you are more likely to be happy. Happiness is a seductive concept for someone who spends a lot of time depressed so of course the idea that finding meaning can help you feel happier holds a lot of hope for me.
So what is meaning? To me, finding meaning is about finding purpose. Why am I here? What should I do with my life? Is there a point to anything I do? My brain, especially in depressed/low mood state often answers this question with 'no'. That there is no point as my life is fleeting in the grand sweep of humanity, and within 4 generations (if I'm lucky, 2 or 3 if I'm not!) I will be all but forgotten. Mexican people believe that there are "three deaths" - the first when you physically die, the second when you are laid to rest, and the third when you are forgotten. If all of life is a march toward certain death, then what should that journey be filled with?
I have always been fascinated with the various religions and cultural beliefs surrounding death, and with death itself. I know I am not alone in this, my quick google search on just the word death brought up more than 3.3 billion results! There is much written on the fear of death, and the glory of death, but I am more interested in how to be comfortable with the knowledge life is fleeting and that this doesn't mean there is no point to being happy.
When I write this it seems obvious that we should live to be happy if life is fleeting. Which is what I understand the central tenant of hedonism to be - that if life is a flash in the pan of humanity then it should be lived to maximise pleasure and minimise pain. That self gratification is the only sensible purpose of a life that may be cut short at any minute. A 'you only live once' philosophy. So I explored the concept that I could live focusing on what would give me the most pleasure, only to 'run in to' my ethics and values, which were dictating to me that I could only be happy if I was not hurting anyone else (or at least minimising that pain) while pursuing my own ends.
So then I explored what it might look like to live your life devoted to a cause you believed passionately in. There are many examples of people like this, from ancient times forward. These people fascinate me and I admire a great many of them. What I found though is that you can be passionate about a cause and dedicate your life to it, and cause other people great pain at the same time. Some times people are so focused on achieving whatever it is they believe to be the greatest good that they are prepared to sacrifice a great deal to achieve their goal/s. Great dictators spring to mind here.
I read, listened and explored all sorts of events and ideologies from here. From the Crusades, to struggles for independence in various countries, socialism and communism, facism, the French and Russian revolutions, terrorism, the stolen generation, various wars, Vikings, the Underground Railroad, NZ history, Chinese dynasties, stories of shipwreck and tragedy and exploration....you get the idea. Anything I could get my hands on about the history of the world and it's people I read and listened to.
And I learned that life is a paradox. There is not one truth. All sorts of contradictory and utterly illogical points of view can exist at the same time, and be at least partly right from various perspectives. People view the same event from different angles, using their unique perspective to decide what is acceptable and not, to them. An individual's perspective is influenced by biology and genetics and life experiences, but also culture, world events, religion, the pervading ideas and government of the time. Their genetics may cause them to be more or less interested, or more or less involved in events of their time, but sometimes there is just accident or coincidence, or being in the right (or wrong) place at the time when something impactful is happening.
So all this brings me back to me. What is my purpose? What do I believe in? For, as many revolutionaries as there are out there, there are just as many people like me struggling to make sense of it all.
I remembered listening to the hedonism podcast and the research I had done, months ago, on that ideology. For some reason it had stuck in my mind and of all the concepts and things I have learnt, that one continues to fascinate me. I'd also heard about a short, non controlled, study done where researchers gave participants a camera to record 10-12 photos over the space of a week of the things that gave their life meaning. And from that they discovered that where people were physically involved in the things that gave their life meaning (by taking pictures, as opposed to talking about them), there was a discernible increase in happiness levels. The reason this study interests me, and why I have related it to the theory of hedonism, is that when I think about the things that give my life meaning, these are also the things that bring me pleasure.
At this stage I need to do more research on the items that bring my life meaning, as I've only been able to come up with a couple. I feel stuck on this issue, so I'm going to go back and do some more research all the different types of Hedonism (and surprisingly there are at least 7 types), and the related philosophies, to see if I can figure out meaning and it's relation to me.
And I wonder - this is a passing thought at this stage - whether my attraction to the concept of Hedonism is due to my tendency to think in dichotomy, and push away any pain I feel as 'bad' using self harming behaviors......
One of the topics I have approached from many directions is the idea of meaning, and that if you focus on the meaning in life you are more likely to be happy. Happiness is a seductive concept for someone who spends a lot of time depressed so of course the idea that finding meaning can help you feel happier holds a lot of hope for me.
So what is meaning? To me, finding meaning is about finding purpose. Why am I here? What should I do with my life? Is there a point to anything I do? My brain, especially in depressed/low mood state often answers this question with 'no'. That there is no point as my life is fleeting in the grand sweep of humanity, and within 4 generations (if I'm lucky, 2 or 3 if I'm not!) I will be all but forgotten. Mexican people believe that there are "three deaths" - the first when you physically die, the second when you are laid to rest, and the third when you are forgotten. If all of life is a march toward certain death, then what should that journey be filled with?
I have always been fascinated with the various religions and cultural beliefs surrounding death, and with death itself. I know I am not alone in this, my quick google search on just the word death brought up more than 3.3 billion results! There is much written on the fear of death, and the glory of death, but I am more interested in how to be comfortable with the knowledge life is fleeting and that this doesn't mean there is no point to being happy.
When I write this it seems obvious that we should live to be happy if life is fleeting. Which is what I understand the central tenant of hedonism to be - that if life is a flash in the pan of humanity then it should be lived to maximise pleasure and minimise pain. That self gratification is the only sensible purpose of a life that may be cut short at any minute. A 'you only live once' philosophy. So I explored the concept that I could live focusing on what would give me the most pleasure, only to 'run in to' my ethics and values, which were dictating to me that I could only be happy if I was not hurting anyone else (or at least minimising that pain) while pursuing my own ends.
So then I explored what it might look like to live your life devoted to a cause you believed passionately in. There are many examples of people like this, from ancient times forward. These people fascinate me and I admire a great many of them. What I found though is that you can be passionate about a cause and dedicate your life to it, and cause other people great pain at the same time. Some times people are so focused on achieving whatever it is they believe to be the greatest good that they are prepared to sacrifice a great deal to achieve their goal/s. Great dictators spring to mind here.
I read, listened and explored all sorts of events and ideologies from here. From the Crusades, to struggles for independence in various countries, socialism and communism, facism, the French and Russian revolutions, terrorism, the stolen generation, various wars, Vikings, the Underground Railroad, NZ history, Chinese dynasties, stories of shipwreck and tragedy and exploration....you get the idea. Anything I could get my hands on about the history of the world and it's people I read and listened to.
And I learned that life is a paradox. There is not one truth. All sorts of contradictory and utterly illogical points of view can exist at the same time, and be at least partly right from various perspectives. People view the same event from different angles, using their unique perspective to decide what is acceptable and not, to them. An individual's perspective is influenced by biology and genetics and life experiences, but also culture, world events, religion, the pervading ideas and government of the time. Their genetics may cause them to be more or less interested, or more or less involved in events of their time, but sometimes there is just accident or coincidence, or being in the right (or wrong) place at the time when something impactful is happening.
So all this brings me back to me. What is my purpose? What do I believe in? For, as many revolutionaries as there are out there, there are just as many people like me struggling to make sense of it all.
I remembered listening to the hedonism podcast and the research I had done, months ago, on that ideology. For some reason it had stuck in my mind and of all the concepts and things I have learnt, that one continues to fascinate me. I'd also heard about a short, non controlled, study done where researchers gave participants a camera to record 10-12 photos over the space of a week of the things that gave their life meaning. And from that they discovered that where people were physically involved in the things that gave their life meaning (by taking pictures, as opposed to talking about them), there was a discernible increase in happiness levels. The reason this study interests me, and why I have related it to the theory of hedonism, is that when I think about the things that give my life meaning, these are also the things that bring me pleasure.
At this stage I need to do more research on the items that bring my life meaning, as I've only been able to come up with a couple. I feel stuck on this issue, so I'm going to go back and do some more research all the different types of Hedonism (and surprisingly there are at least 7 types), and the related philosophies, to see if I can figure out meaning and it's relation to me.
And I wonder - this is a passing thought at this stage - whether my attraction to the concept of Hedonism is due to my tendency to think in dichotomy, and push away any pain I feel as 'bad' using self harming behaviors......
Wednesday, 6 February 2019
Emo April 2002 - 3 Feb 2019
I'm struggling with my grief for Emo, although I know it's early days yet. The first day was the hardest as everywhere I looked there were reminders that she wasn't there. The empty food bowl, the water bowl in the bottom of the shower. No Emo in the kitchen while I'm cooking or making breakfast, meowing when I take the milk out of the fridge. No one following when I get the mail or sitting with me when I'm having my lunch or reading my book. Flashes of memories keep coming to me so I thought I'd record them while they are still so clear. It's one of my greatest fears that I will forget. Not the love I had for her, but that the specifics of the memories will fade. Having had two grandparents with Alzheimers/dementia, and a cat, plus another grandparent in early stages of dementia, one of my worries is forgetting things. So I am mostly recording these for me, and in no particular order:
- Her long long tail and big feet, which seemed out of all proportion to her kitten body when we brought her home.
- One of her back paws/legs was perfectly half black and half ginger even though she was a tabby. Looking at her from behind it was almost like a line up a the middle, one side black and the other ginger.
- She liked to climb on the clothes airier when she was a kitten - it looked like she was using it as a jungle gym.
- She would snuggle up to my ex-husband B a lot as he spent a lot of time in bed.
- Emo was an excellent hunter, and when she was younger she always brought in her latest catch and put it by my side of the bed.
- If I got meat out to defrost and left it on the bench she would jump up and eat it out of the plastic. I had to put things on a plate in the microwave so that didn't happen.
- When she was a kitten she sat on my shoulder while I studied. When she got too old to sit on my shoulder she liked to sit on my knee or the desk. In the last year when I worked from home she sat on a cushion next to me, or on a blanket in the document destruction box.
- We got a dog when she was about 8 or 9. She was terrified and ran away for 4 days. My heart broke and I took the dog back. I loved her too much to put her through being scared in her own home for my own reasons.
- She was very gentle and tolerant. G loved to pick her up and cuddle her, and only after extreme amounts of this attention would she growl at G and flick her tail. She never once bit her, though G did get a few scratches for not obeying the warning growl.
- The only time I ever saw her take an interest in the TV was when I watched "The Secret Life of Cats". She sat close to the TV with her ears pricked up like she was watching. I was sure she must have seen or heard something she understood.
- She was happy to be with us, and was very flexible around where that was. Due to various mental health issues in the last 5 years, and life stuff before that, G and I have spent periods of a week to 6 weeks staying at my Mum & Dad's. She came along on these stays and never objected to having a new house temporarily. Her and my parent's cat tolerated each other reasonably well and stayed out of each other's way.
- Emo handled car trips well and in recent years I never bothered with a box or cage to take her to the vet. I would just put her on a blanket in the front passenger seat next to me and she'd look out the window, and then settle on the seat or in the foot well.
- At our last trip to the vets in June 18 I just held her wrapped in a blanket in the waiting room and she was quite calm. Wide eyed but never tried to get down or run away. Her heart beat a little faster but she was happy for me to hold her and comfort her.
- Emo liked to climb on the roof of the Nissan Tiida I had, while it was parked in the garage and then up onto the storage shelf area. There was a box of out of season clothes that had a collapsed lip so she would sleep in it. Sometimes I would need to go out and put the garage door down, which would have meant she couldn't get down, but she'd refuse to get down. A couple of times I was late for work because the cat wouldn't climb down from her hiding spot!
- If I left the windows down in the car she would climb in a curl up on the drivers seat, or occasionally in the back passenger foot well. When she was starting to get dementia she'd forget how to get back out of the car and I'd have to go and rescue her.
- She liked to sit at the table with G and I for breakfast and dinner. She'd climb up on the chair next to me and sit waiting until I'd finished, and then switch table sides and sit next to G hopefully, waiting to see if she'd get scraps.
- If there was a drawer left open, chances are Emo would climb into it. Open the wardrobe or shed and she'd go in. She loved to get into the airing cupboard and sit next to the hot water cylinder on the clean warm washing. She would even climb into kitchen cupboards and over all my pots and pans exploring.
- When I gardened she would grab weeds or plants as they moved and want to play fight with me.
- She loved to chase after the palm tree fronds that fell down. Especially when she was younger she was very playful and happy to play lots of chasing games with sticks and bits of plant, or her toys. As an older cat she would still like to chase after toys thrown in the air for her.
- Pegs and towels were two of her favourite play things. She would pull pegs off the clothes airier so the clothes fell down, and throw the pegs up in the air and chase them and chew on them. Towels she liked to roll on and grab then play fight with her teeth and feet. Her feet looked like a kangaroo's back legs when she was doing this kicking move on the towel with them.
- Sometimes she forgot to put her tongue back in when she was giving herself a bath :-) she'd have this little pink bit of tongue poking out, it was so cute.
- She would sometimes lick me if I'd been scratching under her chin or patting her just right. It was a little sign of affection when she was especially happy.
- She loved to snuggle but she was not one for sitting on my knee. I move around a lot, and even in bed I don't spend much time staying still. She would sit next to me on her blankie, or on the footstool in between my feet, but very rarely on my knee.
- She liked to sit on G's knee though, and often G would cover herself in Emo's blanket and sit crossed legged with Emo between her knees. It was G's favourite way of stalling her bedtime - "I can't move, the cat's just sat down/got comfortable/will get upset".
- She had a particular place she liked to lie in my bed - always on the side of me closest to the edge of the bed. I often had to lie closer to the center of the bed so the cat could stretch out as she pushed me further away from the edge.
- A lot of the time in the last couple of years she'd lie right up level with my head, sometimes with her head on my pillow or resting on my arm. In winter she liked to snuggle under the covers in the little crook between my tummy and legs when I was sleeping on my side.
- In winter she'd go out to hunt in the night and come back to bed covered in dirt and paw at the covers to be let back under to warm up.
- When she wanted to wake me up she'd tap on the wall with her claws just out enough to make a scratching sound without actually scratching the wall. That got me out of bed pretty quick. Or she'd tap on the covers of books next to the bed.
- She loved the rustling noise of a plastic bag. If I had one on the floor in my room she'd spend ages playing with it, sometimes getting fully inside it.
- Sometimes she was naughty and teased the neighbour's dog by sitting right next to the fence just out of her reach. The dog would get worked up knowing she was there but just out of reach.
- In the winter she liked me to open and close the doors for her constantly. She had a cat door, she just preferred the human door opener to do it :-)
- Often it seemed like you'd just let her out one door and then she'd run around the house to the other door and you'd have to get up again to let her in. Then she'd walk straight through and want to go out the other door again!
- She was very good at letting me know if she wanted to go in or out. She would tap on the glass or the door and meow. Some of the doors don't latch very well so she'd push against them and let herself through.
- For the first three or four years of her life she couldn't meow. She'd make the face but no noise would come out. It was bizzare. You'd look at her and know she was trying to communicate but no noise happened. She also didn't purr during that time either. I don't remember when this changed but she certainly didn't have this problem in her later years!
- When she developed deafness and dementia it was the strange sounding high pitched yowling that alerted me to something being wrong. She started doing this really horrible yowl - at first it was only occasionally, then several times a week, and gradually got worse. It was like she was confused or couldn't find something. At first she responded to you calling her name when she did it but later she stopped.
I'm not really finished recording my memories and I'm sure I'll think of more but for now I need to get some sleep.
Ka Kite
Sunday, 3 February 2019
A tribute to my cat Emo
Our much loved 16 year old cat Emo crossed the rainbow bridge this morning. I miss her so much already and keep expecting to see her in all her usual spots. I am devastated and feel like I've been punched in the gut. I know logically I made the right decision but the sadness is overwhelming. So much worse than I thought it would be, and I knew it would be bad.
Emo has had a couple of bad weeks and on Friday I had to make the decision to put her down, and I booked the appointment for today (Sunday). Yesterday (Saturday) she had a really bad morning, one of the worst she's had. She wandered around agitated and upset, crying. We could hear her in the back yard and Little G went out to find her and bring her in - there's no point calling her as she'd become completely deaf recently. Emo was up on the trampoline, which she used to do all the time but hasn't for a while. She was stuck, lost, inside the safety netting, unable to find the door she'd come through. Even after G picked her up and brought her in she continued to wander and cry, and she was looking straight through us as though she had no idea who we were. I knew then that I had made the right choice. She was confused and distressed and it was so upsetting for all of us (me, G and the cat).
However, after a few hours she settled a bit and the rest of the day she followed me from room to room, interested as always in what I was doing. G and I treated her to lots of pats and cuddles, milk (she loved milk but it was a rare treat) and some puree treats she loved. In the afternoon I brushed her which she loved and she purred and purred. Then I had G help me try and get some paw prints from her.
The paw prints were an absolute disaster. I used non toxic tempura paint and though she was initially relatively co-operative, I couldn't get a clear print on the paper. Many of them were just paint splodges. Her patience ran out after a short time while G and I persevered, trying to get a good print. Then we discovered all three of us were stuck in the bathroom! We'd been having trouble with the bathroom door handle and while we were in there it latched and jammed. So after a bit of a kerfuffle G unlatched the security stay and I had to climb out the window.
Emo took it all in her stride, laying on the handtowel that had fallen on the floor and relaxing while G and I maneuvered ourselves. She was always happiest when she was with us, no matter what we were doing. My Dad came over and took the handle off and door jamb out and freed Emo and G. None of the paw prints are exactly perfect and many have bits of cat fur stuck to them, but they are from her and we will treasure them. It was certainly an experience I won't forget.
Her usual wandering and crying at dinner time and into the evening didn't manifest itself last night and we were able to enjoy cuddles with her on the couch. After a night spent cuddled up with me in my bed, I started to question whether we needed to let go of her so soon and was very close to cancelling. I mentioned this to Little G and she said something I thought was very wise - that she was upset a lot and very confused and was not going to get better. And that if we put it off today we would only be prolonging the decision, wondering if this week she was worse and we should do it now.
It was so hard to spend our last morning with her, knowing we were taking her to the vet soon to end her life. She had her normal breakfast, plus milk and a puree treat. Then my Mum arrived and I told her I wanted to back out, that I didn't know if I could go through with it. She didn't want to advise me on what to do but told me the vet would know what was right.
So Emo got into the cage with her favourite blanket of G's and we drove to the vets. She was very quiet, no meows of distress at all. I expressed my concerns to the vet and she told me what Gabrielle had, that we would be back within a week to a month anyway, that Emo was declining and was experiencing significant distress. I couldn't put her through another month of confusion and distress to spare me and G the pain of putting her down, and I felt that would also be unfair to G (age 10) as I had mentally prepared her (and myself for the death).
The vet nurse and vet were very kind. We had one last cuddle and then we were patting her as she lay on the blanket she loved of G's. She was purring as she left this world.
My heart broke. I couldn't believe she was gone just like that. I wanted to hold and cuddle her some more and tell her how sorry I was and that everything was going to be alright, but it was too late. I hope that her purring meant that she knew what was happening and she was trying to tell us it was ok.
Coming home was awful. I expected to see her on the driveway, where she would wait for us and greet us when we got home. Or just inside the front door, where she often sat waiting. Or curled up on my bed in a patch of sunlight. But she wasn't there. Everywhere I look I see signs of her. Her special blankie. Her second favourite blankie. The footstool she loved to curl up on. Her toys and her bowl. Her water bowl in the base of the shower. I keep expecting to hear her claws tapping on the toilet door and her meowing for me while I'm in there. Or her to jump into the airing cupboard when I open the door, as she loved to curl up by the hot water cylinder. I went to hang washing out and there was no Emo following behind me and scratching in the garden or curling up in the shade in the dirt while she waited for me. I sat on the couch and there was no Emo next to me. My heart breaks every time I expect her to be somewhere and she's not there. I couldn't eat lunch because every day for the last two months I have sat outside on my chair and she's sat next to me while I've eaten, sometimes sharing yummy bits with me.
We went through photos of her on the computer. Over the last two years I have taken a lot of photos of her. Partly because it's easy on my iphone, the camera is always there. And partly because I started to sense our time with her was becoming limited and I wanted to capture every moment, every little quirk. She was at my side or G's a lot of the time - I have so many pictures to treasure of her cuddled up to my dearest daughter purring away, and sitting next to me on the couch or at my desk. She sat on my knee at my desk many days over winter while I worked from home, or on her cushion or on a blanket in the document destruction basket. While I have been off work for 2 months on ACC she has kept me company, both in bed and at my feet while I've pottered around the house.
She has been my best friend for such a long time that I can't picture my life without her in it. I miss her so much. I am so grateful for the time we had but I am overwhelmed with the pain of losing her. She was cute and cuddly, gentle and quirky, emotional sometimes (especially in the last few years) and she loved being around us. She has comforted me through some of the toughest times in my life, and celebrated the best ones. She gave her love unconditionally and she displayed that love for me and my daughter in so many ways. She will be forever in my heart and I am so grateful to her for sharing our lives. I love her so much and I know G does too. Many tears have been shed already and I am sure there are more to come, though I am not sure she would appreciate that. I will hold on to that memory of her purring at the end and hope that she knew how much we loved her and how hard it was to let her go.
I love you my darling Momo. Go gently into the light and know that we will miss you and love you so much.
Emo has had a couple of bad weeks and on Friday I had to make the decision to put her down, and I booked the appointment for today (Sunday). Yesterday (Saturday) she had a really bad morning, one of the worst she's had. She wandered around agitated and upset, crying. We could hear her in the back yard and Little G went out to find her and bring her in - there's no point calling her as she'd become completely deaf recently. Emo was up on the trampoline, which she used to do all the time but hasn't for a while. She was stuck, lost, inside the safety netting, unable to find the door she'd come through. Even after G picked her up and brought her in she continued to wander and cry, and she was looking straight through us as though she had no idea who we were. I knew then that I had made the right choice. She was confused and distressed and it was so upsetting for all of us (me, G and the cat).
However, after a few hours she settled a bit and the rest of the day she followed me from room to room, interested as always in what I was doing. G and I treated her to lots of pats and cuddles, milk (she loved milk but it was a rare treat) and some puree treats she loved. In the afternoon I brushed her which she loved and she purred and purred. Then I had G help me try and get some paw prints from her.
The paw prints were an absolute disaster. I used non toxic tempura paint and though she was initially relatively co-operative, I couldn't get a clear print on the paper. Many of them were just paint splodges. Her patience ran out after a short time while G and I persevered, trying to get a good print. Then we discovered all three of us were stuck in the bathroom! We'd been having trouble with the bathroom door handle and while we were in there it latched and jammed. So after a bit of a kerfuffle G unlatched the security stay and I had to climb out the window.
Emo took it all in her stride, laying on the handtowel that had fallen on the floor and relaxing while G and I maneuvered ourselves. She was always happiest when she was with us, no matter what we were doing. My Dad came over and took the handle off and door jamb out and freed Emo and G. None of the paw prints are exactly perfect and many have bits of cat fur stuck to them, but they are from her and we will treasure them. It was certainly an experience I won't forget.
Her usual wandering and crying at dinner time and into the evening didn't manifest itself last night and we were able to enjoy cuddles with her on the couch. After a night spent cuddled up with me in my bed, I started to question whether we needed to let go of her so soon and was very close to cancelling. I mentioned this to Little G and she said something I thought was very wise - that she was upset a lot and very confused and was not going to get better. And that if we put it off today we would only be prolonging the decision, wondering if this week she was worse and we should do it now.
It was so hard to spend our last morning with her, knowing we were taking her to the vet soon to end her life. She had her normal breakfast, plus milk and a puree treat. Then my Mum arrived and I told her I wanted to back out, that I didn't know if I could go through with it. She didn't want to advise me on what to do but told me the vet would know what was right.
So Emo got into the cage with her favourite blanket of G's and we drove to the vets. She was very quiet, no meows of distress at all. I expressed my concerns to the vet and she told me what Gabrielle had, that we would be back within a week to a month anyway, that Emo was declining and was experiencing significant distress. I couldn't put her through another month of confusion and distress to spare me and G the pain of putting her down, and I felt that would also be unfair to G (age 10) as I had mentally prepared her (and myself for the death).
The vet nurse and vet were very kind. We had one last cuddle and then we were patting her as she lay on the blanket she loved of G's. She was purring as she left this world.
My heart broke. I couldn't believe she was gone just like that. I wanted to hold and cuddle her some more and tell her how sorry I was and that everything was going to be alright, but it was too late. I hope that her purring meant that she knew what was happening and she was trying to tell us it was ok.
Coming home was awful. I expected to see her on the driveway, where she would wait for us and greet us when we got home. Or just inside the front door, where she often sat waiting. Or curled up on my bed in a patch of sunlight. But she wasn't there. Everywhere I look I see signs of her. Her special blankie. Her second favourite blankie. The footstool she loved to curl up on. Her toys and her bowl. Her water bowl in the base of the shower. I keep expecting to hear her claws tapping on the toilet door and her meowing for me while I'm in there. Or her to jump into the airing cupboard when I open the door, as she loved to curl up by the hot water cylinder. I went to hang washing out and there was no Emo following behind me and scratching in the garden or curling up in the shade in the dirt while she waited for me. I sat on the couch and there was no Emo next to me. My heart breaks every time I expect her to be somewhere and she's not there. I couldn't eat lunch because every day for the last two months I have sat outside on my chair and she's sat next to me while I've eaten, sometimes sharing yummy bits with me.
We went through photos of her on the computer. Over the last two years I have taken a lot of photos of her. Partly because it's easy on my iphone, the camera is always there. And partly because I started to sense our time with her was becoming limited and I wanted to capture every moment, every little quirk. She was at my side or G's a lot of the time - I have so many pictures to treasure of her cuddled up to my dearest daughter purring away, and sitting next to me on the couch or at my desk. She sat on my knee at my desk many days over winter while I worked from home, or on her cushion or on a blanket in the document destruction basket. While I have been off work for 2 months on ACC she has kept me company, both in bed and at my feet while I've pottered around the house.
She has been my best friend for such a long time that I can't picture my life without her in it. I miss her so much. I am so grateful for the time we had but I am overwhelmed with the pain of losing her. She was cute and cuddly, gentle and quirky, emotional sometimes (especially in the last few years) and she loved being around us. She has comforted me through some of the toughest times in my life, and celebrated the best ones. She gave her love unconditionally and she displayed that love for me and my daughter in so many ways. She will be forever in my heart and I am so grateful to her for sharing our lives. I love her so much and I know G does too. Many tears have been shed already and I am sure there are more to come, though I am not sure she would appreciate that. I will hold on to that memory of her purring at the end and hope that she knew how much we loved her and how hard it was to let her go.
I love you my darling Momo. Go gently into the light and know that we will miss you and love you so much.
Emo part 2
As I mentioned in my previous post, I feel like Emo and I grew up together. I got her when I was with my ex-husband, just after we'd moved in together. I was 20, navigating life as a extramural student and working part time. Emo and I spent lots of time together in those early years while I studied from home.
She used to sit on my shoulder, or on my knee while I worked. Every day when I left to walk to work she'd escape the house the minute I put the key in the door and run down the footpath after me - she wanted to come too! She would hide every time I turned around, and run away from me if I went back to catch her and take her home. Some days I'd have to put her back inside 3 or 4 times before she'd give up following. It must have looked so funny - me walking down the road with the cat stalking me and hiding every time I turned around. Me chasing the cat and putting her back, then trying to run away quickly before she escaped again.
When she was about 2 or 3 she got into a massive fight and ripped the side of her face open. Many stitches later (her ear to her chin) and it got infected as she kept slipping out of the cone of shame. That wound got recleaned and restitched twice, with the whole episode costing over $1,000 - and that was 13 years ago, and I was a poor student!
She slipped out of every collar I brought her and I gave up after I saw her pulling the 6th one off by hooking a low branch under it, pulling down on with her neck and backing out of it.
Emo was an amazing hunter, keeping me in regular supply of mice, birds and rats. Sometimes several in one night.
She adopted my sister when she moved in with us - and her footstool. E's red footstool was her absolute favorite thing in the world and she'd sneakily wait till E got up from the couch and come running to claim the footstool, then refuse to move when E came back.
When she was 6 I had a baby and she wasn't pleased in the slightest. She thought she deserved more attention than the baby did, and she didn't like the noise the baby made. It didn't take her long to work out how to use that to her advantage though. If I wasn't feeding her fast enough or giving her enough love she'd go into the baby's room and howl loudly right next to the cot - that sure got me running!
She grew to like and then to love Little G though, especially in the winter when Little G cozies up in bed early and Emo could go and join her. She would spend some nights going to bed with G and snuggling, then switching beds to me when I went to bed. Cuddling up to me under the sheets to get right to the warmth.
Emo has always been a velcro cat, glued to my side, always interested in what I was doing and keeping me company while I was doing it. She 'helped' with various gardening and DIY tasks, computer work, writing, reading, cleaning the car, even checking the mail. She sat in the bathroom every morning on my PJ's while I had a shower, and she was with me every night when I checked the house was locked up. She would often come out of the house to say goodbye in the morning, and be waiting on the patio or the driveway most days when I got home. She would remind me every night about 10pm when it was time for bed, though she was quite happy to go back to sleep on the couch or the footstool if I wasn't going.
A few years ago she lost her tail in a freak accident. She was following me as usual, while I got the bins in. I took them through the garage and opened the back door, and she sat in the doorway while I put them away out the back. There was a sudden gust of wind and the door blew shut on her tail. She screamed in a way I've never heard a cat scream and threw herself back against the door. I opened it and she ran away, returning hours later to creep under my covers with her tail a bloody mangled mess. She had to have half of it amputated, but true to form, she managed to escape out a narrow window only open about 15cm, despite the cone of shame on her head, then work the cone off and come back happy as larry.
Emo has comforted and commiserated with me, and celebrated with me, through my engagement and wedding, an Ironman, completion of my studies, 5 jobs, birth of my daughter, several deaths, divorce, multiple house moves (7 in 16 years I think?), and my breakdown episodes. Plus so much other stuff in between. She's accompanied us to stay at my parents for periods of days, weeks or months when I've not been coping. She has seen me at my worst when I've been contemplating suicide, and sat beside me while I've cried. I couldn't have asked for a better companion. She is one amazing cat and I will love her forever.
She used to sit on my shoulder, or on my knee while I worked. Every day when I left to walk to work she'd escape the house the minute I put the key in the door and run down the footpath after me - she wanted to come too! She would hide every time I turned around, and run away from me if I went back to catch her and take her home. Some days I'd have to put her back inside 3 or 4 times before she'd give up following. It must have looked so funny - me walking down the road with the cat stalking me and hiding every time I turned around. Me chasing the cat and putting her back, then trying to run away quickly before she escaped again.
When she was about 2 or 3 she got into a massive fight and ripped the side of her face open. Many stitches later (her ear to her chin) and it got infected as she kept slipping out of the cone of shame. That wound got recleaned and restitched twice, with the whole episode costing over $1,000 - and that was 13 years ago, and I was a poor student!
She slipped out of every collar I brought her and I gave up after I saw her pulling the 6th one off by hooking a low branch under it, pulling down on with her neck and backing out of it.
Emo was an amazing hunter, keeping me in regular supply of mice, birds and rats. Sometimes several in one night.
She adopted my sister when she moved in with us - and her footstool. E's red footstool was her absolute favorite thing in the world and she'd sneakily wait till E got up from the couch and come running to claim the footstool, then refuse to move when E came back.
When she was 6 I had a baby and she wasn't pleased in the slightest. She thought she deserved more attention than the baby did, and she didn't like the noise the baby made. It didn't take her long to work out how to use that to her advantage though. If I wasn't feeding her fast enough or giving her enough love she'd go into the baby's room and howl loudly right next to the cot - that sure got me running!
She grew to like and then to love Little G though, especially in the winter when Little G cozies up in bed early and Emo could go and join her. She would spend some nights going to bed with G and snuggling, then switching beds to me when I went to bed. Cuddling up to me under the sheets to get right to the warmth.
Emo has always been a velcro cat, glued to my side, always interested in what I was doing and keeping me company while I was doing it. She 'helped' with various gardening and DIY tasks, computer work, writing, reading, cleaning the car, even checking the mail. She sat in the bathroom every morning on my PJ's while I had a shower, and she was with me every night when I checked the house was locked up. She would often come out of the house to say goodbye in the morning, and be waiting on the patio or the driveway most days when I got home. She would remind me every night about 10pm when it was time for bed, though she was quite happy to go back to sleep on the couch or the footstool if I wasn't going.
A few years ago she lost her tail in a freak accident. She was following me as usual, while I got the bins in. I took them through the garage and opened the back door, and she sat in the doorway while I put them away out the back. There was a sudden gust of wind and the door blew shut on her tail. She screamed in a way I've never heard a cat scream and threw herself back against the door. I opened it and she ran away, returning hours later to creep under my covers with her tail a bloody mangled mess. She had to have half of it amputated, but true to form, she managed to escape out a narrow window only open about 15cm, despite the cone of shame on her head, then work the cone off and come back happy as larry.
Emo has comforted and commiserated with me, and celebrated with me, through my engagement and wedding, an Ironman, completion of my studies, 5 jobs, birth of my daughter, several deaths, divorce, multiple house moves (7 in 16 years I think?), and my breakdown episodes. Plus so much other stuff in between. She's accompanied us to stay at my parents for periods of days, weeks or months when I've not been coping. She has seen me at my worst when I've been contemplating suicide, and sat beside me while I've cried. I couldn't have asked for a better companion. She is one amazing cat and I will love her forever.
Emo part 1
My heart is breaking. My cat Emo will be gone very soon. I've had to make the difficult decision to put her to sleep. She's 16 - born early 2003 - and is now completely deaf, blind in one eye, has arthritis and a heart murmur, and dementia. The last couple of years have been tough on her, and by extension myself and Little G. As she's gone deaf and partially blind, and her dementia has worsened, she's spent a lot of time howling and wandering around crying. We would find her in the corner of the shower (her water bowl is in the shower base) crying because she had forgotten how to get out. The constant howling, loudly and in a high pitched tone, was hard to ignore. And because she is deaf you have to go to where she is and touch her before she would stop. She's done odd things like get in the shower while it was still running (and I was in there!). But lately things had been getting worse.
Emo's always been a gentle cat. She'd bat you with a paw or bite without using her teeth if she was annoyed, but she had never properly bitten or scratched me. But now the dementia has progressed to a point where's she's bitten me three times in the last two months. Every time she looks very confused afterwards, and sad too, with her ears down. It's very unlike her.
She has spent increasing amounts of time wandering and crying, but until not too long ago that was limited to inside the house. She seemed to be getting lost and calling out, or trying to find her way around. The last couple of weeks she's been wandering and crying in the backyard, causing 3 neighbors in the last 10 days to remark on how upset she seems and how loud she is.
Back in June I took her to the vet, hoping that there might be something fixable wrong with her. She'd been weeing in my daughters room on and off for quite some time, although I hadn't realised how often because Little G was still wetting the bed so the room smelt like pee a lot. Emo also seemed to be drinking an awful lot and her eyes were runny plus one of them clearly had a cataract. The vet ran a whole lot of diagnostic tests, which is when I found out she had a heart murmur. Nothing could be done about any of the things that were wrong with her, they were aging related. I knew then that we were on the downhill slide and things might be ok for a while or she could go downhill quickly.
We have been making the most of our time left since then. But recently all her symptoms have got worse. She is now completely deaf and gets quite a fright if I touch her while she's sleeping. She snores. She is still weeing in my daughter's room. The crying has got worse. She's very unsteady on her feet, and often slips and falls when jumping on to the bed, or off it (though she can make it on to the kitchen bench when there's meat left out apparently!!). Despite all that we could go on I think. What really tipped the scales was the periods of extreme agitation. She gets very confused and wanders around and around and around, howling and crying. When she looks at me it's like she's looking right through me, like she doesn't recognise me. She's clearly upset and confused and she wanders around slowly crying. She can't seem to find any comfort, sit down stand up change positions. Wander in and out of each room and round in the garden outside. It is heartbreaking to watch as we can't comfort her, she doesn't know us and she doesn't know what she wants. One of my neighbors has also mentioned to me how distressing it is - he thought it was a baby crying that no one was attending to.
I feel like I've got to make a decision that saves her from that distress. The physical stuff I can deal with, but to see her so highly agitated and confused makes my heart ache for her.
So tomorrow is the day. I don't know if I can go through with it. I don't know what I'm going to do without her. I don't know if I'm making the right decision. It all hurts so damn much. I love that cat and I can't imagine my life without her. 16 years - we've grown up together. Her and my daughter have grown up together. I just hope that ultimately I am saving her from further suffering.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)