Wednesday, September 30, 2009

Flu and Fleas

We've had a pretty busy last week, going up to Ames so Aaron could do the career fair for work at ISU. While there Q and I spent time with my sister and her boys.

The very next day Julie calls to tell me that she had to take her middle son to the ER and he came back positive for pneumonia. Not 20 minutes later my mom calls to tell me that Julie was back at the ER and she and my dad were meeting her there to pick up the other two boys.

A little later we find out that Julie's son had influenza in addition to the pneumonia and because of how fast it came on and that it's not flu season just yet, they are fairly certain that it is H1N1.

In the meantime I'm watching the other 2 boys and the youngest was running a temp and weezing. Julie comes by later to pick them up and take them to the doc to have them tested for the flu too and the youngest comes back positive for that. All this time I am not feeling so great myself, but I just had cold symptoms so it could have been worse. Later that evening Aaron, Q and I head back home.

The next day I'm still feeling aweful so Aaron stayed home to take care of Q. We made him an appointment with his pediatrican who put him on Tamiflu as a precaution and is going to have him get his flu shot this Friday. She also suggested that I see my doc and make sure that all I had was a cold and not H1N1 since it can start out with cold symptoms.

Off to the doc I went. I was there FOREVER feeling worse each passing minute! Then comes the flu test; sticking a cotton swab up my nose and wiggling it around! While not exactly painful, it was one of the most uncomfortable experences ever. And I was negative for the flu. I come home to find Aaron starting to feel bad.

Thankfully only Aaron and myself were sick and Q has been just fine the entire time.

BUT! Saturday night we notice that there are a lot of blood droplets in the sink in our bathroom where our cat Harvest likes to drink. Now I had noticed a couple droplets in the past couple of weeks here and there after she would drink, but just thought maybe she and Paprika had been fighting. She also was leaving little bits of fur around the house, but again I just thought she had been fighting.

So Sat. night Aaron and I take a closer look at her - she is biting herself an aweful lot and then we see the fleas crawling on her! We got both cats some meds to take care of the fleas that were on them as soon as we could. And we've been vaccuming the house every day since then. I pray that this gets resolved quickly and (fairly) easily! The war is on!

Thursday, September 17, 2009

Possums!

The other night I went downstairs to feed the cats and heard this awful scratching noise coming from the other end of the storage area. I went and turned on the lights and looked around to see what was making the noise (my first thought was it was one of the cats scratching on a cardboard box). Instead, there was a possum going crazy trying to get out of the window well!

I told Aaron about it and he said just wait till morning and then call animal control to come get it out. So come morning I look on the internet to find the number for animal control and what I find is that I need to call the local animal shelter; that they do animal control for domestic and native animals in the area. I try giving them a call only to find that they don't open till 11:00 am.

Meanwhile, I go downstairs to check on the possum and see that it has left bloody scratches on the inside of the window well and our window. Quentin came down with me and he ran over by the other window well we have, and glancing out I find that there is a possum in that window well too! How crazy is that!

Once it was 11 I tried calling the shelter again and the woman I talked with said I needed a different number since they only delt with domestic animals. I then call the number she gave me and the woman I talked with there said she doesn't come get animals; she does rehabilitation for animals. So helpful!

In any case she suggested I put a broom or something of that nature down in the window well to let the possums crawl out on their own. Let me tell you, brooms don't work! The only other thing we had that was long enough was an aluminum ladder, which apparently possums will climb up. So we are minus one possum and hopefully tonight the other will take its leave as well.

What I've learned from this is that animal control in Osky for wild animals is apparently non-existant and the person they put you in touch with obviously does not know what she is talking about. Yes, the possums need something to help them climb out, but a broom isn't going to work! The other thing I learned is that we need to get those window well covers we've discussed getting sooner rather than later!

Thursday, September 3, 2009

Child Health Specialty Clinic

The other week I finally heard back from the Child Health Specialty Clinic in Ottumwa. The woman I talked with wanted to know if I had any questions regarding what the nutritionist wanted us to do for Q. I told her we hadn't heard back from the nutritionist yet. She told me the info was sent to Q's doctor, but since I hadn't talked with the nutritionist, she would go over it with me now if I wanted. Of course I wanted to hear what we should do! So she tells me - have him drink whole milk (we're working on that), add extra butter to things for him (doing it already), give him fruits and vegetables with more fat in them (there are fatening fruits and vegetables?) and keep giving him 5-6 meals a day. Wow! How helpful was that?!? Everything Q's doctor had already discussed with us and that we've been working on with him. They also want to see him back in 3 months. My question is why should I do anything else with them when they haven't done anything different than his doctor has? It's about 30 min to get there, we were there for about an hour, took time to eat lunch and then 30 min back. So about 2 1/2 hours of my day ended up being wasted since I got nothing new out of it. I'm so disappointed about the whole thing and am not looking for a repeat thank you very much!