The Old Folks Home

[pennyJo1960]

but the work you do is very special girl there is a certain
spot in heaven for you @superchemicalgirl

 

[bruceha2000]

Main, a close poultry friend is getting married and I won't fricken make it

Where is the wedding? I bet there is some BYCer who can go in your place!

I used to get exta rims for studded snows. Junk yards are great for them even new rims off wrecked cars.
Now I have a manual tire changer I got from TSC, works great, changed 100s of tires for us and others.
Usually get three winter's out of a set rotating them.
I always put them on all four. Many people insist on only putting them on the front if front wheel drive. Makes your rear end squirrely, front end stick, out of control. My FIL is one that does this. I had to rescue him once his van on it's roof, he made some other excuse and still doesn't agree with me...
I've just put all seasons on our Suburban last few winters, does pretty good beings it's so heavy. This yr I got actual snow tires and didn't bother studding them cause we're just going to run them all yr. Snows are definitely better than the all seasons. Last snow storm I passed three spun out cars going up the mountain out of town and a truck and tractor trailer that was making it but having a hard time, went by them all like it was nothing.

Ah come on @Beer can ! Who needs the rear of the car to follow the front? More fun when it takes the lead

Problem with snows year round is they are generally poor at stopping on dry or wet pavement. That and they wear out a lot faster due to the rubber compound. Oh and MPG goes down with all that rolling resistance.

Not to so drastically change the subject but have any of you ever dealt with a diabetic kitty? Our half Siamese was diagnosed last month. We took him into the vets when we noticed that he was loosing weight and sure enough, blood sugar in the mid to high 400s. We have been giving him 3 units of insulin twice a day and his blood sugar was only down about 100 points so the vet put him on a Science diet for diabetes and upped the insulin to 4 units twice a day. That is when the problems have started. On 4 units he appears to be controlled but bonks. Stares out into space, won't eat, won't respond to you. I wind up squirting thinned out honey into his mouth and in 45 minutes he is pretty much his old self. Nibbles food and within 2 hours is back staring out into space again. Sure enough, when we took him to the vet, his blood sugar was just coming back up and was around 200 which meant he probably went well under 100 when he was hypoglycemic. We expected our vet to lower his dose back to 3 but he didn't and insisted that we keep it at 4. Didn't work. We were having to feed him honey water pretty regularly just to keep him alert enough to eat. So what do we do? We know at 3 he isn't really controlled but at 4 he is over controlled and has a really crappy quality of life.

We are pretty frustrated at this point and hate going against the vet. Our kitty is a sweet boy, just old and worn out. We think he is somewhere around 15-16 years old. Vet keeps hinting that he suspects maybe he has a pancreatic cancer but he has gained some of his lost weight back so we really don't know what has triggered this diabetes in him.

Sorry for the rant. We are just trying to figure out what to do with our boy.

Did the vet say why he chose that specific insulin? Our cat has been on Glargine for 2 years, she is 15. Vet said it works well on cats even though it is for humans. Your cat is part of the family right? Close enough

Seems to keep her running fairly smoothly. 3 units BID. She won't let me stick her while she eats so we have come to an agreement. I sit on the couch and she comes when she is ready. Some pre stick brushing and some post stick brushing and she is good to go. She does skip in the mornings occasionally, not sure why.

Vet instructions or not, if your cat is going hypo on 4 I wouldn't do 4! That just doesn't make sense. Better to run a bit high than low. In fact my vet said "I don't tell everyone this but if you go away for the weekend and your cat doesn't get her insulin, it won't kill her". So yeah, blood sugar being a little high isn't the worst thing in the world.

If you do switch to Glargine, see if you can get a local pharmacy to sell you Solostar pens 1 or 2 at a time. They are expensive, ~$80 each, but a 3 ml pen is way cheaper than the three 1 ml bottles we were getting from the local compounding pharmacy. They were pushing $50 each. Hannaford is carrying the cost of the extra Solostars in the box until I come back for the next refill. Easier than me coming up with ~$400 all at once. Went to pick up once and the lady at the counter called back to the pharmacist after looking at the order:
"We don't sell partial boxes of Solostars do we????"
"We do for a cat".
"Oh, this is for a cat"

The prescription says the patient's name is Samantha (cat).

I get the syringes from ADW online. ~$19 (including shipping) for 100 of them.

Good luck!!!

 

[Alaskan]

I got my train platform/tree/village set up today.

Looks awesome! I especially like the pharmacy.

 

[jtn42248]

Thank you for sharing the photos! Love the ponies. They must enjoy doing this... they look calm.


I got my train platform/tree/village set up today. It was too hard to do it last year and I only cried one and a half times setting it up this year.



I'll give you one close up... SCG's Pharmacy

It is beautiful, especially with the lights all turned on. I just noticed your Type O Negative lyric in your signature file, very nice.

 

[bruceha2000]

Quote:
Guess she doesn't need those studded tires after all. Short commute and she can take the train right to work!

 

[superchemicalgirl]

Did the vet say why he chose that specific insulin? Our cat has been on Glargine for 2 years, she is 15.

Glargine is a good insulin because it's peakless, whereas all the other (human) insulin I'm aware of has peaks. Ie inject it, you get an insulin "rush" and lowered blood sugar, and then the med wears off. All the other insulins you have to worry about timing around food, or you'll get blood sugar roller coaster, whereas glargine you don't. Your pancreas (when in normal working order) gives you a pretty consistent drip drip drip of insulin (the glargine mimics this). But when you eat and the food energy starts to flood your body your pancreas releases a ton of insulin to counter the influx of food. That's what most of the other insulins mimic.

Most people need both glargine and a short acting peaking insulin around meals, if their diabetes is advanced enough (type 2). Again, I don't work on cats but we're also not talking about your cat having another 10 years of life projected ahead of him/her and needing tight control.

Hope this makes sense.

 

[getaclue]

Sorry about your cat having trouble. I've heard of people giving insulin to their pets, but never had to experience it, so I don't have a lot to contribute about it. I do know with people, getting the dosage right can sometimes be a bit tricky, so I would assume it would be the same with animals.

The Christmas tree, and village are beautiful. We won't have much this year in the way of decorations. The expense of buying, moving, and making the needed repairs on our new home, not to mention the cost of building a new coop, and getting Christmas gifts for everyone, has tanked my Christmas decoration budget.

Yes, we had some decorations at the other place, but Dh didn't want to fool with moving them, so (without my knowledge) he gave them to one of our moving helpers. It will actually work out better in the long run, since I've looked at this place with "fresh eyes", and the other decorations would not have worked for what I'd like to do here.

The coop is coming along nicely.

 

[getaclue]

Some pics from the parade last night. Sorry they are slightly out of focus; my phone just couldn't seem to get it all together in the low light (though maybe if I'd had the sense to fiddle a bit with the settings it might do better!

Bunny, thank you for doing that. I took my grandchildren to their first parade last night. They had a blast. I know it's a lot of work, with little reward, but it really does make a big impression on the kids. A lot of the older folks seemed to be having a good time too. I'm glad there are those that are willing to bring the joy to them.

 

[chickadoodles]

graves or heredity took what the lord let it.. I go to the eye institute in Seattle
at UW they said any sign of change hustle my tail in there

interesting note doc recently became a bit concerned said my aic was little off so he has been checking it but
that is my primary that I adore him

My SIL is dealing with Graves Disease. Not fun.

Penny I hope everything will ok. Sending prayers your way.

 

[Beer can]

Ah come on @Beer can ! Who needs the rear of the car to follow the front? More fun when it takes the lead

Problem with snows year round is they are generally poor at stopping on dry or wet pavement. That and they wear out a lot faster due to the rubber compound. Oh and MPG goes down with all that rolling resistance.

They definitely don't last as long. All season tires don't last as long either. This past yrs we've kept both summer and winter specific tires on most our vehicles but kept all seasons on the Suburban cause we don't really drive it a lot anyway and it's starting to get some rust so figured get snows and run it till we replace it.. It's our 'good' vehicle, I use the 'crappy' van for back and forth to work. With our oldest DD not hanging out with us anymore I'd like to replace it with a truck (miss having a truck) extended cab and we can still fit the whole fam with out oldest. DW doesn't like the idea cause of shopping, that's what tonneau covers are for!
Stopping distance, I have run snows in summer before not much different than any big mud truck tire, and if they were studded pulled the studs, why I didn't waste $ on studs this time, be nice this winter but figured I'd have to pull them in spring.
We can only run studs from Oct 16- April 30 legally. I ran some into early summer one yr cause I kept putting off changing them over, almost rear ended a car, was feet from putting it off the road to avoid it, stopping quick with studs on hot pavement is like stopping on marbles.