In 2024, we won't let ourselves get down, right?
With Wolverine back, we left for Nantes for a week in mid-December to see Marie's granddaughters, two little beauties born this year. It was a pleasant, moving, adorable, and exhausting trip. I didn't realize it right away, but when I got home, my energy was close to zero, to the point that I was tempted to go to bed at 10:30 p.m. on New Year's Eve ;-).
Me, a zonard?
Since December 27 or 28, I had been feeling some discomfort, like a burning sensation that had been there for two or three days, on my hip, at the front of my left thigh and up to my stomach. The burning seemed to come from under the skin but was very sensitive to the rubbing of my jeans whenever I moved. It wasn't excruciating, but the pain was ever-present, whether I was standing, sitting, or lying down. As a result, I spend my day walking with unnatural foot and leg positions, sitting crookedly to avoid putting pressure on the painful areas, and by the evening, I'm exhausted from trying to minimize the inconvenience all day long.
As I felt it mainly at the front, after showering I looked at my hip, the front of my thigh and around my stomach, but couldn't see anything... at all! Then, after five or six days, I glanced at my left buttock and there, inside an 8 by 4 cm rectangle, were two pimples and a red patch. The next day, four or five pimples had replaced the red patch. Pretty quickly, after inspecting my bedding and realizing that no insect would be stupid enough to settle for this rectangle when it had a “field of investigation” 100 times larger at its disposal, I ruled out the bug option, especially since I didn't feel any itching. But then what?
I left messages for the team and sent them photos of... my rear end (that's the first and last time I'll ever do that ;-). But it was the first week of January and, having worked over Christmas, they were on vacation. With no reply and an appointment on January 8, I decided to wait.
On the appointed day, Zeus looked down and thought of a zona. He gives me a note for a dermatology appointment. Rachida sends me to Port-Royal, across the street. Imen accompanies me, taking shortcuts usually reserved for healthcare workers. I get an appointment, but it's not until 2:30 p.m. It's noon... It's freezing outside, it's even snowing, with a biting wind, so I seek refuge in a café/restaurant where I eat a very mediocre cheeseburger, fortunately accompanied by good fries and a delicious hot chocolate.
Back in Port-Royal, the dermatologist confirms: zona. Okay, but... what's that? Basically, when you're little, you get chicken pox: spots, scabs, etc. It goes away and you think it's over. Wrong!
The VZV (chickenpox virus) stays there and goes to sleep in a lymph node. It may never show up again, or it may return in the form of shingles at some point in your life when you are immunocompromised or simply very tired. It's a bit like herpes for those who are familiar with it, except that, unless you're unlucky, shingles only happens once in your life. Well, in most cases.
At first glance, shingles doesn't seem too bad, BUT because the lymph nodes are connected to nerves that have their own branches, the pain spreads and can even show up far away from where the rash started. It is constant, varying neither in intensity nor in extent (thankfully...), muffled and exhausting, and can last even after the rash and red patches have disappeared: “Nerves on edge? Suck it up!
In any case, here I am, “zonard” on top of everything else. Fortunately, at some point, the pain subsides a little, or you get used to it and can tolerate it better. Except that... shit flies in formation, as a former french president used to say.
IAO
We have been living with two cats for eleven and a half years: Iaorana, aka Iao, and Heva, aka Toutoune. On Thursday evening, Marie noticed that Iao had spat a foul-smelling liquid onto her bed. We kept an eye on her and noticed that a few drops were escaping from her mouth from time to time. The next day, she was bleeding a little. Thinking it was an abscess, we took her to the vet, only to learn that it was much worse.
The vet sees us, listens, then explains that in order to examine the underside of her tongue, he will give her a little shot so that she will let him do it. While we wait, we're a little more worried, because he mentioned the possibility that it could be more serious than an abscess. Twenty minutes pass, and he calls us back and explains that it is indeed a sublingual tumor. He shows me the photo he took (after asking if he could) and it looks bad, very, very bad. Then he explains that given its location and the fact that the inside of the tongue has started to necrotize due to the tumor, the only solution would be to operate and remove almost the entire tongue. Now, he tells us, a cat without a tongue is not viable.
He tries tactfully, little by little, to make us understand that there is only one thing left to do: euthanize her, but that it is up to us to make the decision. It's hard! We came to have our little cat's abscess treated, and an hour later, we're leaving... Alone, without this little star who will no longer be with us. Marie is in tears, and I'm not far behind. I keep telling myself that we did the right thing, that we were with her until the very end, that it would have been pointless and inhumane to try to prolong her life, but when I look in the rearview mirror, I see the little pet carrier in the back seat, now empty, and I feel empty too.
Iao was a kind, affectionate cat, a little shy, greedy, plump, funny, and a little clumsy too. We knew it was her who had just jumped off the table just by the sound her paws made when they landed on the floor: PATAM!
It won't happen again... We'll miss her... a lot...
So, 2024 isn't off to a great start, to say the least. I don't know if there's anyone up there, but if there is, you're a real pain in the ass, dude! That's okay now! Maybe it's time for this to stop! We need a break... Repetition humor is very overrated, man.
