Lily of Death

I type this to you with Xanax seeping through my veins. Meanwhile, I.V. fluids are creeping through the veins of my beloved Mad Max Rockatansky. Why? Because he chewed on the leaves of an Asiatic lily. The life of my cat hangs in the balance because of four fucking leaves. Or more accurately the mere pieces of four different leaves.

Until 3:47 this afternoon when my Mom informed me 'Your son is chewing on my lily, google that and make sure it's not poisonous.' I had no idea - literally no fucking concept - of just how toxic lilies are to cats. If pollen gets on their fur and they lick it, they could die. No, I'm not being dramatic. That was my first reaction when the first website PetPoisonHelpline.com so, being the 'multiple reference' person I am, I went to another site PetMD.com and then to https://www.aspca.org and http://www.preventivevet.com and http://phys.org. 

By then, I was genuinely starting to panic. I had *watched* Max swallow one of the leaves, and three others were tattered. So I called our vet, and was told to bring Max in immediately. To overview: At approximately 3:47 Max chomped the ends off four leaves of an Asiatic lily. By 4:30 we were at the vet's, and he was consulting with a specialist in animal toxicology. By 5:00, Max had been induced to vomit (he vomited all the leaves, they could practically put the pieces back together) and they were waiting for the sedative (with cats, they give them an anesthetic, which causes nausea, and vomiting) to wear off so they could begin giving him activated charcoal. He's a twelve pound cat, which equals a dosage of 70 MLs of activated charcoal. By now, Max was swearing that he'd never even look at anything green again. Amazingly, they got all 70 MLs into him, and other than burping droplets a few times, he kept it all down. The next step is I.V. fluids. For 48hrs. The idea is that any bits of toxin which don't adhere to the activated charcoal, will be flushed out of his system before they have time to settle in his kidneys. Basically, it's the same sort of toxic process as antifreeze poisoning.

Shocked yet? Yeah, me too. I'm still trying to convince myself that in the span of five hours, I went from loafing in my pjs to writing this and not knowing if Max is going to live. Scientifically, rationally, and medically, his prognosis is 'very good' according to the specialist, my vet, and the emergency clinic vet, where he'll be spending tonight, and possibly tomorrow night. But anyone who has much experience in medicine understands that having everything go even the best way, doesn't guarantee that it will *continue* to go the best way. Now, with lily poisoning, the consensus is 'treatment within the first 18 hours' gives you the best chance for recovery, and obviously, Max started treatment within the first hour, so *crosses fingers and knocks on wood* in theory, Max stands a good chance of running rampant for years to come. 

But we won't know for sure until we're through the next 48 hours without problem. And no amount of scientific or medical fact is going to assure me of his safety until 48 hours has gone by without incident and he's charmed all the vet techs and comes bouncing home with me. So in the least, this incident has given me more gray hair, and empty bank account and a hell of a lot of emotional trauma.

The terror associated with the idea of losing Max aside, I'm still reeling with horror over the toxicity of lilies in general. And it's not just cats. Dog, humans and goats (of all animals) are incredibly vulnerable too. I mean, let's get real. Dropping pollen on a cat can kill them? Now think about a toddler chewing on a leaf of that Easter lily on the coffee table. Or the dog snuffling it.

There is not enough public awareness of just how poisonous lilies (all of them, to varying degrees) are to us, and the animals many of us keep as pets. I beseech you to share this post on all of those Facebook groups you're in, or Pages you frequent. And the lily that got Max into all of this? $3.98 at Walmart, not a single word of warning anywhere on the label or pot. Nowhere on that plant did it say just how devastatingly harmful it could be to an animal or human. I presume that the lack of warning is because everyone and their second cousin buy lilies in the millions around Easter and in the spring or early summer. This one happened to be be given to my Mom last week for teacher appreciation week. I hazard that the mother who bought it might have had second thoughts if there was a big old skull and crossbones on the tag. But I wouldn't be going through all of this, either. Even my vet, who's been in practice for over 30 years, hasn't ever dealt with this. He has indoor cats, and his yard is full of lilies of various types. That's probably going to changed. 

Please, share this. Help me spread this information now. The majority of lily poisonings are fatal, simply because people don't understand how dangerous they are. If no one witnesses the cat consuming the lily, the symptoms that eventually provoke treatment are related to renal failure, not the actual poisoning. And once the cat enters renal failure, chances of survival are slim, at best. Sometimes even weeks of dialysis are not sufficient to get the cat through.

The best way to assure that a cat recovers from lily poisoning, is to make sure they never get poisoned to start with. ALL LILIES ARE POISONOUS. If you have pets, or small children, don't have a lily. Period. It's just too dangerous. 

Driving All Over The Place And Going Nowhere...

I figured it was time to throw another post up, you know to stay in the habit of posting... at least every couple of months... or so... Anyway, I'm *finally* over whatever abominable plague I had. At leas, I'm over it enough to feel like a million bucks, but I suspect I'm still slow enough that once I'm *TRULY* over it, it'll seem as though I've been sick for most of my life. Point is, I'm back to doing stuff, laughing and snorting, and writing. Also, mowing the lawn.

Anyone who's known me for any length of time will remember that I'm not normally allowed to touch things like the weed eater or lawn mower. This is because like some sort of rogue EMP wave, I can break the shit just by touching it. No joke, this happens a lot. On smaller things (like watches) the stuff just stops working for no obvious reason. On larger things, it's sometimes more obvious (split main belts, ruptured things, whatever) but the result is the same. Shit no work, no more. So normally, I don't touch it, and that solves the problem.

But Dad, while he's doing fine, is at a point where stuff like riding the mowing for two hours, affects him more and more. So I'm his replacement. I know, terrifying. It's like sending Chris Farley to stand in for Chris Pine. Not the same. But after a lesson from Dad, I managed to mow the whole property without dying, killing anything or breaking anything. Sunday, I repeated the procedure (except that I forgot to mow the back lot...) and succeeded again.

While I was driving the mower the first time, I was hit with yet another story idea. I know, I know. You're thinking Just pick a story and write it, kid! But the problem is that I don't have anyone waiting for the stories, so I just keep plodding along with them instead of running a marathon, and along the way I find shiny new things to pick up, and eventually I start dropping other shiny things that I've gotten tired of carrying. But I do remember where they all got dropped, so I can go right back and pick them up if anyone is ever interested in them. This is what happens when you drive all over the place and go nowhere. You start playing make believe while you're driving.

In my case, that means that while I'm writing, but not moving forward toward publication (not that I can tell, anyway) I tend to have many multiple projects going at once, and sometimes, they get traded out for new projects, which eventually get set aside so I can work on older ones. But at least my engine is still going. And when that gate toward publication finally opens, I intend to roar down the racecourse without a backward glance, my stories flying behind me like banners in the wind!

Childhood Dreams Become Artist's Fodder

Overdue for a post... as is custom. But I must have some traditions, mustn't I? Anyway, I've been laid up sick for a week (not in a fun 'oh I get to be 'sick' and stay home and write' kind of way, but in a 'occasionally surfacing to consciousness, then submerging again' kind of way) and since I've been able to cling to humanity long enough to string a few thoughts together, I've been writing madly on yet another new project, one that I already love dearly.

I'm not entirely sure what this project is going to look like once I'm finally facing it at close range. It's like a massive stag moving back and forth through thick fog. But I know the project more intimately in other ways. I know the characters in it, the things that drive them, the things that haunt them. I know where it's going, and I'll learn what it looks like on the way.

All of this ties into the fact that while I was sick, I saw the latest Transformers movie (Edge of Extinction, or Age of Extinction or some such...) and - I know, I know, stop rolling your eyes! So much of the recent 'live action movies' are terrible, but some parts of them are actually pretty wonderful. While I have an undying hatred of the 'token hot bimbo with no intelligent reason to be there' and the 'token hot guy who's supposed to be witty' (I'm not even able to quantify my hatred of Shia Labeouf. I mean, plagiarizing your apology for plagiarizing something else? I can't even.) and all the other random story devices that Michael Bay has made up because, Bay does what Bay wants, I really do think he got the souls of the Transformers themselves well represented. It's something I'm willing to debate, anyway, with anyone who wants to. Also, the music in those movies is awesome.

So, anyway, the whole point is that I'd never seen the most recent movie, so I watched it. Like four times. Because, you know, I'm sick on the couch, and they just kept playing it, so I kept watching it. I cannot remember a time when I didn't love the Transformers. I've been with them since the very beginning, and I maintain a certain devotion to them even in less than perfect manifestations. I, personally, rather liked the newer looks given to them in the more recent incarnations, because they're viably realistic. Even if there are parts of these movies I don't care for, the Transformers themselves give life to all the daydreams I thrived on as a kid. They make me go out and look at the stars at night and wonder what might be up there. Consider things like the idea of a non-human entity having more humanity than humanity generally does, and how being alive has more to do with actions than it does with having a heartbeat.

Which leads me to new ideas, new themes, new stories.

My happy obsession at the moment is this revisitation of longstanding childhood dreams involving the Transformers, and associated themes. But they're only one remnant of my childhood dreams that provide me with fodder for stories and characters. So often as people grow up they leave behind influences that, at the time, meant a great deal to them, even shaped how they viewed the world. Let's face it, not many guys will say 'I went into the Marines because it was the closest thing to being He-Man that I could find.' But how many engineers really wanted to find out if you could built a glider out of three pieces of bamboo, a trash bag and a garden rake, like MacGyver, how many conservationists wanted to be like Jana of The Jungle and run with the animals. Adult underestimate the influences of childhood dreams, even as they're utilizing those very things in their careers.

I prefer to embrace my childhood dreams, feeding them and loving them.