So I’m pretty sure that there is some kind of crazy curse over my existence. I happen to have the most bizarre, unlikely events happen in my life on a regular basis. I should write a book.

So I came home from work tonight, well actually from Walmart (the same walmart that I happened to get my cell phone stolen /held hostage at). I finally broke down and got myself an oil change, a little late, thanks Ben! (For the reminder that is).

Anyhoo… I bought some new flowers to plant on my deck to replace the seeds that didn’t take from this spring. I brought the flowers out onto the deck and shut the glass door since the AC was on. I had bought myself dinner so I decided to head back in to eat before potting the new flowers. Dinner would have been lovely except for the fact that somehow the glass door to get back into my apartment had somehow locked from the inside as I had earlier slid it shut. *&%#$$#!!!!!!! I was so pissed. I tried and tried and tried to jiggle the door in the hopes that it was merely stuck. Not so much. Not only was my door locked to get into my apartment from my deck (three stories up), but I had locked my apartment door so no one would be able to get in from the hallway either. Sweet! My cats looked out at me on the deck from the window and had no idea how badly I wished that they could have let me in.

I figured I had two choices. Either wait until someone walks by and try to get them to make a phone call for me, or try to scale down the building and walk around to try to find someone to help me out. I looked down and realized that climbing down wasn’t really a viable option (if I didn’t want to risk an injury or two). So, I waited…and waited…until what seemed like forever someone happened to walk out of my building. I yelled down and asked for the lady to problem-solve with me since I wasn’t quite sure what to do. Just then, one of my neighbors across the hall happened to hear me talking and peered out his balcony to see what was up. Long story short, my neighbor ended up having to call the emergency maintenance people to come and let me back into my place. AN HOUR LATER, a sweet little Latino man opened up my place and let me back in. What an ordeal. It wasn’t quite over though…

Evidently the maintenance man had accidently opened up the apartment below mine before he realized that he had the wrong apartment number. Evidently he had walked in on some chick in her underwear. I’m assuming he didn’t knock either since he thought the tenant was locked out on the deck. So the maintenance man asked me to go downstairs with him to explain to the lady what had happened so she would believe his story that it was just an honest mistake. Sure, why not… When we got to the door, we could hear the lady ranting and raving about the incident from inside the door. I knocked. The lady (a rather disheveled looking 19 or so year old) opened the door and glared at me. “Whachoo want???” I kindly tried to start to explain the incident and how it was all just an honest mistake. She continued to glare at me, so I asked her why she was looking at me like that. She continued to give me attitude about why I happened to be bothering her. As I pleasantly tried to finish out my story about the deck, the poor maintenance man, etc., she interrupted me and asked, “Why you lookin’ at me that way?!?” (Mind you, I had a rather plain face look on at that time. AND, I happen to be queen of attitude, so I would totally own up to it if I had actually been giving her a crusty look). I tried to placate her and finish my explanation of what happened, when the chick started screaming at me some more and then proceeded to yell “get the f*@# out of my face” and then slammed the door in my face.

Wow. I laughed to myself as I had never realized just how crazy the chick is that lives right below me. Yikes. The poor maintenace guy was so apologetic and upset about what happened. He kept saying he was worried that the lady was going to report him and he would get into trouble for it. I tried to reassure him that the lady was crazy and that he had made a perfectly honest mistake. He felt so bad that he asked that I be a witness for him if necessary if the woman happens to report him. I happily told him I would.

Many lessons could be learned from this story. Don’t slam the sliding deck door unless you have a spare key hidden out on the deck. I don’t just work with crazy people but they actually live right below me too. And, crazy things, crazy mishaps, and crazy people have a way of finding Jillian where ever she happens to be.

You guys are relentless!!!

Today they decide who gets into the St. Thomas program. I am anxiously awaiting the arrival of that envelope in the next few days letting me know “yay” or “nay.” I got a new snowboard this week. I mounted the bindings last night and it sits on my living room floor ready to go. My cat Suzi is currently obsessed with the big box it came in. I love when she tries to claw at things yet she has no claws. Poor dear. I think I might go Friday night boarding or else Saturday. It will be in the 40’s! What do you wear to go snowboarding in such weather? I am getting excited for spring yet I have never been sad about the snow leaving until now. I was told to stop blogging about my cat but I thought it would be good to give a Zoe update too. She is doing awesome. The steroids cleared her outbreaks up within days, it was amazing. Now she just gets to deal wiht me daily giving her oral steroids that taste like tuna. Ooh, yummy. Oh yeah, and I will be getting a raise soon at work as soon as it gets approved through HR. Life is looking up. I can feel the spring coming in both a seasonal sense and a spiritual sense. Better get back to work…

So the biopsy results are back, Zoe has an immune disease. Pemphigus foliaceus. Basically, her immune system is attacking the skin around her face and ears as if it is a foreign body. Not good. After receiving the message from the vet yesterday after a long stressful day at work I felt sick. I had to wait for awhile to hear back from the doc about treatment options. Images of Zoe dying a slow, painful death from feline AIDS ran through my head. Not very pleasant.

Evidently the treatment is not as complex as I thought. (Insert your favorite ‘Jillian is dramatic and tends to overreact’ comment here). They will treat her with an oral steroid to get her outbreak under control. After she hopefully clears up they will taper down her dosage to a long-term maintenance level. She will most likely have future outbreaks that will have to be treated aggressively as they come up. She will basically be on steroids for the rest of her life. Suzi better watch out, Zoe already pretty much dominates their throw downs in the living room ring. The doc had to order her steroids so she will begin treatment sometime next week. I will keep y’all posted on how she’s doin…

So, it has been a week since Zoe’s Revolution treatment that was supposed to “clear things up quickly.” Zoe it still not doing well and the scabs are spreading. The doctor continues to state that he is dumbfounded that she did not improve with the various treatments that she has already been given. He is suspecting that something may be wrong with her immune system. I had to take Zoe in yesterday to get a biopsy done in the hopes that we could get an accurate diagnosis. I consulted with the U of M veterinary hospital. I spoke with a veterinarian that specializes in small animal dermatology. She recommended that doing a biopsy was indeed the next step. So poor Zoe had to be dragged back to the vet’s office AGAIN yesterday to be poked and prodded. She hates it more and more every time. She usually jumps out of her kennel when she gets there and adventurously explores the exam room. Yesterday she barely wanted to come out of her kennel. The vet tech made a comment that Zoe’s ears look like she has leprosy. They had to give her a sedative for the procedure. Evidently the normal dose of sedative didn’t work on her so they had to give her an extra dose. She ended up having a section taken out of her nose and a section taken from the top of her head. She now has a suture on the top of her nose and another one at the spot on the top of her head. She is on morphine for the next few days. Poor thing has lost a pound since this started two weeks ago. They told me that a side effect of the morphine is that she will most likely become extra loving and cuddly. Not so much. She wants nothing to do with me. After the sedative was reversed yesterday she was growling at me when I tried to comfort her. Oh yeah, and the visit yesterday cost me another $230. So we are up to about $500 now and still don’t have a diagnosis or a cure. My frustration continues. Please continue praying for Zoe. She is the sweetest thing ever and I hope so badly we find out what is wrong so she can get better.

Poor Zoe. I noticed last Thursday that Zoe was missing a chunk of hair off of one of her ears and there was in its place a bloody scab (I know, gross). Anyways, neurotic me begins to picture Zoe having flesh-eating bacteria and eventually walking around without an ear in the near future. After rationally thinking it through I decided to take her to the vet the next day after work to get her checked out. I figured they would look at her ear, tell me what it was, and most likely give me some meds to give her to get better. If only life was so simple.

I decided to check out a new veterinary office since I have moved quite a ways away from her old vet in our old neighborhood. They seemed nice enough and adored Zoe. (Who doesn’t adore her, honestly?) Trouble is they rattled off a list of a ridiculous number of tests they would run to figure out what was wrong. Two hundred dollars later they ruled out mites and an ear infection. They felt it was probably a food allergy, instructed me to track down food with a “novel protein” in it, and gave me two weeks worth of antibiotics.

So off I went to search for a cat food that did not contain beef, chicken, pork, lamb, fish, or corn. Yeah, pretty much all cat food has at least one of these ingredients. After scouring Petco shelves and reading countless ingredient lists off the back of food bags, I found hidden on a bottom shelf cat food for cats with allergies. It contains venison and peas. Yum. So home I went feeling hopeful my little dear would be feeling better soon with the new food up and running. Not so much.

With each passing day Zoe became worse. On antibiotics and her new miracle food her scabs were starting to spread and starting to crust over. I ended up calling the vet’s office on Tuesday to see what was up. They told me to come back in on Wednesday and they would treat her for mites. They confirmed that Zoe looked like she was indeed getting worse. They once again tested her for mites and once again found nothing. They decided to give her the treatment for mites anyhow telling me that sometimes a cat can have mites and they are just too hard to see under the microscope. Thirty dollars more. They told me that if it was indeed mites that were the culprit that Zoe would show signs of improvement pretty quickly. They then tried to sell me another treatment for my other cat “just in case” she had mites too. Suzi is still symptom-free so I opted out of this one.

So, long story short, it has been two days since Zoe had her treatment and she is continuing to get worse. Her scabs are continueing to spread and she winces if I get near her ears when I pet her. A few more days like this and we will be marching back to the vet (which Zoe hates, by the way) to see what else they can sell me to fix my poor kitty.

Talk about frustrating. I just want answers as to what is wrong and what I need to do to fix it so she can feel better. Maybe I am supposed to learn some type of life lesson out of all of this, I don’t know. All I know is that I feel so bad for my little kitty with her sad little sore ears. Say a prayer for my little gal today.

What Reality TV Show Are You?Your Result: Survivor     You are definitely the reality TV show “Survivor”. It’s a good thing you enjoy the beach because you would be spending a lot of time on one. And you are going to need those puzzle solving skills to win those tough challenges. You would make a great survivor!
American Idol
Amazing Race
The Bachelor
Deal or No Deal

What mental disorder do you have? Your Result: OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder)   You have odd obsessions that you cannot seem to control. You may even perform rituals to make you feel better. Counting and continuously obsessing over things happens frequently.
Manic Depressive
Paranoia
ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder)
GAD (Generalized Anxiety Disorder)

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Midland   “You have a Midland accent” is just another way of saying “you don’t have an accent.” You probably are from the Midland (Pennsylvania, southern Ohio, southern Indiana, southern Illinois, and Missouri) but then for all we know you could be from Florida or Charleston or one of those big southern cities like Atlanta or Dallas. You have a good voice for TV and radio.
North Central
The West
Boston
The Inland North
Philadelphia
The South
The Northeast
What American accent do you have? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

So I am at home sick today… blah… Spending some quality time watching daytime television. The blog-worthy show of the day today is going to have to be Maury. Today’s show topic: “Did my man cheat on me because I have only one leg?” Turns out this poor woman has been in love with her fiance “Chubby” for ten years. She suspects that her sister, who happens to have two good legs, has been sleeping with her fiance. The lie detector tests are pending, can’t wait for this commercial break to be over…

Seriously???