And the preliminary diagnosis is…bursitis.
Saw doc. Got X ray. Got meds. Got acupuncture and massage and cupping.
My back looks like it was attacked by something from the X-Files.
Well, crud. Was all set to see a theater production at the local college. Got there in plenty of time…to find out that the show had sold out. In fact, all performances are sold out. Might be able to get on the waiting list for tomorrow night or Sunday afternoon. Might. My own dumb fault for not pre-ordering a ticket. Should have remembered that the audience for a college performance is going to be packed with other students.
Phooey.
flatlined, if it helps any: I had ringworm once, when I was a little kid. It wasn’t that bad, really. Just some over-the-counter ointment and keeping the area clean and dry.
I once had a veterinarian tell me to use human athlete’s foot topical treatments on kittens with ringworm, and it worked nicely.
Is it just me or has the board had a real bumper crop of dipsticks for new members this month?
The question then is: Where was Straight Dope mentioned that brought them over?
Exfoliative Keratolysis? I have this, have had it since I was a teenager. It happens when I am in a very humid environment (usually on vacation to somewhere in the tropics). My outer layer of skin becomes hard, then peels off. Takes about 3 weeks or a month to go through the process for me. It affects the soles of my feet as well.
I am so sorry. Back problems just suck. What is “cupping”
Ringworm isn’t terrible and is easy to treat. Its a fungus and as Seanette has mentioned can be treated with OTC athlete’s foot stuff. The nightmare is that if I have it, I’ll have to track down all of the cats I’ve handled in the last month and see that they are treated.
I don’t think its ringworm. I locked myself in the closet and used a black light on my hands. I didn’t see anything that looked like I’ve seen on cats.
I looked at the pics and they look very much like what is going on, as well as the description of symptoms. My hands don’t hurt, and they don’t itch. Its kinda like the end results of a bad sunburn, when you are all peeling and scratching because of the dead skin.
According to the link, it usually does start as a teenager. I’m well past those years, so I’m not suffering the angst that would have happened if I was 16. Bummer for you, that must have sucked.
Thanks for the link, I’ll ask my doctor about it on Monday. I really had been assuming that I was having some sort of contact reaction because it was so localized.
My hands are a mini-rant, but this isn’t…today, I saw yet another dog fall out of the back of a pick-up. Driver was making a left turn and gunned his truck so he could beat the oncoming car, dog fell out and the oncoming car tried to avoid the dog, but hit it anyhow.
Come on folks, if you MUST have a dog in the back of your pick-up, use tie downs. You know, like the straps you use on the other stuff.
Or better yet, put the dog in the cab and roll the window partly down so she can sniff the breeze.
I know this isn’t going to be popular, but I think the solution is to have Maggie declawed.
For history: My Pride, my Joy, my Budley boy (Little Guy) was declawed when he was young and lived happily to the ripe old age of 20.
Not something I do lightly. But last night I played with her and she was having a blast out on the deck. Then it got too cold (into the 40’s), so I closed the sliding glass door. At the same time, I was trying to get some stuff sorted out on my computer and was kinda busy for over an hour. She didn’t bother me or try to get my attention. She just went into the bedroom and started shredding the sheets again. She spent the next 12 hours locked in the bathroom, about half of it locked in the carrier when she started getting out of hand while I was trying to sleep. She won’t be allowed back in the bedroom until or unless she is declawed.
My only alternative is to get rid of her. 
I think that you probably should take her to the same no-kill shelter you took your last cat to.
If you feel like you want another cat, ask the shelter about adult cats. They are much easier to handle than a teenager like Maggie. Its pretty easy to find an older declawed kitteh, heck, I just googled and found a 4 point declawed adult cat with one petfinder search.
While your purrfect boy was just fine without claws, many cats develop litter box problems because the litter hurts their feet. You got rid of your last cat because of litter box problems, why pay so much money to mutilate your current cat and risk her having litter box problems as well?
Or, you could learn how to trim her claws. When you get into a weekly routine, every time you cut them, you move the quick back…so after a while, you can cut the claws so short that its like they are declawed.
I trimmed her claws 2 days ago. Not too short, didn’t want to hurt her.
Another form of “alternative” medicine. Generally considered higher on the woo scale than acupuncture, but under ear candling. At least in that it looks less silly.
ETA: Chimera, have you tried nail caps? Not to be confused with cups of course.
Eldest got note for doing her math homework in class . . . and then promptly left the note in class. Sigh. She’s so smart. She read the last Harry Potter book in a single day. She got a nearly perfect score on the statewide math test. And she’s so scatterbrained sometimes. I love her and worry about her and I want to hug her and I want so desperately for her to realize that brains are great and fabulous and terrific and wonderful and nice . . . but they just aren’t enough. You have to do the work. You have to do the work under the terms the teacher tells you do it. She’s eleven and I sometimes feel as if I’m running out of time to get her the work habits she needs to get what she wants and what she’s smart enough to get in life. I only hope that my love is strong enough to help her find that path and then let her cross the rest of the way on her own.
One of the problems a lot of people have, and I used to be one of them, was being too deep in our own heads and our own thoughts and not paying enough attention to the world around us. Not being aware of other people, of things happening right in front of us. Becoming aware, becoming perceptive and ‘awake’ isn’t something that society teaches.
I’d think that having her toes cut off would hurt her more than having a vein cut. A quick cut is an ouchie like would happen to you if you ripped a fingernail. Having toes cut off is a very different thing.
What color are her claws? From Maggie’s coloring, I’d guess that they are white. That’s good because you will be able to see where to stop cutting…but seriously, just keep cutting her claws back. The vein will move back. It won’t take long before she just has nubs on her toes, but at least she will have her toes.
Or just get rid of her and buy one of those fake cats available. Much cheaper in the long run.
Not going to treat her like she is disposable.
Nor am I really going to waste my time justifying and arguing the point on-line, so I won’t be discussing it any further.
You are right,** Chimera**. I won’t change your mind, but you are the one who has a track record of treating cats as disposable. However, there are so many homeless cats out there that if the only way a cat can have a home is to have toes cut off…shrugs…I’m actually OK with that.
I have lost a lot of respect for you, but its not like you mean anything to me. You are just another stranger online who showed his true colors. shrugs again.
Holy Fucking Shit.
I got rid of the last cat because she had quite literally urinated on every thing in my apartment, destroying a lot of stuff including some things I’d had most of my life… ONLY getting rid of her after more than a year of trying every goddamned thing I could to try to change the behavior and beating the fuck out of myself for not being able to change things. It was a seriously fucking hard thing to do and the whole situation cost me a lot emotionally.
Getting rid of ONE cat after that much effort is ‘a track record of treating cats as disposable’?
Don’t ever fucking interact with me again.
Chimera, how long did you play with Maggie? It sounds like she has a LOT of energy, and that your place might be kind of small? One of my kitties is a little firecracker, and I run his ass off solidly for about 15 minutes every day. Then he’s fine.
Also, what about getting her some toys that you only leave out when you need to have her distracted? That way they’d still have the novelty. I’ve seen these on infomercials and have been thinking of getting one:
It’s like a mouse under a blanket. There are also those plastic track things with balls in them, some of them are pretty intricate. I’ve also seen cat wheels like there are for hamsters (which can be hilarious with multiple cats!):
She'll grow out of it, she just has so much youthful exuberance right now.You can ask to be put on something that will prevent your periods - they aren’t actually medically required by the body every damned month. I was on norethrindrone for my PCOS hell, that handily turned mine off totally. I already had a tubal ligation so it wasn’t as birth control it really was for the hell of golfball sized clots, cramps that felt like someone reached into my gut and slowly wrenched out my intestines by the handsful and mood swings from perky to serial killer.