I'm Back & Will Be Catching Up for a LONG Time!

I didn't fall off the face of the Earth, really.  I am back and I want to thank everyone for all the notes in the meantime.  Life has gotten in the way - yet again!  It will take me a VERY long time to get back into the swing of things are caught up so for the foreseeable future I'm sure to have a lot of mishmashy type posts.  Hope you don't mind!

One of the main reasons I have been avoiding a blog post is because we lost our dear Paco to his immune issues back in Early May.  He was just shy of his 7th birthday.  It all happened so fast and I'm not sure if I can fully explain everything that happened within the 12 hours of it actually happening.  Plus it was very graphic when it did happen because he was dealing with clotting issues.  Not only was he dealing with his ITP but he also had IHMA.  Up to this point he had dealt with 1 immune disease but that dreadful night he developed a 2nd one.  In addition, he was developing Cushing's again.  Because he was on a high dosage of long-term steroids he was losing muscle mass, too.  Since he was diagnosed at about 2 and a half we knew something like clotting could be in his future but NOTHING prepared us for what actually took place.

Eventho, I haven't been able to take down his pen area YET I was able to 'keep busy' and that seemed to help a little bit.  I know it sounds weird but I have to keep busy to deal with certain things.  It's not that I'm running away from my problems - it just helps me to focus on multiple things to help me heal in the meantime.   

I'm not sure if I blogged about this before my hiatus or not but back in March, I traveled to the Capitol Building.  It was my first time there.  It was a rainy day but I'm glad that I was part of it.  It was a Rally for Fair Districts and to stop Gerrymandering which is a HUGE problem in our state.  Over the past several months it's been a whirlwind and eventho we didn't get the results we had hoped we are still fighting for VOTING RIGHTS!

The county I live in doesn't have a large Refugee population but we neighbor a city that does.  Back in January and February our League of Women Voters invited the director of the Multicultural Resources Center to do a Refugee 101.  We wanted to do this because there is a lot of misinformation and incorrect assumption about how Refugees come to America and integrate into life in a new country.  The feedback was positive and a group of citizens decided to start hikes for Refugees locally since we are smack dab in the middle of the Allegheny National Forest and have other natural beauties in our area.  So...the middle of May we hosted our first of 2 hikes.  The first one was for Refugee Kids.  Ukraine, Syria, Somalia, Eritrea (a country bordering Somalia), and Nepal were the countries they fleed from.

A little over a month later we hosted another hike.  This time for a group of Senior Citizen Refugees.  Some of the participants were part of a sign language group, too.  Within this group were mostly people from Bhutan and Pakistan.

In the beginning of the Summer another outing we had was to Erie, PA, where we went to a Food Truck Festival in hopes to have one locally some day.  I was thrilled that there were vegan options!

Another thing that has been on my mind is a local tragedy.  K9 Choper - our local K9 Officer - passed away from his injuries during a training day.

During the end of June I was a committee member for the annual car and craft show at our fairgrounds and I was pleased to see more vendors that offered vegan friendly products.  One of them being these Vegan Lip Balms.

Of course we have been busy with work, too, an have had many live remotes lately including a few at local businesses and during fair week.  More on fair week in a future post but here is a neat snapshot from Employee Appreciation Day at a local business.

Another thing that has been keeping us busy has been trading in our vehicles on new ones!  Here is the new Fiat I traded my old one in for.  I LOVE it!

A few months ago I became a Zonta Member, too!  It's been fun so far and I'm looking forward to getting involved with more of the service and advocacy end of things.  Each summer they have a Summer Surprise and members don't know what it is until they get there.  This year we went to the Lucy-Desi Museum.  We had dinner in The Tropicana that they set up to look like the real TV set.  There were also recreations of the sets from I LOVE LUCY, too!  Since I'm in radio I found this tidbit extra interesting!

In other news...our local mall is going thru a major redesign and revamp.  They are turning it from a shopping mall to a strip/plaza type thing.  A co-worker has gotten me into indoor plants more the last year or more and she was upset when I told her that the indoor plants at the mall were going to be trashed.  We asked the project manager if we could take some and he said YES so we are trying to save some of them.  More on that in upcoming posts, too!

And before blogger gives up on me I think I will end this post right here.  But I will be regularly blogging again so please check back.  I really didn't scratch the surface of the stuff I have to share with you and I know I will be adding more to the list very soon!  Thanks again for staying with me the last couple months!  I appreciate you all!

Raw Vegan Tacos, Thrown Together Meals, & Furkid Updates

Yesterday I hinted at something that I have tried lately and LOVED and will be eating a lot of until I run out of the ingredients.  That is Raw Vegan Tacos.  I grabbed Romaine Hearts, Sun Dried Tomatoes, Guacamole (because it was cheaper than Avocados), and Cauliflower at a little mom and pop shop and I already had some Coconut Aminos at the office.

I marinated the Cauliflower in the Coconut Aminos and used it as the bottom layer along with the Sun Dried Tomatoes and topped it with Guac!  I have to say it was pretty awesome!

They are messy but I don't care.  The Guac sort of helps with the mess tho.

I will be doing variations of these in the near future - for sure!

I have been saying that my food efforts have been pretty weird as of late.  I either throw something together at the office, on the road, or in the camper.

We are having some issues with our house and I haven't been able to cook there.

This 2nd photo is something I threw together at my parents house.  They didn't have much that was vegan in their house and I didn't know prior to stopping by that I would be eating there.  I made up some Mac and added stewed tomatoes!  I threw some Earth Balance on there, too!  It wasn't too shabby!

There has been a LOT going on the last several months and I wasn't going to mention it on the blog but I feel like I should.

On of the MANY things we have been stressing about is the furkid situation.

In the past month ALL of our furkids have been at the vet as least once.  Charlie - our 17 year old feral cat - was acting weird and I thought he had a stroke but it was a really wicked double ear infection.  We also found out he has kidney failure.

After treating the ear infections we decided to switch his food to a Kidney Diet to help him with that as long as we can.  Since he's a really wild (feral-like) cat and always has been we don't want to stress him more than we have to by taking him to the vet PLUS there has to be 2 vets there to deal with him.

Moving on to the dogs - Cricket (pictured above) had to go in for a check-up and shots.  Riley had to go in for the same - and he had a double ear infection, too.  He has always had Chronic Ear Infections so we are used to it.  However, this time around they tried a new med on him and it seemed to work well.  He had to go in 3 times.  Then there is sweet Paco.  Oh...sweet Paco!  That poor guy!  He's had such a hard time with everything but he's a fighter!

I had to take Paco in for Kennel Cough - it's the only thing we give him - up the nose - we don't vaccinate him otherwise because of his immune issues.  Then a few weeks later we found out he caught something from the kennel so we treated that.  Then his nose started bleeding a little bit and we had him in twice for that.  After finding something on X-Rays we had to decide what to do moving forward.  We are still trying to decide.  He's be in about 4 times already.  They found something in his nasal passage.  It's either something that he sniffed up and got stuck or it's cancer.  Knowing how hard he has has it with other issues his whole life all I can think of is that it's cancer.  GOD!  I hope it isn't.  I think we have the choice made - and that is to have our vet go in and do exploratory surgery and see if she can remove the thing that showed up on the X-Rays.  But I;m afraid because of his immune issues.  Because he has ITP/IMHA that means he might not clot or might clot weird and it could kill him.  Also - if the vet can't remove it - we can't really do cancer treatments because of his immune issues.  From what I have seen about Nose Cancer in Dogs it will grow and morph his face and/or cause seizures.  It seems like a lose-lose situation.  Our vet was on vacation so I need to call her back to see how we are going to go about this.  In the meantime every couple of days he has a slight bloody nose.  We have been treating it with Epinephrine.   These vet bills have been a lot to handle all at once in addition to all of the other stuff we have been facing the last several months.  But those stories I will save for another day.

Where Did The Week Go?

Thursday, already?  Not sure where the rest of the week went but I knew I needed to get a blog post on before the craziness of the next few days takes place!  You see - my sisters baby shower is Saturday!  Both near-future grandma's are running around like maniacs and then there is the near-future 'Crazy Aunt' (that's ME) that has been overly busy at work and down and out not feeling well for a few days last week!  I haven't been as much help as I wanted the last couple of weeks!  Anyhow...today I will share with you some things I have been taking snapshots of over the past week and then I will blab about the shower next week!

First up is what I had for dinner last night.  It's the first photo you see in this post and it is LITERALLY something I threw together because I didn't want to fuss with anything special.  I found tortilla boats that happen to be vegan and I filled them with this chickpea mixture!

Smoked Russian Chickpeas:

1 Can of Chickpeas

4 T Vegan Mayo (I used Trader Joe's - see below)

2 to 3 T Ketchup

1/2 t Smoked Paprika

1/2 t Wildtree Memphis Dry Rub

3 Drops Organic Liquid Smoke

I cannot express how AWESOME this turned out!  I'm not going to lie - I kinda wanted to drink the 'dressing' which was a more smoked up version of my Vegan Russian Dressing I have done in the past.

This was the Vegan Spread and Dressing I used that I found at Trader Joe's the last time I went.  I'm partial to Just Mayo but this is pretty awesome on it's own.  It's not what I would call a straight-up vegan mayo but more like a dressing like it states - it seemed thicker and did have a different taste but the taste was pretty wonderful!

Another wrap I did within the last week was this one.  It doesn't look like much but it was a great comfort food!  I used a couple of potato patties, tomato slices, and vegan cheese sauce.  The vegan cheese sauce was the leftover vegan cheese powder I made not too long ago!  It worked well!

I had a huge salad this week, too, and I made this dressing.  It was supposed to resemble a vegan Ranch Dressing using Sunflower Seeds as the base but it totally missed the mark as a Vegan Ranch Dressing taste-alike.  The taste wasn't bad it just wasn't what I was going for.  

I'm grateful on a daily basis that Paco has been doing well the last several months!  A few months ago he wasn't able to do this!  He would barely move let alone look engaged in things!  

I still have to help him up on the sofa and recliner but the WANT and INTEREST is there!  I put him up on the recliner but he managed to get on the armrest all by himself and pose like this!  I couldn't tell you the last time he did that!  For about a year I freaked out when he did try to because his legs were so unstable!  How can these photos NOT put a smile on your face?

Household Updates

Last week was crazy.  I wanted to hold off on posting this until I knew more.  I'm happy with my choice to wait because I think there has been some improvement.  Here's what's up...Last week...Paco developed another spot near his hip.  He also stopped taking his meds - which was never a problem up to about Wednesday Night.  PLUS...Wednesday and Thursday he was getting sick.  Thursday Night even more so.  I called the vet that had been with him thru his whole ITP Diagnosis and she wanted me to bring him in again on Friday so I did.  They did all the blood work all over again and said the good news was that his levels and counts were the best they have been since this whole thing started.  The bad news was they are pretty sure that he has an ulcer somewhere in his body.

So we took him off of the steroids and added an additional medication to coat his stomach and help with this ulcers.  This seemed to help a LOT.  Because it was an intense steroid that he was on - they asked me to start giving it to him yesterday so I did. 

Time will tell what we will do next but I have a feeling they will have to adjust the steroid(s) that he IS on because that is the problem.  

Thankfully all else seems to be ok.  What I will say - without any hesitation is that ITP SUCKS!!!!  I wouldn't wish it on ANYONE...human or animal! 

In other news...Suzie has been rapidly aging.  We've had her for 12 years and she was 2 when we adopted her.  She's the Queen Bee - always has been - always will be - but - she's been making some noises the last few months that we are chalking up to arthritis.  She's always been a picky eater but the last week or so we've had to coax her to eat more than usual.  She's not in pain because she's still running around and playing.  I have been adding water to her food and yesterday I picked up some soft food to mix in with what she usually eats...I know she wasn't crazy about the food we just ran out of so that could be part of it too!  BUT...I have to say she is LOVING the wet food that we bought for her.  She's been eating it up without much nudging from us.  Disclaimer...our furkids are NOT vegetarian/vegan neither is my hubby.  Anyhow...I hope this new special mixture of wet and dry food will be the trick for her.


Aside from 'furkids' it was a weekend of CLEANING in our house!  WOWZA!  I started on Tuesday of last week going thru my clothes and ended up trashing a bag and donating 3 large garbage bags full of clothes.  THEN...this weekend I was able to toss 2 more bags and donate 4 more bags of clothes to Goodwill, too!  I still have more to go thru but this is a great start!  We went thru the upstairs hallway, the bathroom, the bedroom, the down stairs living room, and front room, and Paco's Palace (as we call it) and cleaned, too! 

Another thing we chatted about this past weekend was possibly opening up a YouTube Channel or two.  We thought it would be a good thing to do this winter since we tend to be hermits when the snow flies...which brings me to my next tidbit...SNOW...blah...YEAH...we saw our first snow fall of the season...a dusting...thankfully it didn't last the whole day on Saturday. 

Furkids Updates, Feathered Friends, & Finders-Keepers

Thanks to everyone who has been asking about our dear Paco!  For a timeline of posts about his medical issues visit these posts:

No!  My Dear Paco! Posted Aug 26th

Furkids/Family Medical Updates & Timeline Posted Aug 27th
Paco Update Posted Sept 3rd

Now for the NEWEST Update on Paco and some info about Suzie as well.  This photo above I took this past weekend!  Suzie - on the right - has lost about 3 pounds in the past several months.  I took her in for some required shots and prep for her stay with a very nice guy we have locally that her and Riley will stay with next week.  He truly LOVES animals and is a great guy.  Anyways...we are to keep an eye on her - she's NOT eating less and she IS acting completely normal otherwise.  They have her down as 12 but I know that is NOT true...we've had her for that long.  And she was 2 when we adopted her.  However, the vet did say that now she is within her ideal weight - where as before she was a little bit on the heavy side for her size.  She's our "Queen Bee" of the house that is for sure!

As for Paco - he continues to IMPROVE!  On Friday his Platelet Count was 698!!!  He will remain on all of his meds for the next 5 months and we will be doing monthly checks in the meantime.  He has another round of Antibiotics but once he's done with those he will be down to 2 meds and a low dose tummy tamer for the lining of his stomach because of the steroids he's on.

In other news I have been making some new friends lately!  Check these 'guys' out!  I went over to my parents Sunday night and across the street these two were hanging out.  I had to take a few photos because these aren't birds I usually see in our area.  They aren't the best photos because I was trying to use my ZOOM on my iPhone before they walked away.

They were short and fat but super cool!  After asking a few people and doing some research we DID establish that they were a type of Heron.  My husband thought they were young Black Crowned Night Herons but I think they look more like the Green Heron photos I have seen.  Regardless I was super fortunate to spot these 'guys' because they are concerned 'least concern' by the conservation department...it's not endangered but it could get to that point.  My mom said she's seen this charming pair of birds around their house and two of the neighbors properties in the last week to week and a half.  They are wondering if they are living in a nearby tree.

Also over the weekend...I was cleaning and found a package of Incense from Wild Berry.  I opened it up and decided to burn a half of a stick and they were still potent!  I remember when I was in college I used to buy Incense were ever I could find some but NOT for the reasons people may think!  Many of my college friends were NOT allowed to burn candles in their dorms or apartments so they burned these instead AND they were nice to put on window sills - they sun would hit them and release the oils, too, without having to burn them.  They were also CHEAP and the perfect price for college students on a budget!  So...yeah...I found a few sticks and was really shocked at the aroma in them still because I bet I have had these for at least 15 years because I don't remember buying them myself.  I'm thinking my father gave them to me because he gets samples at work for purchasing for a chain of C-Stores here.

 

OH!!!!!  And...I will have multiple posts again today so please check back AND if you haven't entered to WIN the Garden of Life Chocolate Cacao RAW PROTEIN Powder...there is STILL TIME...I will draw a winner tomorrow morning at 8am EST.  Check out THIS POST for more details and to enter!

Paco Update!

I have a lot to cover today at My Blissful Journey.  First off - I'm happy to report that Paco is improving!  Last week I mention he was diagnosed with IMHA which stands for Immune Mediated Hemolytic Anemia.  BUT...in fact he's been diagnosed with ITP instead.  ITP stands for Immune Mediated Thrombocytopenia.

They are similar diseases being that they both attack their own systems and that they are both immune diseases.  The difference being - in short - is that IMHA - is when the Red Blood Cells are being attacked and ITP is when the Platelets are being attacked.

When we took him in last Tuesday his Platelet count was at 9.  Thursday the count was at 3.  This is VERY bad.  Anything under 200 is bad.  We took him in for blood test again yesterday after him being on VERY limited activity for the long weekend while at home with us.  He was at the vet for 3 days prior to that.  His Platelet Count yesterday was 468.  YAY!!!!  Eventho he's 'out of the woods' he's still not up to par.  With ITP there is a long recovery time.  Right now they are shooting for 4 months on meds.  Maybe even 6 months.  OR...maybe even the rest of his life.  BUT we are VERY pleased that his counts jumped that much over the long weekend.  We could be more happy!  Thank you everyone for their positive vibes, prayers, thoughts, etc.  I believe they helped make a difference!  Thanks again!

Furkids/Family Medical Updates & Timeline

If you read my post yesterday you will see that Paco is not doing well.  He was diagnosed with IMHA.  We are very worried.  He's currently at the vet hospital getting aggressive steroids and fluids.  I've been doing a lot of reading and research on the disease and it's NOT good.  Even if he pulls thru - it will be a long and tricky recovery.  It's so frustrating because other than the rash on his stomach he was NOT showing any other symptoms of the disease.  Perhaps that is a positive thing - meaning we caught it early - and he will do better than the majority of other cases I have been reading about.  Right now it's a waiting game and I almost can't handle that.

Last night I went thru the last 8 months in my head and put it all together...I can't believe (the following) all happened in the last 8 months with all 5 of our furkids...Suzie had two fatty tumors removed - her stitches popped and it set her back for a few weeks.  We lost our precious Gabby to Liver Cancer and that was totally unexpected.  Charlie had a wound that would not heal on his tail and he had to have his tail amputated.  Riley - just last week - had to have a large portion of skin removed from his neck and has a double ear infection that we are still treating.  6 days later - this has happened with Paco...I took him in for what I thought was a rash and it ended up being IMHA.  All this in 8 months.

In addition...my  husband has been having stomach issues for about a year and a half.  Yesterday (while everything was going on with Paco) he was out of town for more tests and procedures and it was confirmed a 2nd time - but by a specialist this time - that he does, in fact, have Crohn's Disease.

Yesterday completely sucked.  BUT...it's NOT a home without Fur-Kids.  And at least my husband now knows that it IS Crohn's Disease.  It's something he will have for the rest of his life but it's manageable.  Now if we can just get some more answers on what to do next for him.

No! My Dear Paco!

This morning I took Paco into the vet for what I thought was a rash and instead he was diagnosed with Immune Mediated Hemolytic Anemia.  He's at the vet until Thursday to be monitored closely.  It's critical that he doesn't get injured in any way.  He's platelets are currently at 9...which is REALLY low...near nil.  This is terrifying me!  He's only 3 years old!  He's been acting completely fine.  No other symptoms other than the red dots on his hips.  From what I have read 20 to 40 percent of IMHA dogs either die from the disease or the treatments that may or may not cause clotting.  I'm in complete shock about this.  I feel like I got hit with a mack truck.  I just want him to be home on my lap.  PLEASE send any prayers/thoughts/vibes my way!  I would appreciate it.