A difficult decision

in memoriam Abi

Last Friday I had to make the difficult decision to euthanize my dear cat Abigail. She had been ill for a very long time. In 2009 she was diagnosed with renal failure and from that time on she has had her ups and downs. Renal failure is a slow, but fatal condition. At the time of diagnosis the kidneys already had lost significant capacity to concentrate urine and filter waste products from the blood

In the five years that followed Abi has had several crises where she had to be hospitalized and take IV drips to help her get rid of the waste products that were slowly poisoning her, but time after time Abi recovered thanks to the great care at the clinic. This made it so difficult to make the decision that it had been enough, because you make decisions guided by your previous experiences and those experiences had taught me time after time that she would recover, even when it was looking so grim.

However, since the last crisis in February things had changed. When she came home that time she wasn’t the same anymore. She wasn’t the independent cat that live with me, but she was hiding often, and when was feeling a little better she only wanted to be at my side. If I was in another room she would call for me with a low meow that made me cry and it was clear that she was in pain. At the clinic they had taken röntgen photos that showed that Abi had many, large kidney stones and while previously IV drips had always helped Abi to recuperate and stabilize her, this time the creatinine and urea levels bounced back up immediately after stopping the IV drips.

To counter this Abi received SC fluids regularly and I learned how to give her SC fluids myself, but Abi hated it and after a few times it wasn’t possible for me to administer her SC fluids at home anymore. So, since April I was at the clinic every week for her SC fluids and at home I gave her tuna-lemonade to seduce her to drink more. Giving her the tuna-lemonade was a great pleasure. She showed how much she loved that by her enthusiastic meowing and running between the kitchen and her eating corner in the living room. I’m thankful to Dymphna at the clinic for giving this great tip.

Two weeks ago during routine checks of the urine a bacterial infection was found. On Friday of that week we started with antibiotics to fight the infection. However in the weekend Abi got ill and she threw up more violently than ever and stopped eating. On Monday I was back at the clinic and Abi had lost 300 grams in 3 days. She was dehydrated and got SC fluids again, but back home Abi was still feeling miserable and wouldn’t eat. On Tuesday she was hospitalized again and got IV fluids. She ate a little bit, but felt miserable at the clinic and I brought her home on Wednesday. Back home she wouldn’t eat until I gave her pain medication. Even then she was very reluctant to eat, but devoured the tuna I gave her.

Yesterday when we were preparing for the SC fluids Dymphna gave Abi’s a check-up and she found that her left kidney was much larger than before and probably shut down because a kidney stone or something else was blocking the drainage to the bladder through the ureter. We now knew what was giving Abi so much pain that she wasn’t eating anymore. The only way to help her was to hospitalize her again, but since she fought that so much only two days before I knew I didn’t want to let her go through that again. Even if she was hospitalized it would be doubtful if we could really help her. For me the decision was clear, Abi had fought her last battle and it was time to say goodbye. However clear it was that there was only one recourse, it still was a hard decision to make and I cried with my head against Abi when I was saying goodbye to her.

When it was time, Abi showed me that it was the right decision and that is was her time to go. She didn’t fight or protested against the sedative she was given and she passed away peacefully.

Good bye, dear Abi – I miss you!

I would like to thank everyone at the clinic for their good care for Abi and the time they took to talk to me when I needed their guidance and help. Especially Jacqueline, who has been Abi’s vet since we moved to Haarlem; Kyra, who taught me how to give Abi SC fluids; Dymphna, who was always available for counsel and always looked for new treatment; Linda, who gave me advice on the phone many times; Lilian, who has been Abi’s caretaker when I was travelling and for whom no effort seemed too much, during one holiday even biking from Bennebroek to Haarlem-Noord twice a day to take care of Abi; Susan, Bente, Stephany and the other para-veterinary assistants who helped so much when Abi had a crisis. Thank you all, you’ve all been great!

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Changing sites

After a long time of no updates on my site, I have now decided to renew my site. I have replaced the static pages generated by RapidWeaver with a WordPress site. Before I made the switch I played a while with WordPress, and I must say it is quite nice.

The new site will not have all the pages of the old site, because I also used this opportunity to reorganise things a bit. Almost all my IT related articles have been moved to my blog All things digital. The photo albums have been removed for now, they might come back, or might find a new place on my Facebook account. What will be left here is more about me as a person than about IT. That means some opinion articles, personal stories etc.

I hope the new site will encourage me more to update this site.

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It’s a small world

The internet has changed the world of gaming, even the way we play traditional family games has changed, but not all companies understand the opportunities these changes offer.

The notion that the world has become a global village is most visible on the internet. Thanks to internet technologies I can now keep in touch with friends in the US, Brasil, Italy and Sweden for a fraction of the costs of a long distance call only a decade ago. I am living the internet life, because I have more friends abroad than I have in my home town. Social network sites like Facebook and instant messaging software like Skype or AIM made it easy to keep track of eachother and costs no longer are an inhibitor to keep in contact.
Some companies have understood that this small world has changed the way we interact which eachother and family games that made some long winter nights pass in a wink are no longer tied to being together in the same spot at the same time. For some time a company called Scrabulous made the homonymous game that was wildly popular on Facebook. The game was an online copycat of the famous game Scrabble, but allowed people from all over the world to play together. I joined Facebook with the sole purpose of playing Scrabble online with my American friends. We enjoyed many a game until the game suddenly disappeared from Facebook. Soon it became clear it was shut down because of copyright violations. The original copyright holders Mattel and Hasbro came with their own version, but where the Scrabulous game allowed me, living in the Netherlands, to play against my friends living in the USA, in their version I was welcomed by the message that I should not use the American version, but the international version. While we could invite eachother to a game of Scrabble, these regional restrictions prevented us from playing. So when we found out that Scrabulous was still available on its own site we moved our gaming there, only to be shut off again after a couple of games. For a while we couldn’t play online anymore, until Scrabulous reinvented itself als Lexulous and offered an unrestricted clone of the game again.
While Hasbro and Mattel can work together to create an official online version of Scrabble and sue Scrabulous, it seems to be too much to ask to create a game where Americans and Europeans can play together. Even though they exploit the site scrabble.com together they don’t seem to see the value of creating a single online community. Obviously the two companies do not understand the concepts on which the internet is based. A global network that is freely accessable to anyone but where the value of a website is defined by profile of its visitors. A game that attracts many highly educated visitors who return frequently should be a valued resource. Instead their shortsightedness forces me and my friends to find alternative ways to enjoy an online game together.

Apparantly, for some it’s not such small world after all.

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