mel's planetoid

yes, new cat picture; my so-called former life;yes i am a crazy cat lady in training; touch me, i'm sick;

I like the whole web thing because I can go off on tangents and not interrupt the flow of an article.

here's me and my cat Mungo. Mungo came from w107 Street. He was "discovered" by my friend Carol's dog Maggie. Carol thought Mungo was meant for her friend Brooke, but Brooke wasn't ready for Mungo. She still regrets this decision!

Henrey was found on my block in Washington Heights by me and my boyfriend Erik on our way home from my friend Annette's party. I'd seen him around a few times and mentioned that to Erik, who berated me for not taking him in. So I decided to tell the universe that if the little cat wanted a home he'd come right up to me. And he did, and Erik was there too so I couldn't weasel out of that one.

I understand how Mungo ended up on the street: he's a bit willful, plus he runs out the door all the time. But Henrey! He's just the sweetest guy. Alls I can figure is that when whoever had him found out how much it costs to neuter a cat they ditched him.

If you know me, you may have noticed that I don't always show up when I supposed to, or I'm MIA for months at a time. It's not that I'm anti-social, although I do have those tendencies; I have an illness! It's really cool, it's called chronic inflammatory demyelinating polyneuropathy. In the acute version, you get sick once, and this is what happens: your feet hurt, the next day your calves hurt, the next day you can hardly walk, the next day you can't open a bottle of soda; the finally you start choking and have difficulty breathing. Then, in about three weeks, you begin to get better, and after about two years you're pretty much back to normal. Anne Rice had this. I have the chronic form, which is much more like MS. I get better, and all of a sudden I have a relapse. Relapses are often brought on by flus and colds, so I try to be careful about getting sick. I first got this in October 1994: I remember I missed both Pigface and Killing Joke. I'm in and out of the hospital. When I relapse, I have to get plasmapherisis, a process by which they draw out your blood, spin out your plasma, mix it with someone else's and send it on back to you, It involves being hooked up to a machine that's similar to a dialysis machine with tubes in your arms for about 3 hours. Most of the time they have tvs in the room, so I get to catch up on Jenny Jones and Doprah. The acute form of this disease (also called Gillian-Barre syndrome) occurs in about 1 in every one million people, and the chronic form is even rarer than that, so it's like I've won Shirley Jackson's lottery (didn't you have to read that story in school?).

Although I can't be sure, I feel that I've suffered a small amount of brain damage due to this illness. I used to be able to write, and by that I mean I could put together a beautiful sentence, and then follow it up with another one! I think the verbal part of my brain suffered somehow during this whole thing. Sometimes I even have difficulty explaining simple concepts. The right words just are not always accessible.