Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Ireland

Last October Leah and I went to Ireland for a work trip and stayed a few extra days to enjoy the country together.  We were in Dublin for 4 days and went to the Cliffs of Moher for a day.  Overall, Ireland was great and has made the very short list of countries I would be willing to live in that I have visited...coming in just after Canada for the third and final spot.

We visited the oldest pub in Dublin "The Brazen Head", toured the Guinness storehouse, saw Brooke Fraser in concert with Cary Brothers and basically walked around enjoying hearing words that formed understandable sentences in a language we could speak.  The people seemed incredibly friendly, especially to be from a larger city.  We had a car for a few days, which was a nice change from how we were and still are living in Switzerland.  For those that don't know, they drive on the left which added an extra level of excitement to driving in a foreign country and for the first time in over a year.  However, the stress was certainly worth it.  I felt as though we had endless power to go where we wanted when we wanted.

I also learned a very important lesson about Leah.  She is willing to risk death to see the sites.  This is not a joke.  In fact, I am going to weigh this little tidbit into future vacation plans accordingly.  We were on our way to see the Cliffs of Moher on our second to last day before returning to Switzerland and some new highway had been constructed our GPS was unaware of.  So instead of following the printed directions, we went with our little guiding black box's (lovingly named Spell Check) ideas for the previous route.  And it has become very clear why the new highway was built...the old one was down right frightening.  I would call it a single lane road, however; the oncoming traffic does not even hint at letting off the gas.  Sometimes I think they just close there eyes and speed up.  So while playing repeated rounds of chicken for 3-4 hours on a road which I would describe at best as being 'janky' and going around hairpin turns at tire screeching break-neck speeds, my eager-to-see-the-cliffs wife (or her maker) was hanging out the window snapping pictures of the country side in between popping her head back into the car to encourage me to speed up, and nervously muttering to herself how we were doing to miss a great once in a lifetime sunset over the cliffs.  Interestingly enough, we were never speeding.  The speedlimit was posted as 100 kph on this road...and I would have needed an indy car to reach that speed with as many corners as there were.  We did make it for the final moments of the sunset:

Maybe it was worth it...

OK, so it was.


And here is a shot of the country side Leah grabbed while traveling at the speed of sound.


Oh yeah, we stayed in this castle too :p



All pictures are brought to you directly from Behind a Lens.

Sunday, February 12, 2012

Good News Found Welcoming Arms

For the last 2 months Leah and I have remained overly stressed over our cat, Monty.  He had developed an upper respiratory Staphylococcus Felis bacterial infection that spread to his inner ears, bursting both of his eardrums and eventually swelling his ears completely shut.  He showed almost on external signs of discomfort until the ears were closed, then he began to walk with his head to the side and started sleeping a lot.  Prior to this, only the occasional sneeze (which from now on will result in rushed medical visits).  For those of you who know about upper respiratory infections with cats, it is highly relevant information to point out he is a pure bred Persian.  These infections are notoriously detrimental to specifically Persians.  In many breeds, this type of infection is related to some type of removable blockage or some underlying condition.  For Persians, the 'blockage' is often attributed to their compact facial structures...and is hardly removable.  The veterinarians have reminded us on many occasions that Persians with his illness often never recover and are forced to deal with it for the rest of their lives.  This news did not resonate well with either of us since he is only 2, and just before he came we lost a great Persian to an untimely development of PKD.

Since we first realized his sickness mid December, he has undergone sedation 5 times to have a scope inserted into his ear to take pictures and flush out the infection.  Before this could even take place several anti-inflammatories had to be administered to just open his ear canal to insert the scope, and even with these drugs, eventually the scope had to be forcefully inserted into his ear resulting in blood coming out of his ears for several days.  At this point they basically pressure washed his ears with a cleaning fluid in the scope.  After 4 more treatments of this, more than 50 days on a fluoroquinolone antibiotic named 'Marbocyl' with an anti-inflammatory/antibiotic ear drop 'Aurizon', and countless prayers we were told the most recent culture came back negative for his bacterial infection.

Concerning Monty, greater news could not have been given to us.  He is still on his antibiotics for 20 more days, because the veternarians are basically afraid of this bateria in combination with his breed...and sounded rather shocked at the negative culture.  They actually seemed to smile as large as I was.  Just in the last couple of weeks he has begun to behave much more normal (as in waking me up for a turkey snack this morning) which is in stark contrast to the days he would sit perfectly still unmoving, while our other cat Marley maintained a seemingly unnecessarily large distance from him that only highlighted our concerns.  

We are tremendously thankful to have received some encouraging news after months of being told to prepare for the worst.

And now some pictures to go with the names:

To be so young he has an excellent mustache.


Monty and Marley being attentive.


Monty snuggled up to his favorite person.