So, I’m trying to get a goddamned sick cockatiel looked at. I bring him in, the vet sees him and says he’s underweight and that we should test, but it will be a while before the test results come back because despite claiming to be a full-service facility, they don’t do tests in-house. But she says “someone” will contact me with the results, but if nobody does, call back and another vet will “talk me through” the results because she’ll be “out” for the rest of that week.

So I wait and then call back and get a vet on the phone who talks me through the results, which are inconclusive. But apart from some basic tips about feeding and giving him some cuttlebone to increase his calcium, she’s reluctant to tell me anything because she didn’t examine the bird. So apparently nothing was written about his physical examination, because recording that would just be silly. She says the other vet is supposed to call me back. But following this vet’s advice does leave Squeak a little more energetic, if addicted to treats.

So I wait until the original doc is back, expecting her to call. So of course I have to call, but of course, being in the office a whole day has shagged her out and she’s off a week after I originally brought Squeak in. So I leave a message and she calls me the next day (leaves a message and claims she’ll try my cell, which never rings, even though that’s the number I gave). I call her back and she is alarmed at the initial advice to feed Squeak some treats (I was never given an amount, so I gave him a bit but tried to make sure it was in with his regular food, and I saw him eating a bit of the regular food too once his energy was up). She claims that “maybe he had something and he’s feeling better.” This despite the fact that the original vet said his white blood cell count was normal.

Did I mention this vet can’t ever get Squeak’s sex right? Inconsequential in this case but symptomatic of the level of concern she’s showing.

So she keeps suggesting that he’s “addicted” to the treats and that’s why he’s not eating normally. Now, Squeak wasn’t eating normally previously, and he’d lost a lot of weight, and he hadn’t had treats in about a year. So I don’t fucking think it was my poor feeding habits. In fact, it’s on his chart that he is on the vet-recommended diet. But she keeps asking me if he’s been on a seed diet. NO, the breeder even gave him the bird equivalent of spinach and wheat germ. I finally get her to admit that it couldn’t have been my bad feeding habits that affected things earlier, so she wants to test to see if he’s just eating the treats now because they’re more fun or if he’s doing it because he’s feeling better. So she orders me to cut back on the treats but I finally badger her into doing something, which amounts to taking an initial weight (again) to see if feeding him the normal food is not working.

So I bring him in and get him weighed and ask what’s next, and they reply…nothing. Well, the vet is off again, having worked a full two days in more than a week, and she won’t be back for a week and a half.

All this would be no big deal if Squeak were truly on the mend. But sure enough, as I’ve got him back on the original food he’s back off it and slowly starving to death. So I’m to hope that he’s going to make it until she gets back from whatever vacation and decides on a lark to maybe treat him?

Fuck that. I’m calling tomorrow and telling a vet, a real vet, that it isn’t working, and they had better have some advice for me besides waiting to see if he dies. Maybe a course of action toward a diagnosis? Maybe matching a vet who can both…and this is really radical, so stay with me…examine him and read his lab results and…follow me…use these two actions to form hypotheses about what’s wrong for him that can be confirmed or denied through further tests, or perhaps suggest a course of treatment? And maybe set up a schedule and lay out possibilities for what to do if said treatment doesn’t work? And maybe if there are further tests, perhaps get back to me with the results?

I am so pissed off, I can’t sleep. That’s going to make me a bundle of joy for the unlucky receptionist tomorrow, but then if this is the standard of care at Eastern Exotic, well, that’s probably something they’re used to by now. At every stage, it’s been me pushing this along. At every point, the default option has been to do nothing until I pushed. I mean, I’m paying them a lot of money–much more than for a dog or cat–to look at my bird, and I haven’t complained once about the cost. Just fucking DO something, other than giving me your vacation plans.

One of the vets talked me through Squeak’s blood work results today. Basically everything is normal except his calcium levels, which are definitely too low. So there’s no obvious reason why he should be not eating enough, though a calcium deficiency would cause lethargy. He eats junk food well enough, so he may have suddenly developed a distaste or an intolerance for his regular (healthy, vet-recommended) pelleted food. So we’re switching him to exclusively the high-fat version of the feed, plus giving him millet sprays to get his weight and appetite back up, and giving him cuttlebone to get his calcium up (normally caged cockatiels on pelleted diets don’t need cuttlebone, as they get plenty of calcium).

So we don’t know why Squeak has gone off his feed or is unable to get the nutrition he needs from it, but we’re going to try to treat it with the cockatiel of junk food to keep him from starving. Then we’ll check in a month to see if his calcium has improved.

So it’s going to be a long road for Squeak, unless something more obvious presents itself in the meantime.

So for the past couple of weeks I’d noticed my cockatiel, who named himself Squeak, was being quieter and fluffing out his feathers more than usual. After a while I noticed he had a lot more urine in his droppings than usual, and he was drinking a lot. So I finally took him into the vet when it became obvious that this wasn’t just a momentary thing.

Squeak spends a lot of time fluffed out and sleepy like this now

He’s still occasionally the old Squeak–not liking me (or anybody else) going into the bathroom, excitedly yelling when anybody comes in the front door, but he’s running between 50 – 70% capacity. When the vet weighed him, he was at 70 grams, down from his normal weight of 90. He’s clearly a sick little birdie.

The vet said that we may be looking at kidney or liver problems, but will need some blood work and maybe some urine samples to be sure. If it’s just an infection, those can be treated. If it’s his liver, there’s something they can give that supports liver function. I got the impression that kidneys might be the worst possibility.

True to form, I researched it on the web, and it turns out there are special diets and treatments that can be used if we’ve caught his kidney disease in time, but that I was not bright in waiting to bring him in. Some people suspect that kidney disease can be caused by all-pellet (formulated food) diets, but the maker of the most respected brand vigorously denies there is any evidence of this, and cites his work with UC Davis. In any event, it seems like a pelleted diet isn’t a great idea if this really is kidney disease, which the symptoms he’s having resemble. However, apparently more urine in the stool isn’t unique to kidney problems, so it’s by no means guaranteed. There is also apparently genetic defect in special colorforms of cockatiel (anything other than the normal gray) that causes kidney failure at an early age. Squeak isn’t a normal gray, he’s a lighter-colored (and, in my biased opinion, prettier) cinnamon colorform.

I’m really hoping this is just a passing thing that can be treated–Squeak is 9 1/2 years old, which is middle-to-upper-middle-aged for a cockatiel. I was hoping he’d be around for five more years at least. Even though he lacks the brain for consciously thinking of it, he gave me a reason to get up every day when I first moved to DC and was having a very rough time of it…if something happened to me, who would take care of this little noisy guy? Indeed, who’d put up with him? So for being there when nobody else was, I owe it to the little guy to be there for him.

Obviously it’s a little premature to worry this much, but nothing I’ve read suggests this isn’t serious. But fortunately there seems to be a good chance that it’s treatable, whatever it is.

Unlike many people, I was allergic to pets as a child and, following the death of our Siamese cat when I was something like 4, I didn’t have any pets. So I haven’t really been through the death of a pet. I’m hoping to put that off for a few years, if at all possible.

Addendum: Hey, folks, thanks for the well-wishes, but don’t assume this is the whole story: modern veterinary medicine actually did work for him, and he’s back and bigger than before. He’s still on a pelleted diet, just a different one. So I haven’t had to go through this yet. It will happen someday, but not yet as of over a year later.

Doesn’t matter how many times you ask, there is no free pony for you.

So I went to NEARFest with my brother this past weekend, and I was excited because I was sure I was going to meet the guy I once referred to as “the only deity I officially recognize.” That’s Keith Emerson, formerly of Emerson, Lake & Palmer and The Nice.

In preparation, I rummaged through my old LPs (these were these flat, non-optical 12 inch disks we used to use to store our music before iPods, kiddies) and dug out my carefully-collected-and-preserved first-edition copies of “Brain Salad Surgery” and “Ars Longa Vita Brevis” for Keith to sign. My plan was to have those and wear the T-Shirt I got when I went to London to hear the Nice play for a short reunion tour in 2002. I mean, I was going to be the One True Fan, because I went to freaking LONDON just to hear a gig.

That was before I met the 52-year-old woman who followed them to every date on their 2003 tour in England, but that’s getting ahead of the story.

So the day finally comes and we’re in our 6th row seats and hear a 3-hour set by Keith. Everybody lines up afterwards and I manage to get in around the 200th place. I have my LPs, I’m wearing my T-shirt, everything is ready to go.

I get to the line, and I feel kind of bad for the guys playing with Keith, because everybody has old ELP stuff that they don’t want them to sign, because they weren’t on it. I tried to hint that I enjoyed their playing in London (I think two of them were on that tour) but was too wound up about meeting Keith.

Now, I’d prepared a couple of opening lines to make the right impression with Keith. He’s English, so they couldn’t be too sappy. My first choice was, “Keith, you’re the reason I went to music school. So you’ll be hearing from my lawyers very soon.”

That seems to get a laugh. Now Keith has had neurosurgery on his arm, because he was almost unable to play for a good deal of the Nineties due to repetitive stress injuries. So my second was to mention the elephant in the room. “So, when I got my first issue of Keyboard Magazine in 1982, there was this column by some guy who’d said he’d had some exercises to relax when he played and threw them all away because they were boring. What have we learned?” OK, a little biting, but sending the message that I’m not just some Sandy-Come-Lately.

But during the show he tells about meeting Jimmy Smith, a famous jazz organist that Keith looked up to. He got backstage and started to tell Jimmy “I can’t tell you what an honor this is for me…” but Jimmy stopped him at the word “can’t” and repeated it with a U substituted for the A and grabbed Keith’s “salad meat and two vedge” as Keith put it. A bit off-putting.

So at the last minute, I decided to say, “After your story tonight, I cunt tell you what an honor this is for me.” I left it optional whether or not to say “so please don’t grab my balls.”

Never go for the last minute plan.

Remember, I’m the 200th, and I mean that quite literally, person in line. It is by now 1 AM. Keith is not as young as he used to be, and just played a 3 hour set. He’s kinda tired. He’s gamely signing stuff but looks tired. The guy standing guard sees that I’ve pulled the promotional poster out from my copy of Brain Salad Surgery and says, “Hey, you only get two things,” not knowing that the poster was part of the album. So I’m distracted as I’m trying to talk to Keith and point out the bits I want signed.

So I get to Keith and stammer my way through the last-minute joke and wait for a laugh and a witty comeback.

He smiled grimly.

Ouch.

So, opportunity for coolness blown, I decided I’d let my fanboy flag fly, and said, “seriously, thanks a lot,” and tried to shake his hand, not realizing that he was protecting his damaged right hand. So I was an insensitive ass on top of it. I abandoned all cool and asked the signature kommandandt if it was OK if I had a picture. He said, “Sure, just sit there,” and pointed to a seat beside Keith. I suddenly felt much warmer toward the guy. So I handed my camera to my brother, scooted around to the seat and sat next to Keith. Clearly Keith knew the routine, so he leaned up against me. Just then somebody else called him and the kommandandt started looking antsy, so I just turned to my brother and smiled:

Sigh.

So at this point, I knew it was just hopeless, so I simply turned to Keith and said, “Really, Keith, this meant quite a lot to me, thank you very much,” and he turned to me and said, “Oh, did you get it, then?” and someone called him away again so I just muttered, “Sure, thanks,” and strolled away with what little shreds of my dignity I could manage, and started laughing at myself before I’d gotten six feet away.

But all in all, I did meet him, I got to thank him, albeit imperfectly, for many years of musical inspiration, and got my photo with him, even if he’s not pointed toward the right camera. Until last weekend, I couldn’t even say that.

But until last weekend, I could still pretend I’d be a lot cooler if I met him.

So, as may not shock anybody who talks politics with me, I’m libertarian. As such, I tend to read Reason magazine. This is just something libertarian types do. Living in the DC area, I have occasion to come into contact with several writers of said magazine when they have a happy hour, as occurred tonight. I also participate in a forum for readers of Reason’s excellent blog, Hit & Run.

So imagine my surprise when talking with Kerry Howley, whose writing is literally award-winning, she mentions that she recognized me from my “disparaging comments” on said forum.

“Bwah?” I said, with all the articulate intelligence at my disposal.

“Yeah, you said how young I was.”

Oh, yeah…that.

Guilty. I’d said in the context of some discussion or other (that I can’t find now) that despite Kerry’s very serious picture and writing, she was, I believe my phrase was, “so *frigging young*.”

Now, admittedly, it’s been a while since I’ve been in my early 20s, but I should have remembered that several of my acquaintances had issues being taken seriously when they first started out because they were perceived as too young (I, on the other hand, have looked like I’m in my mid-30s, so lucky for me I’m finally there).

All I can say is, it totally was meant as more of a shock, because–let’s face it–most early-20s-types you meet do not write sophisticated and entertaining rants on the the IWF discovering prostitution is called “sex work”. But I can see how she might take it as general assholery from a geriatric.

As a word of advice from the wisdom of my advanced years, let me suggest a comeback if anyone ever condescendingly says, “Oh, you’ll change your mind when you’re older.” Just say, “Only if I get early-onset dementia.”

So true to my word, here’s my public apology and chance for Kerry to take a free shot. I suggest something about looking spry for my age.

So, what ways could we think of to make the experience of going to the post office less enjoyable? I have to vote for a customer bringing a screaming baby in and proceeding to ignore it while using the postal counter to do a few week’s worth of bill paying, fiddling with mail, and, yes, sorting through your snapshots, all while ignoring the continuous screaming of your baby.

Yep, that ought to do it.

After a hard day of having a nice lie in, a bit of a a gnosh, watching a spot of telly, having a nice lie down, and a bit of light reading, I’m off to bed, completely shagged out.

(Yes, part of the TV was Farty Owls, I mean, Fawlty Towers).

God, the excitement’s liable to kill me.

Don’t watch the movie Free Enterprise if you are over 30 and do not have both job and home life worked out.

If you’re female, it’s OK, because in typical geek fashion they assume your life is perfect except for the fact that the geeky men aren’t doing enough to be whom you say you want them to be (as opposed to whom you actually want them to be, but that’s another rant).