Saturday, 13 June 2020

elusivek: (Default)
So... my Mom got herself a new rice cooker. Really fancy. It's RED in color. It's small. She loves it.

However, since it's some fancy-schmancy newfangled technology stuff, she doesn't really know how to use it, LOL.

And of course, when she gets new stuff that she doesn't know how to operate, she comes and asks me. Why would I know how to use it? So I had to read the operations manual. It's actually pretty simple and self-explanatory.

Anyway, the folks find out that the rice cooker can be used to bake cakes. So they immediately try out that function, and baked a cake last night. Since they were trying it out, they used a provided recipe of a chocolate cake.

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Admittedly, the cake came out looking quite nice. How smooth! Taste-wise, it wasn't anything special. Actually it didn't really taste of anything.

So, we have a secret family recipe for a chocolate cake called the Midnight Cake. I might have mentioned of it before, so some of you may have already read of it at some point in time. It uses quite a lot of cocoa powder (and absolutely no milk) so it's a very dark cake, and the family had called it the Midnight Cake. My aunt's and my Mom's recipe differ a bit (one measurement in tails and the other one measurement in grams, they come out more or less the same; Mom's has less sugar though). The name has become a joke in my immediate family though, because we tend to bake the cake at night and finish around Midnight. Double entendre, if you will.

Well, this tryout rice cooker cake was so light in color, and we finished baking it some time between 10pm-11pm. Dad called it the "11pm Cake", but whether he's talking about it not being dark enough, or the time of the baking, I don't know, but LOL. Dad joke. I didn't think my Dad would ever come up with one himself.

I'll try to bake a Midnight Cake with the rice cooker one time though, see how it turns out.

Doggies update

Saturday, 13 June 2020 20:12
elusivek: (Default)
Thought I'd talk about the puppies a little bit.

Max has something against my bed now. He just doesn't like to lie in my bed. I wonder why? He was getting in the way when I was trying to do some yoga, so I just plopped him onto my bed but he was complaining all the time.

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One more photo of Max. I think of all our dogs, he is Mr. Photogenic. Probably because he has some white and so makes his face more visible.

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We took Menina to the South African vet for a final re-check of her ears and it seems she's good already. I need to remember to periodically clean her ears though, because her ears are really sensitive to problems. Then I asked this vet about a diagnosis and medication another vet had given her for her cushing's disease. He thought it's all very weird. After some discussions, I decided to let this vet (vet for all our other dogs) to do a big general check on her. I think I'll ditch Menina's old vet as he's been.... weird....

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So a couple years ago, when Menina had that problem with her back (I forget the exact term, but it's a very common thing with Dachshund and long dogs, I guess it's like having a splinter in the spine or something?), we took her to a Portuguese vet and he essentially cured her of this problem. However, she had somehow turned a wirey kind of fluffy  and then the vet said she had Cushing's Disease, and put her on some medication.

For a couple of years, we followed his medication, and Menina turned into a very quiet, no mood, just sleeping dog. Sometimes she refused to eat, and when she didn't eat, we wouldn't give her any of her medication, because we don't feed them medicines on empty stomachs. When she skipped her medication, she would become lively again. We always thought it was a normal side effect of the medication.

Certainly, early this year in January, the vet decided to do a blood test for her to re-check. Fine, we go. But the vet himself did not see us, he had his junior vet (I shall call him the apprentice) and he said he didn't understand the test results. Thinking it weird, I asked "what do you mean?" And he replied the dog has been over-dosed on that medication for so long, that she's now on the other end of the spectrum, which is Addison's disease.

She was on 30mg of a certain medication and the vet made us do a lot of blood tests every few weeks to adjust the medication... going to 20mg, 15mg, and 10mg. Every time we had to do a blood test, every time they say the results came out as "inconclusive".

Also, one time I made an appointment and I specifically said I wanted to see the vet, not the apprentice. The receptionist said "oh but the vet is very busy today, so you can only see him late." I didn't mind that. "Okay, so what time?" "You will have to come at 8pm." "Sure, I'll be here at 8pm."

For some reason, I get off work at a weird time, and I decided I'll just kill time at the vet's, so I went there at 7.15pm. Who do I see? The vet, preparing to go home with his kid. And then it was the apprentice that talked to me. I made it known that I was really annoyed and displeased as I wanted to see the vet and not the apprentice.

At this point, I was starting to think back to the firs time vet mentioned menina having Cushing's disease. There was no blood test. He only ascertained that by the condition of her fur. She's a short, smooth haired dog. Her fur turned spiky-wirey-fluffy, which after we trimmed those off, she was back to her short smooth fur. However, now she had to do this weird blood test (ACTH test, I think) that the vet had me time her morning medication to between 4-6 hours before the first blood draw, and after she took the first blood draw, she had to take a second blood draw to do a comparison.

I started to have a sneaky suspicion that Menina never really needed all that medication at all.

So I went to him again some 2 weeks ago, in my heart I was thinking "it's the last time." Again, he says the blood test is inconclusive, and after an ultrasound he adds some issues to her (gall bladder sediment) and issues another round of antibiotics and other medications.

Well, since Menina had an appointment with the South African vet today to re-check her ears, I put it all on the table. The South African vet was confused. He says:

  • The ACTH test is a very clear test. It will either say "yes, Cushing's disease", or "no, no Cushing's disease", it will not have an "inconclusive" result

  • The dosage for her gall bladder sediment is not strong enough. Also, technically, that's not the medication that helps because that is only a supplement. Instead, she needs another medicine.

  • The whole ACTH testing doesn't require to time any medication to anything because it's not a test on the hormones.

  • Even if the medication for her Cushing's disease is right, for her size and weight, she should only take 5mg of the stuff. 30mg is severely overdosing her

I was so upset that we had been overdosing her for so many years!

Anyway, she needs to have her teeth cleaned next week, so he will do his own round of ACTH test. And give us his diagnosis.

Bido also had to go in because he had a patch of skin issue. While we were waiting at the waiting room, I just happened to look to his face and started checking his teeth and noticed he has a very severe issue with plaques and whatever it's called... it's like he has rocks stuck in his mouth.

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So after the vet quickly checked the skin (easy, just wash with the special shampoo) I told him how embarrassed I was to admit that we don't check his teeth regularly. He was easygoing and said to just schedule a teeth clean with him, ensuring that it's OK even though Bido's super-senio (18, maybe 19!)

So... Monday, teeth cleaning and blood tests for Bido and Menina!

Typhoon coming up

Saturday, 13 June 2020 22:18
elusivek: (Default)
I've really been pretty happy with how I've designed my room to be in the last renovations. I wake up every morning to the sky and I really like it very much. And because of the little space that the foot of my bed has until the window, I asked for the guys to extend my bed until the wall (I had to cut up an old mattress my Sis was planning to kick out) so during the day, if I want to, I can huddle up against the window for some sun and reading.

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But, with the nice blue skies and all that, it just means that eventually a typhoon will be coming by. Yes, we are hearing about an upcoming typhoon "Nuri". We now have signal #3 hoisted, with a medium probability that it will get to #8 tonight midnight. Let's hope the people here are prepared.

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Agueda Umbrella
kat (DW: elusivek | LJ: notte0)
❤︎ loves dogs, dark chocolate, and books.
★ doesn’t exactly hate cats.
◆ hates white chocolate.
more?
I read books :-)

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