So: when last we checked in, D was sick, I was sleeping on the couch, I was stressing out about an audition email I’d just sent, and my cat was awaiting surgery for his insulinoma. Oh, and I was having trouble feeling like I was allowed to exist anywhere.

Since then:

My Cat Had Surgery (And He’s Doing Pretty Well)

When he was first diagnosed in the vet ER, it looked like the location of Merkah’s primary tumor might very likely make it inoperable. When his oncologist looked at the scans, though, she thought there was a shot, and the head of surgery agreed.

Flash forward (okay, crawl forward, because first I got sick at SI and then D got sick) to last Tuesday. Merkah went in for surgery and the surgical team was able to remove the two masses from his pancreas (it sounded like it was a challenge getting the main one, but the kind of challenge surgeons like).

While they were in there, they biopsied his liver and other areas of his pancreas just to check. The biopsies both came back with only benign changes.

Merkah came home on Friday with an e-tube for feeding, since he wasn’t into eating (cats are like that, and even though he thinks he’s a dog, Merkah is being a cat this time). He’s recovering fairly comfortably, although his medications make him pretty sleepy.

The surgeons think they got all of the insulinoma, and Merkah’s blood glucose has remained stable over the past week, so things are looking up for him.

At the end of the day, he’s 15 years old, which is definitely in Senior Citizen territory as cats go, but since housecats can live to be into their twenties, it seemed worth trying. My biggest concern was that he wouldn’t survive anaesthesia, but he came through that just fine.

If they survive surgery (which most do), the worst-case outcome for cats with insulinoma is simply that the insulinoma either proves too difficult to extract or comes back, and then you just go back to managing quality of life for as long as possible and/or trying chemotherapy.

Overall, though, in the sample of cats who’ve undergone surgical treatment for insulinoma, there’s been a pretty high rate of good outcomes, in which the surgery resolves the problem and the cats live for another two or more years (most cats who get insulinomas are older cats, so that often places them towards the end of their life expectancy).

We’ve got a follow-up coming up with some further x-rays and scans to check for any possibility of recurrence or metastases that weren’t yet visible earlier in treatment, so I’ll keep y’all posted.

It’s still early days, but things look hopeful for Mr Mu to be with us for a while longer. I know he won’t be around forever, but I’m glad to have a bit more time with him.

Everyone Recovered

D got better, and Mom managed to not catch COVID. It felt weird moving to the couch for like ten days, then equally weird moving back to the bedroom, but things are back to normal now, for values of normal, etc.

I Did The Audition

After much internal panic, I was invited to come take company class, observe rehearsal, and chat about things with the AD of the company where I was auditioning.

The tone of the email was overwhelmingly positive, so I went into the audition feeling confident and excited and…

I Got It!

This is huge for me.

This isn’t the first dance job I’ve auditioned for, but it is the first ballet audition I’ve done: I didn’t actually have to audition at LexBallet, because Mr D sort of just plucked me out of a summer program.

Moreover, I’m coming into this job as a full company member, which – NGL – feels amazing.

So as of this week I’m officially a Company Artist at New England Ballet Theatre.

My picture is on the website and everything! ^-^

My first performance with NEBT will be in the role of The Shoemaker in The Red Shoes. Léonid Massine originated the rôle in the 1948 film, and I’m excited to be taking it on in my first outing with the company.

More importantly, though, is this: from the moment I walked in to take class on my audition day, I felt welcome and, in fact, at home in the studio.

Like LexBallet, NEBT is a small company with strong dancers and big dreams. Like SPDC, our AD is a woman with a strong creative vision.

She’s also the most chill AD I’ve ever met, which is great. The vibe of the company overall is lovely. I mentioned that on Tuesday as I was gathering my stuff to head home, and we had a longish chat about it.

If I hadn’t felt so strongly from the first that NEBT is a good place, our AD[•]’s efforts to make sure SPDC was treated equitably under the circumstances would have gone a long way to convince me. Yes, the dance world is small and you don’t want to make waves unnecessarily, but Ms R has been incredibly fair and flexible, and that means a lot.

• We’ll call her Ms R, since it feels weird to refer to a ballet company AD by their first name in writing; I’ll have to sort that bit out for myself later ^-^’

As someone who kind of fumbled his way into a ballet career, it means the world to feel like I’m a dancer that the company wanted, and not just one that the company settled for.

SPDC was the first place I felt like that, and I hope to continue my relationship with them as a teaching artist and an intermittent guest artist for the foreseeable future.

If it weren’t for the fact that commuting back and forth to NYC just isn’t going to work at this point in my life, I would gladly have remained a member of SPDC, but as things stand, I’m immensely grateful for the time I’ve had there, and also incredibly grateful to T for sending me NEBT’s audition notice and to NEBT for offering me a contract.

It’s nice to feel at home in the studio. It’s nice to feel like I belong and like I fit. It’s also remarkable how much it does for you to feel comfortable and safe in class: I’m still getting my legs back under me a bit, but I’m dancing better than I expected to during my first week back as a full-time ballet dancer.

It’s early days, but I think NEBT feels like somewhere I’d really like to stay and grow as an artist. I like the other dancers, I like Ms R, and I like the way Ms R thinks both in a creative capacity and in terms of how she’s running day-to-day company operations.

Yea Verily, The World Be Smöl

One of the best things to come out of this entire situation is that my friend and OG Nutcracker Grand Pas Sugarplum, AK, from LexBallet is dancing at NEBT, which I didn’t realize until after I auditioned.

She’s one of my all-time-favorite partners, so it’s good to be reunited with her.

My friend T is also joining the company, and it’s awesome to be coming in with two existing friends (both of whom are also neurospicy ^-^).

So that’s it for now. The past year has been a gigantic adventure, and I look forward to more adventures coming up.

For now, keep the rubber side/contact patch down (unless you’re doing contemporary choreography, in which case, roll with gusto and wear your bruises with pride)!

PS I will come back and add alt text to the pics, but I’m almost to my train station