November 29, 2006

• Rough but Rewarding

  Yesterday was grueling for me, and I’m not even the one who had major
  abdominal surgery.  I was out in the driveway before dawn, airing
  up the flat tire.  After the car was all warmed up, the windows
  scraped free of ice, snow brushed off (Troopers give tickets for
  driving around with snow on vehicles, because it can blow off or slide
  off in chunks, obstructing traffic or obscuring visibility for
  drivers.) and everything else I was taking already loaded in the car, I
  put Hilary in her carrier and started out the door. 

  In my gloves, I needed both hands to get the dog’s chain out of the way
  and shut the door.  I set the carrier down on the icy step. 
  Before I could pick it up again, it slid off and popped open.  I
  was scrambling for a few moments, trying to grasp the cat and get the
  carrier closed with it gripped between my ankles.  Finally, I took
  her by the scruff of the neck with the carrier in my other hand, put it
  in the car, took out the pillowcase I’d put inside in case she tried to
  escape the carrier, stuffed her in the pillowcase, tied a knot in it
  and dumped the bundle in the carrier.  After I got settled and the
  car door shut, I untied the knot, closed the carrier, and let her work
  her way out of the pillowcase.

  After I dropped Hilary at the vet, I went to Greyfox’s cabin and woke
  him up.  He showed off Frankie’s new litter of kittens, and I got
  my first chance to meet Raffles and Fancy (we have a Fancy at our
  house, too), two beautiful new strays who have moved in with him. 
  Then we had breakfast at the Windbreak Cafe, shopped at Salvation Army,
  and spent the next couple of hours in the waiting room at Mister Lube,
  as they changed my oil and put Streak’s winter tires on.  They did
  some grinding on my old rims, which might have fixed that crazy and
  unpredictable intermittent slow leak that has been moving around on my
  car from year to year as the tires are rotated twice a year with the
  seasonal changes.

  Physically, it was a challenging day.  I was exhausted by the time
  I got to town and hours past that old fatigue wall by the time I picked
  up Hilary for the trip home.  On the other hand, Greyfox and I had
  a pleasant day together and I got a cheap frame at Sally Ann for the
  matted Byron Birdsall print (a cat looking out a window, with a moose
  looking in at the cat) he had traded for at a recent show.   I
  also got enough loungewear to allow me to put off going to the
  laundromat for another week or two, and two pairs of Gloria Vanderbilt
  jeans:  a like-new black pair, and some broken-in faded blue denim
  ones.  The big score was a t-shirt for fifty cents with a Barbara
  Lavallee print of an Eskimo mother and two kids.

  Dawn had been breaking when I dropped Hilary off, and it was dark
  before I picked her up.  I empathetically caught a dose of anxiety
  and sadness from some other people who were at the veterinary hospital
  with their pets.  Hilary was still anesthetized when they carried
  her out to me, and I heard no more than a few scrabbling sounds from
  her carrier at one point about halfway home.

  I interrupted Doug’s twice-a-week online D&D session so he could
  help me prepare his room for Hilary’s convalescence.  She has to
  be isolated from the other cats, and that’s the only available space
  for it.  She was wobbly from the drugs, couldn’t walk straight and
  kept falling on her side.  She has to wear an Elizabethan collar,
  a plastic cone around her neck and head, and it was giving her a lot of
  trouble with drinking, slightly less trouble eating.  Doug stayed
  up all night with her, shut into his room.  When I took him some
  food before midnight, he had his whole Lego collection, a gazillion
  bricks, spread out on his bed.  He was cross-legged in the middle
  of it all, with Hilary draped across his lap.

  He was going to bed about the time I woke up today.  He reported
  that Hilary had none of the expected nausea, no bleeding or drainage,
  and no evident inflammation at the surgical site.  I have a dose
  of anti-inflammatory analgesic to give her today, and a second dose to
  give her two days from now.  Her appointment for final
  immunizations and suture removal is on Monday, almost two weeks from
  now.  I may be able to rest until then and be all fresh and
  relatively energetic for that trip.

  

  • 3:52 pm
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