Shoes, Ships, and Sealing Wax

I'm not even gonna touch the local sports news

I'm starting to look forward to October...just write September off, this party sucks, I'm goin' home.

We put one of the rats to sleep on Saturday, one of the older girls. She had three tumors and could no longer walk straight, and she had trouble using the water bottles. But it was such a hard decision...was she ready? I never want to be responsible for them suffering needlessly, but I detest playing God.

I'll spare you the end-of-life-what-is-next ruminating this time.

You'd think, keeping pets with short lifespans, I'd either learn to deal with this...or perhaps stop keeping pets with short lifespans. One time my father said "maybe you should get one of those parrots that lives for 80 years, or a giant tortise." He's been known to say some insensitive things about the pets, but in that case, he was actually being sympathetic. He just doesn't see why I keep doing this.

The finger thing may actually be looking up...on Friday I got a gold star in PT, I went from 30% range of motion to 70% in five days. And I didn't cry...I bit my lips, I held my breath, I wrapped my legs around the chair so hard I'm surprised I didn't break it...but I did not cry.

Also on Friday I'd resigned myself that the doctor was going to want to cut, but I got a reprieve. The culture from Wednesday night hadn't grown anything (which I assume means I'm not teaming with nasty bacteria...I would have thought it would have grown something, but microbiology is so not my strong suit), and when the doc start pushing the places that were making me scream, the pain was not quite so intense. Of course, I'd just come from PT, so it was relative. He took blood to check my white blood cell count (and I am sporting the nastiest black-purple-and-green splotch on my left arm, thanks to two phlebotomists who really should look for another line of work...and while I'm not the type to pass out at the sight of a needle, I still don't wanna hear "Oh damn, it's gonna blow" when sharp things are in my veins) and I go in tomorrow, of course, for another recheck. I think the swelling is finally starting to subside, though. Instead of looking like a half smoke, my finger now looks like one of those cheapo hotdogs you'd get in a grade school cafeteria. I can even make out my knuckle.

Oh...you guys do know what a half smoke is, right? I mentioned half smokes at work the other day and nobody in the room (one from Bawl'mer, two from New York, and an Eastern European) had a clue what I was talking about.

Posted by Nic at September 18, 2005 08:23 PM | TrackBack