Sunday, January 23, 2011

project pegleg and related woes

The surgery is a week in the past now on the lame beast called Abby. She sports a bright green cast to keep her splint in place while her kneecap heals back into its new location. She did have a pink cast, but she did a number on that when her lampshade wasn't long enough to keep her nose from poking out the end.

The good part about that was that she got the pain patch removed several days early. I think that the patch was bothering her more than the pain itself, plus it was in a spot on her back that hits me in the face if I try to pick her up. Which I finally did on Friday, and threw out my lower back trying to keep her from bolting around on the driveway.

Outside, she is slow to do her business, as she wants to eat snow, try to run in snow, or watch the world go by. We are cold and stressed, and want her to go, so we can bring her back in and box her back up. In the beginning, she got the idea that the crate was her home, and the pen we set up was her bathroom. So we have had to combat this with various hit or miss techniques. Last night, Kevin almost had to be committed to an institution because on one of his many ventures out, she was about to go (so he says) when the dog across the street started barking like crazy, a pizza delivery car cruised the block, and the dog next door came outside and her people called for her.

As if one dog with a woe is not enough, the other day Wilbur was licking his forepaw, and I checked to see why. He has a hard painless lump on his wrist! I looked this up, of course, internet hypochondria kicked in, and I spent the day in a near-panic, sure that he had bone cancer, which carries a very grim prognosis when found in the extremities. I got him into the vet that afternoon and was greatly relieved to find out that, whatever it is, is NOT on the bone. It's a soft tissue mass which seems to have no connection at all to the bone.

The vet said he could try to aspirate it, but he thought it would be ok to wait a couple of weeks to see if it would heal on its own. In two days it hasn't shrunk, but it hasn't grown either. I might ask for antibiotics tomorrow, when we take Abby in for her cast check. It reminds me of a lump Molly once had on her paw that went away when she took antibiotics. So I still don't know what it is, it could still be bad, but at least it is not bone cancer!

As for B, midterms were last week and it was a week of hell as usual. Grades are trickling in and so far, he hasn't failed a class ::knock wood - English grades are not online yet, nor religion:: but he did do poorly on history, which brought his average down. Math and chemistry were respectable grades, so that was a nice thing. But awaiting the rest of the grades is always a stressful time.

Today is the Y meet where they honor the seniors at their last home meet!! I don't think I will be able to stay composed. And this is only the first - we have nationals (at which, by the way, we may not even be able to watch, we got notice last week that the city condemned the bleachers at the pool!) and then the worst: the end of year banquet with the speeches !!! Not the speeches !!

We were looking online today and found a state performance list and saw that M is listed as top in the 200 and second in the 500! In the state! However, there's another story covering a county meet where a girl blew everyone away and took the top spot in both, which bumps M down at least one spot, and other county meets might have the effect of lowering her further. But it's exciting to see that anyway. Occasionally a story will say that someone's time is xth in the state, but we have never seen the actual list so we've always had to wonder.

And in other news, our house is a disaster, and they say more winter weather is to arrive on Tuesday and Wednesday .. enough of this!!! Can we just see some grass for a few days? I was thinking the other day about the snow at Christmas and how it looked so beautiful and everyone took pictures and posted them on Facebook. Now it's just so depressing that we all look at old pictures from springtime and vacations to warm locales and dream of better weather days!

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