martinzoo

We had a terrifying night last night. I went to sleep as usual, but was awakened by my husband around 1:00 a.m. It’s annoying to be awakened after being asleep for only an hour and a half, but it’s scary to be woken up to an emergency. Our little dog, Peatsy, whom you will remember had surgery on Monday, had impressively been able to get most of his bandages off. Bandage stuffing was spread from the bedroom all throughout the house. All this mischief making occurring while dh was researching on the internet. This dog may be dumb, but he is persistent. My other dog, Murphy, would have realized that the pain in his ear was getting worse because of his own paw. But not Peatsy. He just wanted those bandages off.

If you looked at my link to the surgery pictures, you’ll understand just how disgusting a site I was presented with in my sleepy state. Dh had tried to put the bandages back on Peatsy, but he has no talent for that, and in despair, decided to wake me.

I am a mother, and I’ve done some gross things. I’ve cleaned things I would rather not clean, and I’ve done a bit of nursing for my kids and dh. BUT I do faint easy. I try really hard to make it through the grossness, but it is a major struggle. This was the situation I faced last night. Peatsy’s incision was totally exposed, bloody, and raw.

In order to rewrap his wound, I had to remove the remaining bandages. The vet had used the sticky kind of wrapping, so I had to carefully separate it from Peatsy’s curly hair. This was probably the hardest part, because I knew that the tugging was putting pressure on his already painful incision. But it had to be done. I had to stop several times to get rid of my ‘fainty feel.’

Like I said, I think I’m pretty wimpy.

Finally, I got it off and rewrapped. And we settled down to go back to sleep. This is when the real fear set in….. It got very quiet while we tried to sleep. And my dh and I became alarmed at the sound of Peatsy’s wheezing. He was definitely struggling to breathe. At first I thought I’d wrapped the bandages too tight. But after checking, I knew that I hadn’t. Peatsy was struggling, but didn’t seem to be in any kind of panic. So we tried to go to sleep. It took me until 3:00. And as soon as I got up I made a bee line for the phone.

The vet’s office was closed, but I knew they were there doing surgeries. So I left a message explaining our night.

Five minutes later, they called and told me to bring him right away. He would have to be put back under anesthesia because I had also noticed this morning that he had busted his stitches. Agh! The breathing problem worried the vet, so he’d have to observe Peatsy before he did anything.

I was so worried and stressed about the situation that I didn’t even tell my dh (who was in the shower) that we were leaving. Nor did I grab my coat as I left. So I shivered all the way to the vet’s office.

All morning GB and I thought about Peatsy and prayed for him. I’ll tell you, but I couldn’t tell GB, that I was really worried that we were going to lose Peatsy for this simple little surgery. But God does answer prayers. And ours were answered early afternoon when the vet called and said we could come get Peatsy.

They had decided to not use the anesthesia. And they also decided to use this Elizabethan collar. Hopefully, this will keep him from doing himself any further harm.

You wouldn’t think an ear hematoma would be this much trouble, would you?

Anyway, in the midst of all this drama, GB and I were very productive scholastically. We plowed through a lot of our Language Arts curriculum. We are working on writing right now. And we are trying to fine tune story writing in particular. GB’s assignment was to write a story that had a clear purpose. It must either entertain, inform, express feelings, or to persuade. He learned more about quotation marks today, so he needed to include at least one conversation.

Knowing my GB, I knew he’d try to entertain. And he did. But I didn’t realize how long he’d spend trying to perfect his story. He spent three hours on this story, and never seemed to resent the time it was taking at all. Would he have been able to do that in ps? No way! They would have sent it home to be completed there, by which time he’d have lost interest and slapped some kind of c**p together. That’s the way it goes.

Once I saw that he was totally into the assignment, I just went on my merry way. I was able to vacuum and wash the hardwood floors, get dinner in the crock pot, and get my kitchen sparkling. It was pretty nice, if we weren’t so worried about Peatsy.

Peatsy is laying at my feet right now. He hasn’t left my side since we got home. I think he’s been pretty scared himself this week. I’m so relieved that he’s home….. but I am beyond exhausted. What day of the week is it anyway?