preraphaelitepunk.com

It seems as if we just had a Monday. I was only just getting settled into the weekend, and now it’s time to go back to work again. Perhaps the missing time means I’m being abducted by aliens, or the History Monks have been using me as a time resource again. (Pratchett again. Go read Thief of Time or Night Watch if you haven’t already — and please get the U.K. covers, because they’re much cooler than the U.S. designs.)

Anyway, most of Nigel’s sutures have come out, but the ones up by his ribcage were a little swollen, so the vet wanted to leave them in for a few more days. (Good thing I’ve got a gazillion vacation hours banked, because I keep burning them up.) Currently, he’s got a big stretchy bandage wrapped around his ribs, to keep him from scratching — e-collars don’t do much against scratching — and to keep Moliere from nibbling or licking at the incision. Happily, Nigel doesn’t seem to mind much, though he does appear to find the bandage a bit itchy. Probably it’s the hair being pushed in weird directions by the wrappings.

I have decided about VeganMoFo: not doing it. It’s a great idea and was a lot of fun to follow last year — and I discovered a bunch of great blogs in the process — but I know I wouldn’t be able to keep up. I really, really doubt I’d be able to update 20 times over the course of October. I don’t think I’d have a problem blogging exclusively about food over the month — I do tend to digress, but I could just snip out the dog- and knitting-related digressions and put them in separate, non-MoFo posts — but it’s the sheer number that would kill me. On my current schedule and point in life, I do really well to get in three updates a week. It’s pathetic, but about all I can manage right now.

Le sigh. At least I’m going to subscribe to the RSS feed, once Isa posts it.

On a food-related theme, I managed to get some cooking and baking done this weekend, in between trips to the vet, gawking and snickering at suburban SUVs idling in ridiculously long lines at gas stations because of the gas panic, and knitting (only 10 more long, long rows and then body of my Sweater at the End of the Universe!). Firstly, seitan from a new-to-me recipe in Nonna’s Italian Kitchen:

It’s got powdered shiitake mushrooms in the broth, and diluted Marmite in the seitan dough. Should be interesting. I haven’t tried it yet, though, because I also made the famous chickpea cutlets from Veganomicon, baked (to cut down on fat, as I’ve promised myself to do in some form or fashion). Usually, when I’ve baked them, they don’t get brown enough for my taste, so I either eat them unseared and sulk about it, or go ahead and sear them in a pan (with more oil) after baking. This time, though, I left them in my toaster oven for about twice the length of time recommended, and they browned nicely:

Perhaps there’s some weird, metaphysical difference in altitude between my flat and those of Isa, Terry, and all their recipe testers? I consistently have timing problems with their recipes, and wind up having to increase baking times a lot. (The food is invariably great; it just usually takes a helluva lot longer than I expected to get it.) Doubling, as here, is not unheard of. Perhaps they’re all just on a higher plane of existence, and thus require a different baking time? I thought it was just my wonky oven, which panics and shuts itself down if you take it above 375 degrees, but my toaster oven is much more reliable, according to my oven thermometer, and I still have the timing problems with it. Huh. At least it’s pretty consistent, though, so I know to check at the prescribed time but to plan for it to take at least another 50% longer.

Hummus was also made; it started out as Isa and Terry’s recipe from Veganomicon, but swerved off into Deviant Hummus Land pretty quickly. (Not the dark chocolate and truffle oil hummus I threated to make — that one still kind of scares me.) I added extra lemon juice, because what am I going to do with half a lemon left over? Also oregano, because I particularly like lemon and oregano together, and parsley because I had some and think it makes the hummus pretty. Also more salt, because I am apparently of the opinion that hummus should taste as salty as the cracker or pita chip you’re dipping into it. Also, because some the cells from the stranger hemisphere of my brain’s thought, “Hey, we’re grinding smoked peppercorns into this — why not up the smokiness?”, there was a dash of mesquite liquid smoke.

The liquid smoke was a bit of a gamble, because it’s very easy to go overboard with it and wind up with something that’s more smoke-damaged than smoky, but I think it actually turned out well. There are no pictures yet of the Deviant Hummus, because I haven’t dished it up yet and made it semi-presentable, but use your imagination: tan hummus, with green flecks. In pretty handmade bowl. Gorgeously shot, of course. (Ha!)

Photos do exist, however, for the brownie with white chocolate chips, made in my cute little mini-souffle dishes:

Cosmo’s has scored some vegan white chocolate chips, so of course I had to use those instead of the regular chocolate chips suggested by the recipe (which is from Lickin’ the Beaters: Low-Fat Vegan Desserts). Excellent. I was a little worried that they might taste chalky or otherwise bland, but the one or two I snuck before adding them to the batter were fabulous. I am thrilled to have vegan white chocolate (non-vegan stuff usually has milk solids in it), and definitely need to go stock up on some more. And more soy curls, and possibly another doner kebap. (Hey, I may be cutting back on expenses, at least for the next five or six months until Nigel’s vet bills are paid off, but food counts as a necessity. It doesn’t do to scrimp on necessities. [Um, yeah. Did that sound convincing to anyone? Anyone at all?])

VeganMoFo is coming up again, and I’m dithering about whether I should actually join this year. I mean, after all, my Ravelympics experience was just so successful (after this weekend’s knitting sprint, I’m currently maybe 65% of where I should’ve been two weeks ago), so why not self-impose another arbitrary duty with a deadline and benchmarks I should meet but will inevitably slack off over and wind up going down in guttering flames? And, after all, I’ve been doing so much freakin’ cooking lately, what with various emergencies and obligations, and getting home at 6:30 if I’m lucky. (Though, to be fair, Jill Connor Browne once wrote that any woman who is not currently a mother just does not have jack shit to do, so I recognize and acknowledge that, in the scheme of things, I am not really all that busy. It just feels like it.)

Still, maybe joining would get me inspired to cook more frequently — though the question remains about whether I’d then have time remaining each weekday (ideally; a total of 20 posts in the month of October is the goal) to then blog about it. True, posts don’t necessarily have to be about one’s cooking that day; they just have to deal with vegan food in some fashion. More cooking would be a good thing, definitely: better for me to have more control over what goes into my mouth, and (generally) cheaper, because my pantry is stuffed to the earlobes with staples, durable exotics, and a gazillion different spices and herbs. Financial outlay would be limited to perishables — and after the combined canine vet bills of the past three weeks, cheap is going to be pretty much a necessity for the foreseeable future. (If you’re expecting a holiday present from me this year, it’s very likely to be home-baked banana bread or something knit from stash yarn. Hope you like bananas and/or yarn.)

Time, though, remains a question. I am not a fast writer — a fast typist, yes, but not a fast writer. Believe it or not, I do go back and revise this crap before I click “publish.” I even think about it a bit before I write, generally. (No, really.) Most blog entries, except for the very shortest (e.g., a quickie update of a few sentences, or the links posts I used to do back when my del.icio.us account was still talking to Wordpress), take roughly an hour to put together, with edits, additions, deletions, double-checking links. Really wordy ones, like this, can take a couple of hours, interspersed with quick breaks to Google something, or take the dogs outside, or make a cup of tea. If Flickr photos are part of the post, then add on maybe another 15 to 20 minutes, to cull the bad shots, decide which of the okay shots I want to use, try (and generally fail) to adjust lighting levels in the preferred shot so it doesn’t look like total crap, upload, add tags and groups and sets and shit, and then stick them into the post.

So, anyway, call it an hour to blog. If traffic is not horrible and it’s not raining, I would get home at approximately 6:30 most days. My weekday evening schedule would thus be as follows, assuming I do any necessary grocery shopping or errands over lunch, and assuming I’m trying as much as possible to blog about food I’ve actually cooked that day:

This speculative timeline leaves me anywhere from 75 to 105 minutes of free time before I conk out. This is time I would use to take the canine brotherhood out for actual exercise, knit, read, destinkify myself in the shower (which then requires an hour afterward for my hair to dry, because I oppose hair dryers on principle and, if I go to sleep on hair that’s more than slightly damp, my resultant ‘do is even weirder than usual the next day), and play with the dogs (or keep Moliere from eating the furniture). Fridays would, of course, be easier, because I either get off work an hour earlier or have the entire day off; weekends are much more flexible. Wednesdays and Fridays would be much more crammed, though, because I usually spend at least an hour on the phone with my parents then. (What? You wanna make something of it?)

Possibly, I could commit to maybe an average of five posts a week, spaced out over the week but relying on weekends to make up the average. Assuming that posts about meals I’ve cooked in the past would count, that would help — I’ve got a fair few old photos stockpiled that are perfectly postable, but I’ve just never gotten around to it. My recent but still-yet-unblogged or -Flickred adventures in the magical kingdom of Soy Curls Land would also, presumably, be doable. If nothing else, I could write about the importance of proper hummus, and how one should not jack about with the classic too much, and how things such as red pepper hummus are, to my mind, an abomination unto the very gods themselves and are only one step away from dark chocolate hummus with truffle oil and shavings of rehydrated chipotles (which, in a weird way, actually sounds like it might be good if you called it a savory mousse — ooh, maybe I could develop a recipe for that and call it Abomination Unto Nuggan Hummus! The Pratchett reference alone makes me want to try it).

So . . . maybe. If I try it, I’ll probably flame out and look really, incredibly lame in front of my vegan ‘net peers. On the other hand, assuming my own health continues in non-crisis state, and neither of the dogs require surgery or a family member spontaneously combusts or something, I might kind of almost scrape through. Maybe.

I’ll give it some thought, and decide in a few days.

(The post that sparked all of this was this delightful rant, which, if you are at all offended by swearing, then you probably should not visit, or even hover your mouse over lest you see the URL with the super swearific post name in it. But, then, if you were offended by swearing, you probably wouldn’t be here, except by Googling accident, and even then you would’ve given up by now because I think I’ve used the word “shit” at least twice (thrice, now) in this post alone. YTVS found via the charming Vegan Chai.)

Nigel continues to improve, and is much happier now that the surgeon has said he could be moved back to his normal kibble plus a smidge of his normal canned food (for mixing in his meds; also helpful for distracting him while Moliere eats, to avoid the “all kibble is MINE” drama). I think he may actually be gaining a bit of weight now, too, which is good. If he can just gain another couple of pounds, I’ll be happy; hopefully, the fact that he’s no longer carrying around a gigantoid hairball in his stomach will help.

The weekend has been pretty quiet, aside from the occasional doggie disagreements. Mostly, I knit: the belated Ravelympics shawl is now over halfway finished, a few rows’ progress was made on the Sweater From Eternity, and I finished my ‘Vog On socks:

I also finally got the results of my ultrasound (which happened back in July), which found nothing much abnormal at all except for some sludginess and small stones in my gallbladder, which the gastroenterologist thinks probably derive from the fact that my low thyroid levels basically slowed my entire metabolism to the proverbial pace of molasses in January and cocked everything up — possibly also raising my cholesterol levels, which are within normal range but, given my veganism, should probably be lower. Because my liver enzyme bloodwork was normal, I’m not having regular major attacks, and my TSH levels are stabilized and in the normal range now, he doesn’t recommend surgery. Over time, it may self-correct, now that my metabolism is more normal.

I’ve had a few minor, apparently stress-induced episodes (e.g., the last one occurred when my parents were telling me about food mysteriously disappearing from my grandmother’s room at her new assisted living facility), but so far I’ve been able to stave off progression into serious pain by relaxation and, oddly enough, warm baths. Possibly the minor ones, or maybe even the major ones, are stress-induced gastritits and have nothing to do with the gallbladder ickiness, but at least it’s something to keep in mind, and to tell the ER staff if I wind up there again.

In the meantime, I’ve got a good stockpile of Lush vegan bath goodies, emergency pain and anti-nausea meds, soothing teas, and my doctors’ numbers programmed into my phone’s speed dial. I’m also going to evaluate my dietary fat intake and see where I can cut down on the fats. I’m not a wholly deep-fried vegan — more of a lightly seared vegan with adequate amounts of olive oil — but I have gotten a bit generous with slopping on the Vegenaise for sandwiches, and I could probably stand to cut down on the nuts a bit.

These, made two weeks ago but only just now posted to Flickr, probably didn’t help with the fat:

Extremely yummy recipe is from the enviably talented Hannah Kaminsky. There’s just something about little nibbles that charms me: I feel all sophisticated when I make them, and want to throw cocktail parties for everyone I know, and swank about the room wearing a party frock. These were particularly good, all savory and crisp, and very easy indeed — but given the fact that they’re basically fat blended with ground nuts and nooch, with some chickpea flour thrown in, I probably shouldn’t make them very often. (If nothing else, I would soon not fit into my party frock any more.) Theoretically, I could eat only a few and freeze the rest, but I’m not sure that would work well: my resistance to sweets is fine, but savory goodies like these, or pita chips, or Tings, have a very limited life expectancy around here.

Nigel really, really hates his low-residue diet, which is weird because normally he’s a maniac for wet food and will just about take your arm off at the elbow to get it. I can’t tell whether it’s the fact that the prescription diet is bland as paper pulp, has a weird texture, or, possibly, has an oily mouth feel to it — judging from the disgusted faces he makes when he takes a few bites, and the way he keeps scraping his tongue against his teeth like there’s a disgusting coating of slime on it as he eats, it could be any of the three, or all. He obviously knows I’m lying when I tell him that it’s all I have for him, because he knows Moliere is getting their regular kibble diet (you can hear him crunching away in the other room).

I’ve tried just leaving the food out (while Moliere is safe in his crate, or being entertained by me in the other room) in the hopes that he’ll eat when he gets hungry. I’ve tried taking the uneaten food away after a reasonable time and not putting it out again for several hours. Neither have worked. I’ve even, guiltily, tried amending the food with tiny amounts of more palatable things I know Nigel enjoys: boil-in-bag white rice that’s been boiled until it’s practically mush, a tiny bit of plain soymilk, a few kibble bits, even a teaspoon of nutritional yeast. Basically, he picks out (or, in the case of the nooch and soymilk, licks off) the enticing additions, and leaves the main course. And no, stirring nooch into the food itself doesn’t work, either. Mushing it up into an enticing blob doesn’t help. Even heating it in the microwave, so it releases its stinky magic smell waves more effectively, can do little against his complete boredom with the prescription diet. He’s interested in food; he just doesn’t quiiiite believe me when I tell him that what I’ve just put in his plate counts as food.

Moliere, on the other hand, thinks the low-residue food is like crack. Forbidden foods are, of course, the most enticing; Nigel has always coveted Moliere’s kibble much more than his own, even though they’re exactly the same thing and scooped (right in front of Nigel’s eyes) from the same locking plastic bin. Maybe I should pretend to give the fiber-free food to Moliere, and let Nigel steal it from him? No, that doesn’t seem fair to Moliere. I’ve got to figure out something, though.

He also particularly hates one of his meds, Carafate, because it’s dissolved in 5 mL of water in a syringe and then injected (without a needle, obviously) down the back of his throat an hour before he’s allowed to eat. I tell myself that he’s obviously regaining his strength, because it’s all I can do to pry open his jaws to get the syringe in. (The worst part is that, because of his post-surgical dietary restrictions, I can’t even give him a treat afterwards. His beloved Mr. Barky’s biscuits are temporarily off the menu. Praise and making a fuss over him helps a little, but for a beagle, food tends to be a much stronger motivator to put up with something weird or unpleasant.)

On a more positive note, he has more energy, despite his small intake of food. This may be because he was able to nap mostly uninterrupted today, except for my lunchtime visit to administer his antacids and take him and Moliere out for a quick airing. Generally, he’s been perkier, and even played a little with Moliere, though the latter soon got overexcited and I had to step in a few times. (It seems that poor Moliere recognizes the categories of sick and healthy, but doesn’t quite understand the nuances of stages in between.) Nigel’s even scared me to death a few times this evening by trying to jump up on the futon. Currently, my strategy to prevent this is to sit on the floor, on a pillow, with him lying on one of my feet and Moliere curled up under the futon and against my back. Not the most comfortable position, but it seems to be working to keep Nigel content on the floor, where it’s safe for him. “Surgical staples ripped out? No, thank you!” (Those last two sentences are to be read in the voice and with the hand gestures of Sensitive Rimmer from the “Polymorph” episode of Red Dwarf. If you don’t know Red Dwarf, then, um, just go Netflix the series III DVD. It’ll make much more sense then, plus you’ll soon be addicted to one of my very favorite shows ever.)

No photograph tonight. Too busy, and now immobilized and unable to reach the camera or card reader. I’m just glad that, despite his suddenly picky palate, Nigel continues to gain ground, despite the fact that the vets practically had to fillet him (seriously, his wound goes from his lower groin to his solar plexus). Wuss he might be when confronted by the irritable chihuahuas who live across the hall, but when it comes to things that matter, he’s a tough cookie, and resilient as all get-out. I am so proud of him, I could pop.

He’s worn out from his ordeal, but that’s to be expected. He perks up if you’re up and doing something, or if there’s somewhere to go; it’s just that, the moment things calm down, he lies down and begins to doze. Actually, that’s not far different from how he is after he’s been boarding for a while, or stayed anywhere different: even when we visit my parents, he conks out almost immediately on the drive back, because he’s just so pooped from trying to watch everything in the new environment.

I keep looking over to where he’s stretched out on his bed, making sure he’s still breathing. I kind of wish he still snored, because then at least there’d be an audible reassurance.

Moliere seems a bit perplexed, but has been behaving really well, not jumping all over Nigel or pestering him in an attempt to play. He’s a good boy, really. He looks a bit sad that he’s not allowed on the futon right now, but Nigel obviously can’t get up here and I’m not about to open the dominance bag of worms again over Furniture Rights. We’ve only just gotten that whole thing pretty much settled these past few weeks.

Moliere is staple-free and meds-free, but Nigel’s got a whole row of staples, and double the number of meds he used to have. The new meds are temporary, though, and his own staples should come out in 10 to 14 days. He’s on a prescription low-residue diet, which he doesn’t seem to like much, though maybe it’s just his general slight dopiness from the pain medications. He’s also got a honking giant e-collar to wear when he’s unsupervised, although so far (unlike Moliere in his early post-surgery days) he hasn’t shown any inclination to lick or chew his incision.

I’ve been trying to outfit the flat to accommodate his needs. To make up for Nigel’s current inability to jump up on the furniture, I’ve supplemented his usual bed with extra pillows, towels, and old blankets piled up in likely-looking corners where he might want to crash for a while. There are also extra pee pads strewn around the flat, in case of emergency — the washable Pooch Pads work really well, and are kinder to the environment than the throwaway ones, though ours don’t have the strange pattern shown on the product Web page, but rather are plain and neutral-colored. Between the towels, blankets, and pads, the place looks like a textile factory vomited its contents all over the floor.

There’s not a lot I can do about the fact that we live on the second floor and must take the stairs to get out, though; Nigel has never much enjoyed being carried more than a few steps, and tends to get grumpy, which is going to make the gazillion necessary trips outside just so much fun. Still, needs must.

It’s totally worth it just to have him home.

Nigel’s going to stay at the hospital until tomorrow. This shouldn’t be viewed as a setback, just a precaution because he’s still having a little diarrhea and one episode of vomiting, which, again, is not unusual among dogs who’ve had abdominal surgery, or for Nigel under stress. The vet had said I could take him home today if I wanted to, because he was pretty perky and generally in good spirits, but that they’d prefer to hang onto him until tomorrow because of the digestive upset, just to be safe. As much as I’d wanted to get him home, I don’t want to take any unnecessary risks with him, so tomorrow it is.

I may just take half the day off tomorrow, assuming approval from my boss, to get Moliere’s staples out and collect Nigel (assuming everything goes well today). The emergency clinic does allow pickups at all hours, but most of the doctors go home at 5:00, so if you collect your dog or cat after then, you wind up getting instructions from the tech assigned to your case — and I’d rather talk to his main doctor, if at all possible, so I can ask all the questions about food, exercise, meds, and so on. I’m not quite sure how best to manage both dogs’ medical errands, because the regular vet is about 30 minutes from my house (assuming light traffic) and the emergency clinic is about 45 minutes away, and I think having Moliere with me when I pick up Nigel would be a distraction. On the other hand, Moliere explodes with excitement when I get home, even if I’ve only been gone half an hour, so his reaction when we arrive home might stress Nigel out more. Still, I think it’s probably best to drop Moliere off at home after his encounter with the Great Staple Remover, and then go collect Nigel so he at least has some quiet time in the car.

Anyway, yesterday’s visit went well. I got there about 3:30 and stayed with him until visiting hours were over at 5:00. Mostly, we walked around (and around, and around, and around) the clinic and the grounds, checking things out and then going back to make sure they hadn’t changed since the last time we looked at them, because he didn’t want to stay in the visiting room. He was a little poky, but he seemed glad to get around, and didn’t appear to be in distress at all.

One thing I found kind of amusing is that the vet techs there are not accustomed to dogs whose bladders are quite so highly conditioned as Nigel’s: when anything suggests to him that he might be going outside (putting on the leash, my putting on my shoes), then his bladder begins an irrevocable countdown, and woe betide the person who does not get him outside in a reasonable time period. This has nothing to do with his kidneys overproducing urine; he’s always been like this, even when he was younger. Shoes and/or leash equals going outside, and that’s all there is to it. Consequently, when the tech yesterday brought Nigel straight to me without a quick visit outside first, I knew we were in trouble — and sure enough, less than a minute after arriving, he peed all over the floor, in a leisurely but copious manner. Happily, this time they’d put us in a room with pee pads handily displayed on the counter, so it wasn’t too much of a problem.

Today, I’m going to ask whether he can go up and down stairs, because there’s a nature preserve behind the clinic, with what looks like a really nice path. He looked longingly at it yesterday, but I was worried that he might rupture something if he tried taking the stairs down to reach it. If it’s okay, though, I think he’d really like to get down there and sniff all the plants and things.

Apropos of nothing: why would they have shaved Nigel’s fetlocks for surgery? Maybe they needed hair-free access to his ankles so they could attach sensors for a monitoring device or something? It definitely looks weird, and his skin is a little irritated from the unaccustomed shaving.

One last thing: I finally managed to get a halfway decent shot of Moliere — meaning one in which I didn’t just photograph his ear as he suddenly turned, or a tail as he decided to jump off the futon, or a blur as he shifted to lightspeed. Most people haven’t properly met him yet, so I figured I’d post it here.

Nigel’s weekend doctor at the clinic just called: he’s continuing to do well. Still some diarrhea, which apparently is not abnormal for dogs who’ve had abdominal surgery (or for Nigel when he’s under stress, for that matter), but after his transfusion yesterday his bloodwork is improving (red cells, I think, are up to 30, when they were 27 last night and 20 on Thursday), and he’s perking along pretty well. They anticipate letting him come home on Sunday.

She also said that it was unlikely that his extended visit yesterday would cause any problems with his recovery. Let’s hope she’s right. . . . Today, I’m definitely going over during the 3:00 to 5:00 visiting hours, when they should still be fully staffed, rather than the after-hours 7:00 to 9:00 time, when they’re probably more likely to be understaffed.

Incidentally, our regular vet took a look at Moliere’s staples and decided to leave them in for another couple of days. I’m not sure how I’m going to swing that, schedule-wise, even if Nigel will be well enough to be left home alone. Hmm. Maybe, if it won’t cause problems to leave them in a few more days, we could go in on Friday, when I’m off work anyway?

Anyway, must go get ready for my own medical stuff today. It’s just bloodwork for TSH levels, nothing big, but hopefully things will be in the right range by now and this’ll be the last appointment for a while.

Nigel is a champ! He came through the surgery as well as anyone could possibly expect or hope. He’s not completely out of the woods and will be in the ICU for another day or two, but his heart held up under the anesthesia just fine, and the growth on his liver came out without evident complications.

They did find and biopsy two more small growths on his liver (fingers crossed for good luck!), and removed a hairball from his stomach — which might have been causing the digestive upsets and failure to gain weight. Who knew dogs could get hairballs? I suppose it’s because he licks the carpet when his stomach is upset, akin to a dog outside eating grass, and I guess stray hairs (probably mine) got swallowed and accumulated over the years. (Yes, years: the thing was apparently 2 by 4 inches, or roughly 50 by 100 mm!)

Still, he seemed reasonably perky when I saw him tonight, and was taking an interest in the other people and animals around him — a hazy, sort of drugged-out interest, but I still take that as a good sign. He kept wanting to check out the surrounding visiting rooms, and go down to the lobby to see what all the chatter was about. He was wobbly, but that was to be expected. There was some diarrhea and some peeing on the floor, but after all he’s been through, no one could blame him at all. Many full-grown humans would be doing the same thing.

He’s tough. He’s going to fight this thing, and win his way back to good health, and we’re going to walk out the clinic doors together just like nothing was ever wrong (except for the big shaved patch on his belly and the staples holding his wound closed, but, hey, hair grows back, and staples come out; Moliere’s post-neutering staples are coming out tomorrow, as a matter of fact).

One thing that did piss me off a little was that the surgeon had given me explicit instructions to limit my visit to 5 or 10 minutes and, when I told the vet tech, she said they’d send someone to collect him in that time frame, to avoid tiring him out too much. Because the tech assigned to Nigel was busy the entire time with someone else, though, I never got any further information about his case — never even saw his tech at all. The others were more concerned with their charges and were apparently not interested in helping out anyone else’s case, because they left him with me for about 45 minutes. Now, I’m grateful for the extra time with him, but I do not want to endanger him at all — and if it turns out that this causes a setback, I will raise holy hell. It took me two tries over 20 minutes to get someone to actually pay attention to us, as I got increasingly concerned that Nigel would overtire himself or hurt his incision site; finally, I got (surprise!) a little bitchy, and told the tech who said, “Well, I’m not assigned to his case” that I knew that, because it seemed that no one at all was assigned to him. Let’s hope that she realized I was just frustrated and concerned about my dog, and didn’t mean it as a personal attack — and that no one takes out any irritation they may have with me on Nigel. Also that the Invisible Tech supposedly assigned to him finds time to look in on him sometime over the evening.

(Sorry for the irrelevant digression about the techs, but it pisses me off. This emergency clinic is a kind of yuppie, hoity-toity clinic with actual interior design and a nature reserve and so on, and prices to match. I was thrilled with the consulting doctor and the surgeon, both of whom were supportive, straightforward, and communicative, but I am supremely irritated with the tech staff’s apparent inability to pinch-hit for each other in busy times. Obviously, I don’t want them to neglect patients in need of urgent care; it just seems as if the tech who brought Nigel to me and promised to collect him within the surgeon-specified 5 to 10 minutes should have actually done so, rather than disappearing into the ether somewhere.)

Bah. Important thing, though, is that Nigel’s doing well so far. Fingers and toes very much crossed that this will continue!

Nigel is in the emergency clinic. On Friday he’s going to have surgery to remove a growth on his liver.

He’s nearly 13 and a half, has a heart murmur, and we don’t know whether the growth is benign or malignant, or whether major blood vessels are involved. We do know that he’s had some internal bleeding, but not much — not that any at all is good.

The good news is that, if everything goes well, he should make a full recovery. It’s a chance, and it relies on everything going the way I want it to, but at least it’s a chance.

At least he’s not in pain at the moment, and is being watched carefully by the vet. And at least he started having problems early this morning, when I was still at home, and not four hours later, when I would’ve been at work and had no idea what was happening to him. At least I was able to get him to the vet as soon as they opened (our regular, non-emergency vet has always been great about that), and he didn’t have to spend an entire workday alone, in pain, and possibly bleeding out.

It’s not great, but it could have been a hell of a lot worse. I could’ve come home an hour from now to find my Nigel had died alone, and Moliere had had to watch him die. The vet could have said that there was no hope at all of any recovery, and that he needed to be put to sleep immediately. As it is, he’s been made comfortable, he’s being watched by people with all sorts of medical training and equipment, and he’s on the road to what I very much hope will be a rousing recovery.

Until today, though, I don’t think I’d really realized quite how scared I could feel.

Moliere was neutered today. This relatively simple procedure was made more complicated by the fact that the Boys had decided not to descend into the usual neat package, but were hiding out in his belly, kind of near his hip joints. My poor little freak of nature is currently heavily doped up and under strict instructions to wear the embarrassing collar for at least a week, until the Frankenstein’s monster staples come out, and to refrain from jumping up on furniture for at least that long, too.

The vet knows him pretty well by now, and realizes that keeping Moliere from levitating onto furniture is a difficult project indeed, but I agreed to give it my best shot.

Oh, and he also has to be carried up and down all staircases. I live on the second floor, and Nigel’s kidney problems mean that (when I’m home) we go outside an average of ten times a day. This will be fun.

Ah well. You do what you have to do, and the Boys needed to come out. While he was under sedation, the vet also noticed a funky bit in his mouth where they thought a baby tooth was infected; happily, it turned out to be an ordinary, if extra-long, snaggletooth, and they didn’t need to extract it — though it’s now something else to keep an eye on, along with his recurrent eye infections (probably from his blocked tear ducts), the way his little face turns brown from tear stains if you so much as blink (also exacerbated by the blocked ducts), his extremely sensitive and bruise-prone skin on his belly (seriously: just shaving him for the surgery left little red bruises all over), the weird way he favors his right hind leg when going down stairs, and the way he seems to be irresistible to fleas, despite the best in modern preventative technology. (My own theory about the fact that he keeps acquiring fleas, however briefly, did not seem to go over well with the vet. Somehow, she didn’t think the reason that flea scouts establish beachheads on Moliere but not on Nigel had anything to do with the fact that the former is quite short, and thus an easier target for jumping; she suspects the grass around my building is just infested. Great.)

The poor little punkin. At least Nigel’s doing okay, though he’s a bit perplexed by Moliere’s collar, and is currently trying to convince me that I did not in fact feed him dinner yet at all, and should give him another quite large serving of kibble right now. So, you know, at least one thing’s normal.

I think I need a cookie.