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10 pounds down 32 pounds to go!

Sunday, January 16, 2011

"Going to the doctor is your answer for everything"

Today's quote comes from my co-worker who was actually bleeding from the ears when we told her to go to the doctor.  In all seriousness this woman should be married to a doctor with the medical emergencies that she's had to live with.  Her birthing stories should be included in every health ed. class on earth...but probably it would cause an apocalyptic population decline even without the one where she needed reconstructive surgery.  She is kind of famous for not going to the doctor until she's on the very brink of death (once with grave's disease and once with appendicitis) which I guess since she's not actually dead must have worked out for her.

I have kind of the same attitude too.  Unless there is copious blood or unconsciousness I usually follow the "give it some time" theory of medical action.  The actionless action.  The sans action method of healing.  I blame my mother, who allowed me to suffer with more than one chronic condition before being shamed into action by my siblings, for instilling in me the belief that going to the doctor isn't important.  I think probably she just didn't think we were important and that it had nothing to do with doctors at all but who knows.

The point is that medical attention is just never my first thought and I don't know how to fix that because that impulse to not go to the doctor is totally wrong.  Especially when it isn't me that is sick.  Yesterday (exactly 24 hours after seeing the vet for routine dog maintenance) Jolie's eye started to look a little red.  It started to look red after a walk where there was much wrestling, which there always is, but Matt noticed Jo made an ouchy noise at one point.  It happens on occasion that Knox will accidentally hurt her and she'll let him know, and then proceed to pound him even harder, but yesterday she just came inside and slept.  When she woke up she was a little teary and noticeably swollen and we thought "uh oh, he must have got her eye".  So we trimmed his claws and made her a cold compress and it didn't look any worse when we left to do errands.*

When we came back it was not cool and we felt like assholes.  Did you ever see Cannonball Run?  Do you remember the doctor?



What about now?   This is what she looked like, but redder and pussier and furrier.  It's really that bad.  So of course I googled it while I was looking up the emergency vet number and of course it said your dog will go blind unless you go to the vet before the redness appears so we packed everyone up and dug out the credit cards and went to the emergency vet.

We were all nervous and worried and it was snowing and we were forced to drive 30 miles an hour in half an inch of snow which will make anyone consider violence even without a slowly blinding dog in the back seat.  So we get there and the first person we see used to work at our vet.  So yay.  They were all really nice and the word that a collie was in the building spread like fire and everyone came out to see Knox.  Probably they don't get to cuddle that many healthy dogs and he loves showing off his belly and poking people with his nose so they all had a good time while Jolie hid under our legs.

The doctor was really sweet and gave her numbing drops to look at the eye but whenever they touched her head to get a closer look she freaked out.  In the end we had to sedate her and I watched while she was muzzled and sedated and the doctor checked out all over her eye...and then in her mouth.  She had her tongue all pulled out like a cartoon and would you believe her eye was popping out of her head because of something she ate?  She got something wedge over her gum that caused an injury at some point and caused a puss filled trauma so huge that it was bubbling up through her eye tissue and pushing her eye out.  Yes, it's that gross.

She won't eat or take her pills because her mouth hurts and she can't take walks for a week but she's enjoying resting on the bed and getting petted.  We're full of guilt, half for letting it go when there was no way that was going to get better on it's own and half for blaming Knox who was as innocent as he always is.  We're going to have to buy them both a pony if we survive the emergency vet bill.

* I hate us right now, you don't even know.  

2 comments:

The Merry said...

Yeah, but you don't always know when it's a problem and when it's not. My vet was really good about trying to determine how serious the problem was over the phone, so I didn't
always have to drag the poor dog in.

And definitely the pups deserve a pony. As do you -- it's awful to see them suffer.

Amy said...

That's the thing, you're either the nervous nelly spending all your money to get pats on the head or the thing you think will get better becomes end a huge emergency. I suppose human parents do the same thing, except they have spock and all those other books to help them out!