tiger_spot

Back from the vet for Tethys' recheck after the surgery. She's healed up well, but there's another lump in about the same area that's growing fast. It's technically possible that it's an incision reaction, in which case it should subside on its own soon, but much more likely that it's a (more aggressive) tumor.

:(

The vet seems fairly optimistic about her chances with a second surgery, but I expect that if it's coming on this aggressively this soon after surgery, there's probably more than just the one tumor. So I think we'll just be doing palliative care, when this gets big enough to bother her.

Poor kid.

Hello, living.

I am not sick any more. It got me awfully behind on things, but I seem to be about caught up. Now I shall catch you up.

Our Thanksgiving trip was quite nice, and I have here on my desk a giant hard drive full of all the home movies ever, courtesy my sibling. Yay sibling!

While I was sick, my permanent retainer succumbed to the pressure of years of flossing. I had my dentist remove it, polish off the remaining adhesive, and recommend me some orthodontists to consult about whether it (and/or my top retainer, which has been broken for years) should be replaced or altered in some way or whether I can just have teeth like a normal person now. I am really enjoying having the back surface of my front teeth back, so I intend to be very thorough about explaining to these orthodontists, when I get around to calling them, that I do not care what my teeth look like as long as they are more or less symmetrical, I did not want braces in the first place so the effects of said braces wearing off are irrelevant, and really they should only recommend I do or wear anything if not doing it is going to hurt or make it hard for me to eat. I like eating.

I made cookies for a holiday cookie swap and swapped them for other cookies yesterday. They are mostly gone now. The swapping-party was fun.

Andres put the house lights up and we hung the wreath on the door, but we haven't got a Christmas tree yet. This feels late to me, but we will go fetch one and decorate it up this weekend and there will be plenty of days of Christmas tree. (The live tree we used to have is no more; it was scraggly and horrible anyway, because of having been painted blue before we got it, and it's hard to keep container plants alive outdoors here. Or, as Andres put it: "You murdered Sparky!" Yes. Yes I did.)

Galen has been doing fairly well learning Rally Obedience. The class proper is over, but the instructor has started doing drop-in classes to cover the Advanced and Excellent exercises. He's still having trouble with right-hand finishes, which I expected given how long it took him to learn left-hand finishes. He's having trouble with them in really interesting and consistent ways, which reveals a lot about his thought processes and learning style, but it would be nice if he would just get the hang of them already. Also, apparently he really likes backing up (this was one of the new exercises last week, although I vaguely recall working on it a little bit just as a trick a while back). I should practice that this evening just to see if he's still as enthusiastic as he was in class.

Galen also had a veterinary incident a little while ago. Google has dispensers containing a particular kind of chewing gum that is high in xylitol, an artificial sweetener with some antibiotic properties. Unfortunately, xylitol is also extremely toxic to dogs. Someone spilled some of the gum, and Galen, who loves gum, found and consumed it instantly. Three pieces of the stuff is a lethal dose for a dog his size, so Andres rushed him to the vet, and he was unhappy for the rest of the day but is fine now.

The chickens have been molting. This is an unfortunate state in which feathers fall out, new, itchy, poky pinfeathers grow in, no eggs are laid, very little food is eaten, and tempers are even crankier than usual. (I would be cranky, too, if my feathers fell out in this weather.) I think Teckla's about coming out of it, though -- somebody's been starting to eat a reasonable amount of food again, and all the feathers clogging up the bedding-scoop have white spots so they're definitely Norska's. Also she's been merely her normal level of cranky the last few days, rather than the Bitch Queen From Hell she was last week and earlier.

Cathy is sick again, poor thing. She has a well-deserved promotion and accompanying massive raise to comfort her in her extremity, but it's awfully unfair to be sick again already.

Tethys is no longer sick, which is surprising but good. I was expecting her to need to stay on the antibiotics to manage the respiratory disease, since that is what the boys needed, but one course seems to have cleared it up. Hurrah!

As of yesterday, all the presents that need to be shipped have been ordered and/or mailed. I thought I had about half the household Christmas present shopping done, but then I got an e-mail that one thing I ordered wouldn't be in until after the new year (and did I perhaps want to cancel, which was very nice of them to ask, so I said no, I'll save it for a birthday present or something, but I should come up with another little Christmas thing in the meantime) and decided to maybe add a few things here and there, so there will be more happening on that front. Also the first of the presents I ordered to come to me arrived, so I can begin wrapping now. We probably need more ribbon, I think we were low last time I used some.

Tomorrow I will begin using the Clipper public transit payment system. I think I have set it up in such a way that it will actually work, and if this is so I will e-mail the various companies involved to tell them how to do that, because their customer service departments were well-meaning but entirely unhelpful. Or perhaps I will be ignominiously ejected from the train. We'll see.

... and I think that is the entire contents of my brain at the moment.

How are you?

We have been to the emergency vet this evening. Tethys did something to her foot. We're not sure what, but when Cathy and I got back from the beach[1] it was swollen and she wasn't walking on it at all. We suspected it was broken, but the vet thinks it's more likely that she got it caught in something and cut off the circulation for a bit. So Tethys is stoned out of her tiny gourd on painkillers, and if it doesn't go back to normal in a day or so we will actually X-ray it.

Cathy is a hero of the revolution for calling like 6 or 8 different after-hours vet clinics to find one that was willing to look at a rat.


[1] The verdict: From the perspective of "How much will the dog enjoy this outing?" we should stick with hiking. I deliberately picked a beach which allows dogs on, but not off, leash on the theory that this would mean there would be fewer other dogs for him to get overexcited about. In practice, there were a lot of dogs, most of whom were off-leash. We learned that Galen likes ocean water no better than he likes any other water that makes noise (i.e., not at all even a little bit HOLY SHIT IT'S TRYING TO EAT ME), so while he enjoyed the trip to a new and interesting environment, we will not be going back, as there are plenty of other equally new and interesting places closer to home with fewer other dogs in them.

Huginn passed away this afternoon, very quietly at the bottom of the cage.

Calypso's died. I mentioned a while back that she'd developed a brain tumor. She'd been pretty stable for a month or two; she could get around, although she fell over a lot, and she was interested in food, although not very good at eating it. About Christmas Eve, she started to look out of it in a new and different way. Yesterday morning, she was lying on the floor of the cage, about room temperature. She sure looked dead, and I couldn't find a heartbeat, but she was still breathing and twitching occasionally. We figured it wouldn't be long, so we wrapped her up warm and kept an eye on her. She remained creepy zombie rat, with no detectable heartbeat or body temperature but occasional breathing and other tiny motions, until well after dark. And then she stopped.

I have pretty much done my mourning in advance on this one. I am impressed she hung on as long as she did, and I hope she was reasonably comfortable.

(At Wayside School, dead rats live in the basement. She'll fit right in.)

Also, Calypso has a brain tumor.


(Or something. There are a few possibilities, so we're treating for the easily-treatable ones, but those are not by a long stretch the likeliest.)

So of course the evening after I post that Hera's doing well, we notice a lump.

Yes, agrees the new vet at the clinic, looks like a mammary tumor. Given the respiratory ick (and her age[1], and the fact that she's a rat), she's a really lousy anesthetic risk, so we're not planning on surgery. If it's growing slowly, something else will probably kill her before it starts to bother her; if it's growing quickly we can try surgery at the point at which not waking up from the anesthetic is better than a continued lumpy existence.

Her kidneys are doing great, though, so we have permission to dose her with Metacam (an anti-inflammatory / painkiller) up to once a day as needed. I offered her a dose on a bit of bread last night, and at first she didn't seem interested. Once I told chinders that I didn't think she was going to settle down enough to eat, so maybe we should try again in the morning before she got regular food, Hera decided that bread sounded like a great idea and ate most of the dosed part (but not the crust -- picky thing).

So then I told her, "You're a very sick rat and you're going to die soon."

Reverse psychology. Worth a try.


[1] We've had her for two years this month, and she was an adult then. We guessed at about a year old when we got her, so the vet has 2 years 10 months as the current estimated age in her chart (she started looking younger when we'd had her for a bit -- must not have been fed real well in her previous life), but she could in theory be anywhere from 2 years 5 months up. So she's certainly old, but we do not know whether she is Really Impressively Old or not.

While I was taking Hera out of the cage to give her her morning medication, she opened her mouth at just the wrong moment and managed to get her top front teeth hooked over one of the bars on the ramp. It took a while to get her loose, and she scratched her muzzle, but she doesn't seem to have hurt her teeth.

Poor kid. That was scary!

She was an awfully good girl. We'll miss her.

I went to take my shower this morning, and Andres shouted "Wait! A rat just ran out of the bathroom!" Sure enough, there was Aphrodite, having knocked the lid off the recovery tank, jumped out of the tank, jumped off the coffee table, and gone exploring.

"You're supposed to be resting," I told her as I put her back in the tank.

After my shower, I noticed the tank lid ajar again, went and retrieved her from visiting the boys (chinders's rats are hanging out in the study), and plonked a nice heavy book on top of the cage. This is exactly why I don't want unneutered males in the house. But hah! Aphrodite's just been spayed, and can't get herself in trouble!

The Norton Anthology of Literature seems to be having some trouble keeping her contained. I will go switch her over to the small cage in a minute; climbing the walls is probably less bad for her incisions than jumping into the lid.