Thursday, March 23, 2006

Detoxing

The last couple days have been sorta icky, not in any my-house-burned-down kinda way, but more in a my-tummy-hurts kinda way. Tyler has been a challenge at bedtime the last couple nights, and has earned himself many non-consecutive hours of restriction. I think he must sense when I'm not feeling well, and it throws his security and routine off - thus the bedtime and morning fights.

I got maybe 5 hours sleep in 48 (Mon/Tues), and woke up Wednesday exhausted. Fortunately, I had an appointment at M3 Bodyworks - whatever was locked up got broken loose in the massage, and I came home and collapsed for 4 hours. Still didn't feel up to the trip downtown to Gilda's. And then last night, Tyler was holding James Brown (the hardest-working guinea pig in show business), and the little fuzzball climbed over his shoulder and took a swan dive to the floor. I heard nothing about it until Kayleigh, very concerned, told me that "James isn't moving his hind legs..."

Sure enough, the fall did a number on his legs and lower spine. Poor little guy was dragging his back legs around the cage. Took him to our vet today, and had him examined by an expert on guinea pigs. The bad news is he got some spinal or pelvic trauma. The good news is he's getting pain response in the legs (which were not broken), so chances are his spine wasn't broken, and a lot of times small mammals can recover from such falls and get around reasonably well. Gave us some anti-inflammatory pain meds to give him, and we'll leave him alone for a couple weeks to see how he does. He's otherwise healthy, and only about 3 years old. Still has a good year or two left in him, if this doesn't end up doing him in.

On the way to the vet, I reminded Kayleigh that he might not make it through this injury - not that I wanted her to worry, just that I wanted her to be ready if it did happen. She totally understood, and added that if James died, then Mommy could play with him again. What must it be like to be 8 years old and already have such perspective? Anyway, the jury is still out on James Brown, but we'll keep y'all informed.

Aside from that, there is a mountain of boxes for the recycling tomorrow, due to the stuff for my studio arriving by the truckload. Got the new work computer up and running, with its new video and sound cards, and have begun extracting some of the salvaged data. It's a slow process, especially with media files.

Gotta get a vacuum tomorrow, and get to the storage unit to grab 10 cases of the Red Dwarf RPG for our consolidator - I've been remiss in getting the product out to the fulfillment warehouse, but it's on the way...

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think Tyler is going through some stuff -- I'm sure you've read his blog. Being a pre-teen is no picnic :)

Take good care.

Anonymous said...

I hope James Brown makes it through this. You folks have lost enough family members!

Anonymous said...

My dog had that problem and had lost all use and movement in all his legs. to help his recovery we massaged his legs and moved them around so he wouldn't lose too much muscle mass. He was up and walking again in about a week.