Ahab leaped up on all fours … um, threes … when I got out to Grafton last night for visiting hours. Poor fellow, he thought we were heading home, so I had to settle him down on his little blanket again and convince him that the hospital was a good place to be after an amputation. He’s on lots of good drugs: morphine injections every six hours, an IV drip of fluids, antibiotics and some other painkiller (I’ll know more when I get the hospital bill), and a lidocaine catheter threaded through the upside-down Y shaped incision itself, delivering numbness right to the amputation hot spot. It’s a bit loud and bright in there — and no fireplace or heart-breaking opera on iTunes — but still, he napped while I was there.
The ICU clinicians (I don’t know whether a clinician is the vet. equivalent of ICU nurse or a student in the vet school) were great, and very attentive. OK, I was sitting cross-legged in a tiled 5′l X 4′w X 8′h dog cage reading the Dalai Lama’s Mind of Clear Light (Advice on Dying) to a napping dog for 3 hours, so maybe they were worried about me, not Ahab. One was French and spoke endlessly about her dread of snow and how they don’t have this horrible weather in France because they are on the Atlantic. Um… we’re … nevermind. I’m hoping Ahab picks up a bit of the language.
We also hope to have Ahab home with us by the weekend, but for now he’s in good hands and we can visit every evening from 5 - 8pm. I don’t think he was really following the part where I was explaining the Highest Yoga Tantras, but he was pretty lucid otherwise.
Your life dwells among the causes of death
Like a lamp standing in a strong breeze.~ Nagarjuna’s Precious Garland
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I cannot stop laughing (in the most loving and adoring way) at the mental image of you reading the Dalai Lama to your napping dog. Betty, you are a strange and wonderful bird. Glad to know The Captain is doing well.