When Too Many Things Go Wrong
How dramatic. From my forum post around 3 pm earlier today:
"Today I've been cleaning out their room, so I set up a 3 x 4 grid pen for them in the humans' bedroom over white towels. I expected them to urinate in the boxes like they did two weeks ago in the run, but there have been some spots of urine on the towels. One that was still wet had a middle circle of a red color, with a larger circle around it that wasn't colored but wet. I thought this may mean that some urine was normal, while at the end, there was blood in the urine. As it has dried, the boundary between the colors has become less clear.
My partner had a theory earlier this week, about the newspaper, that it may be the red chard staining their urine after meals. But the last time I fed them that was Friday, and I'd think if it did have anything to do with the urine, it wouldn't just be the last drops."
During last week, when I first noticed the urine was redder than usual, I SHOULD HAVE JUST RUSHED TO THE VET.
We partitioned the cage and set it up over fresh white towels at a bit past 3. Shortly after, halfway through preparing our lunch, we saw that Wasabi had urinated small amounts, and some was bright red. Since we'd been checking every few minutes, it was NOT just rusting, obviously.
I told Anti to try calling Adobe, as I'd heard good things, to make sure a cavy vet was there, and if there was, we should go there asap. He said he'd look up the vet phone # and stuff, but complained that he was starving, so I finished making lunch. He was still looking at stuff... We ate. He was still looking at stuff... Finally, a little before 4:30, he called, then reported back that we can go there, but they said there'd be a long wait. They also advised him to come in before 7 p.m. because afterwards there'd be emergency fees, making it more expensive. I asked if he'd made sure a cavy vet was there, as I asked, and he said he didn't, but he assumed there must be one since they told him he could come today. He was concerned about the expected wait and asked if I knew of any others, so I opened up http://www.cavyspirit.com/vets.htm in my browser and scrolled down to South Peninsula Veterinary Emergency Clinic. He didn't want to come my computer, so I told him to get on MSN so I could show him the URL. He did, then sat there eating another helping. I was quite upset and yelled at him after several minutes, and then he went to phone them at 4:36. He reported back that they had no cavy vet there now.
So then we needed to arrange a taxi to take us to Adobe. This should be obvious. I had to remind him. I asked him to call one if he hadn't already. He hadn't, but he preferred to use the online form. He told me it should arrive at 5:45. At 5:42, he realized the cab company had failed to confirm. He ended up calling for a taxi.
So it arrived, a little down the block and across the street. The driver barely spoke English and apparently didn't know his way around. Gogo GPS navigator. Except, you know, he apparently didn't know well how to use that. (One of the funny things is that when Anti told him the city is Los Altos, the driver was like "Fremont?" How the hell Los Altos sounds anything like Fremont is beyond me.) Anti had to spell out everything as the driver sloooowly found each letter and hit it. After we did the building number, he asked for the street name. "First" did not work, so Anti realized it has to be "1st." He told the driver to just put in the number one. The guy tries doing F... again. Anti tells him no, no, just the number one. He points to the number button at the bottom to switch to numbers. The driver goes back to the building number. OMFG. After I leaned way forward, pointed at each button, and wrote a big "1" (just a line downward" in the air to show what we meant, he finally got the address in.
Of course he can't even follow the navigator's instructions all that well, made a U-turn that cost us at least a dollar, but oh well he did eventually get us there. I signed in, filled out a form, waited, answered some questions, waited... Shortly after 7, it was nearly our turn! Just one more person ahead of us, we were told! However...while there was a cavy vet, that particular vet went home after 7, and the emergency vet on after 7 didn't do GPs. Wonderful. And here I was thinking we'd just have to pay extra fees like the person on the phone had said. To her credit, the person who broke the news went around asking to see if anyone who did know cavies would see us. No takers, apparently. She presented us with three options: 1) see the vet who didn't really know much about cavies, 2) schedule an appointment for tomorrow with a cavy vet, 3) give subQ fluids before going home. I asked how much fluids would help, considering that Wasabi was acting fairly normally other than the bloody urine. My answer was that if she's fine otherwise, I should wait until tomorrow and not go in to see the vet today who may not know much about her anyway. Not exactly what I asked, but ok.
So I wanted to get an appointment in, and asked Anti to come with me to the front desk, but there was a person already on either side, he pointed out. I was like well then duh let's stand in line. While I argued with him, the person on the left was done, and two new people stepped through the door and took her place. Arrrgh. All the "little things"... So Anti stood in line with me behind them. We were told that there'd only be emergency tomorrow, no appointments, but a GP vet would be there. So we said thanks and went back to our seats, then Anti went outside to get a cab so we could go home.
At this point, I was feeling really shitty. Not just for the girls, who were cramped in their carrier, jostled around to strange and perhaps threatening new places, without water, and still unable to see a vet, but my neck had been hurting since this morning, and by then it was killing me. When Anti told me that he'd gotten a cab and it should arrive in 15 minutes, I told him when we got home, I wanted to go to Urgent Care to see a doc for myself.
Too bad I didn't realize how long that would take. After a long wait, Anti got a phone call. He said the driver was saying he couldn't see Anti on the street, etc. Anti had no clue where the guy was, but apparently he was lost because Anti was clearly standing on the sidewalk and we saw no taxi. Anti called again, and straightened things out...apparently "Los Altos" sounds like "San Jose" and the driver was wandering around in the wrong city!
By the time we got home, it was almost 9. We set up the sheet on the carpet in here (so I could clean the other room, which I hadn't finished doing), put towels over that, then partitioned the 3 x 4...Wasabi has a 2 x 2 in the middle, along the left side, leaving three sides around it. That's partitioned in half. This way they each get 4 squares. Not much but meh. Water bottle, handful of hay, and a house for each. Dinner was baby romaine, bit of tomato, slice of cucumber, and parsley.
And...damn I'm really worried about them. And I'm still kicking myself for not bringing them in earlier, for not being strong enough to talk to people and use the phone etc by myself, for not screaming at Anti over and over until he got it through his head to ask about which vets were there. And making the girls live in filth...I must have given her/them the infection. I'm so sorry. On the way home, we were waiting at an intersection, then the light went green and the girls got lurched forward. I heard a thud followed by unhappy squealing. And I apologized. As if that would help them at all! So many things I did wrong when all along I'd convinced myself I was doing ok. Damn I hate myself. And I love my babies, even though I don't deserve them.
To put things in perspective, well, I surely hope they last until tomorrow. They did eat all their dinner, except for the cucumber and tomato (which they've never really liked), and Kona left her parsley, but Wasabi ate it for her :P After a good night's sleep (oh who am I kidding, Anti will be a zombie, he'll have to work until 5 a.m.), the quest for veterinary attention will continue. I screwed up bad, and who knows, it might result in their death after all. But after hearing the firsthand accounts of prolonged, agonizing torture...yes, perspective. What I did was still just as horrible as it was before I heard about this. I still see how horrible it is and may turn out to be, but I see it more in perspective.
This world FUCKING SUCKS.
"Today I've been cleaning out their room, so I set up a 3 x 4 grid pen for them in the humans' bedroom over white towels. I expected them to urinate in the boxes like they did two weeks ago in the run, but there have been some spots of urine on the towels. One that was still wet had a middle circle of a red color, with a larger circle around it that wasn't colored but wet. I thought this may mean that some urine was normal, while at the end, there was blood in the urine. As it has dried, the boundary between the colors has become less clear.
My partner had a theory earlier this week, about the newspaper, that it may be the red chard staining their urine after meals. But the last time I fed them that was Friday, and I'd think if it did have anything to do with the urine, it wouldn't just be the last drops."
During last week, when I first noticed the urine was redder than usual, I SHOULD HAVE JUST RUSHED TO THE VET.
We partitioned the cage and set it up over fresh white towels at a bit past 3. Shortly after, halfway through preparing our lunch, we saw that Wasabi had urinated small amounts, and some was bright red. Since we'd been checking every few minutes, it was NOT just rusting, obviously.
I told Anti to try calling Adobe, as I'd heard good things, to make sure a cavy vet was there, and if there was, we should go there asap. He said he'd look up the vet phone # and stuff, but complained that he was starving, so I finished making lunch. He was still looking at stuff... We ate. He was still looking at stuff... Finally, a little before 4:30, he called, then reported back that we can go there, but they said there'd be a long wait. They also advised him to come in before 7 p.m. because afterwards there'd be emergency fees, making it more expensive. I asked if he'd made sure a cavy vet was there, as I asked, and he said he didn't, but he assumed there must be one since they told him he could come today. He was concerned about the expected wait and asked if I knew of any others, so I opened up http://www.cavyspirit.com/vets.htm in my browser and scrolled down to South Peninsula Veterinary Emergency Clinic. He didn't want to come my computer, so I told him to get on MSN so I could show him the URL. He did, then sat there eating another helping. I was quite upset and yelled at him after several minutes, and then he went to phone them at 4:36. He reported back that they had no cavy vet there now.
So then we needed to arrange a taxi to take us to Adobe. This should be obvious. I had to remind him. I asked him to call one if he hadn't already. He hadn't, but he preferred to use the online form. He told me it should arrive at 5:45. At 5:42, he realized the cab company had failed to confirm. He ended up calling for a taxi.
So it arrived, a little down the block and across the street. The driver barely spoke English and apparently didn't know his way around. Gogo GPS navigator. Except, you know, he apparently didn't know well how to use that. (One of the funny things is that when Anti told him the city is Los Altos, the driver was like "Fremont?" How the hell Los Altos sounds anything like Fremont is beyond me.) Anti had to spell out everything as the driver sloooowly found each letter and hit it. After we did the building number, he asked for the street name. "First" did not work, so Anti realized it has to be "1st." He told the driver to just put in the number one. The guy tries doing F... again. Anti tells him no, no, just the number one. He points to the number button at the bottom to switch to numbers. The driver goes back to the building number. OMFG. After I leaned way forward, pointed at each button, and wrote a big "1" (just a line downward" in the air to show what we meant, he finally got the address in.
Of course he can't even follow the navigator's instructions all that well, made a U-turn that cost us at least a dollar, but oh well he did eventually get us there. I signed in, filled out a form, waited, answered some questions, waited... Shortly after 7, it was nearly our turn! Just one more person ahead of us, we were told! However...while there was a cavy vet, that particular vet went home after 7, and the emergency vet on after 7 didn't do GPs. Wonderful. And here I was thinking we'd just have to pay extra fees like the person on the phone had said. To her credit, the person who broke the news went around asking to see if anyone who did know cavies would see us. No takers, apparently. She presented us with three options: 1) see the vet who didn't really know much about cavies, 2) schedule an appointment for tomorrow with a cavy vet, 3) give subQ fluids before going home. I asked how much fluids would help, considering that Wasabi was acting fairly normally other than the bloody urine. My answer was that if she's fine otherwise, I should wait until tomorrow and not go in to see the vet today who may not know much about her anyway. Not exactly what I asked, but ok.
So I wanted to get an appointment in, and asked Anti to come with me to the front desk, but there was a person already on either side, he pointed out. I was like well then duh let's stand in line. While I argued with him, the person on the left was done, and two new people stepped through the door and took her place. Arrrgh. All the "little things"... So Anti stood in line with me behind them. We were told that there'd only be emergency tomorrow, no appointments, but a GP vet would be there. So we said thanks and went back to our seats, then Anti went outside to get a cab so we could go home.
At this point, I was feeling really shitty. Not just for the girls, who were cramped in their carrier, jostled around to strange and perhaps threatening new places, without water, and still unable to see a vet, but my neck had been hurting since this morning, and by then it was killing me. When Anti told me that he'd gotten a cab and it should arrive in 15 minutes, I told him when we got home, I wanted to go to Urgent Care to see a doc for myself.
Too bad I didn't realize how long that would take. After a long wait, Anti got a phone call. He said the driver was saying he couldn't see Anti on the street, etc. Anti had no clue where the guy was, but apparently he was lost because Anti was clearly standing on the sidewalk and we saw no taxi. Anti called again, and straightened things out...apparently "Los Altos" sounds like "San Jose" and the driver was wandering around in the wrong city!
By the time we got home, it was almost 9. We set up the sheet on the carpet in here (so I could clean the other room, which I hadn't finished doing), put towels over that, then partitioned the 3 x 4...Wasabi has a 2 x 2 in the middle, along the left side, leaving three sides around it. That's partitioned in half. This way they each get 4 squares. Not much but meh. Water bottle, handful of hay, and a house for each. Dinner was baby romaine, bit of tomato, slice of cucumber, and parsley.
And...damn I'm really worried about them. And I'm still kicking myself for not bringing them in earlier, for not being strong enough to talk to people and use the phone etc by myself, for not screaming at Anti over and over until he got it through his head to ask about which vets were there. And making the girls live in filth...I must have given her/them the infection. I'm so sorry. On the way home, we were waiting at an intersection, then the light went green and the girls got lurched forward. I heard a thud followed by unhappy squealing. And I apologized. As if that would help them at all! So many things I did wrong when all along I'd convinced myself I was doing ok. Damn I hate myself. And I love my babies, even though I don't deserve them.
To put things in perspective, well, I surely hope they last until tomorrow. They did eat all their dinner, except for the cucumber and tomato (which they've never really liked), and Kona left her parsley, but Wasabi ate it for her :P After a good night's sleep (oh who am I kidding, Anti will be a zombie, he'll have to work until 5 a.m.), the quest for veterinary attention will continue. I screwed up bad, and who knows, it might result in their death after all. But after hearing the firsthand accounts of prolonged, agonizing torture...yes, perspective. What I did was still just as horrible as it was before I heard about this. I still see how horrible it is and may turn out to be, but I see it more in perspective.
This world FUCKING SUCKS.
posted by Weatherlight at 11:58 PM
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