Well okay then.
It’s been a less than auspicious start to 2010 for the House of Watkii.
I spent the beginning of December nursing Neil with the flu, then spent the last 10 days of 2009 terribly ill myself (too ill to eat more than 1/2 plate of Christmas dinner – tragedy!), finally feeling better on the Jan 1st. And none too soon.
Neil managed to have a close, personal encounter with a tree trunk on his last day skiing, Jan 2nd, and because he was still hurting 5 days later, has gone to various doctors. The verdict so far? He’s knocked the cartilage off his ribs on his left side (nothing to do but take lots of painkillers).
In the same fall he smashed the fuck out of the right side of his face. Thankfully he looks mostly normal on the outside (a bit puffier on that side), but he’s waiting for the X-Rays to come in to find out if he’s broken his upper jaw. Bruised bone or hairline fracture means he just takes lots of ibuprofin and waits for the hurting to stop. Compound fracture means eventual reconstructive surgery to repair the break. In either case he’s probably got an ugly infection in there and killed a couple teeth. The dentist can’t go in to investigate further until the jaw thing is sorted out.
UPDATE: Hooray! Broken face is officially not broken! Lots of pain, lots of pus, no broken bones. *phew*
Oh, and time is of the essence in finding a solution/treatment path, since he leaves for a week in England on Saturday evening.
Among all that, we noticed the evening of the 4th the dog was generally out of sorts and licking herself a lot. We rolled her over to find her delicate ladyparts badly swollen and inflamed. Off to the emergency vet we went. $300 later, we had a cone of shame, a tube of lotion, and a diagnosis of “could be any number of things, see your regular vet ASAP.”
Another couple hundred dollars at the regular vet and we know that she’s got a nasty infection in her undercarriage, requiring twice-daily washing and lotion application, as well as 10 days of antibiotics. She’s mighty uncomfortable. Every time she gets up to walk, she realizes her bits hurt, panics and starts running around (which makes it even worse), then starts crashing into things because of the cone. It would be funny if it weren’t so sad. Needless to say, the dog can’t be left alone.
Thankfully my Sister-in-Law has been around the past couple days sorting out her visa application to return to work in Korea and has been able to watch the dog the couple occasions we haven’t been able to stay home from work or other obligations.
Though her story isn’t exactly rosy either. After 2 weeks of being dismissed, degraded, deferred and dicked-around by the Korean consulate in Vancouver, her visa was denied.
No good reason for it (she’s been working in Korea on visas for the better part of the past 6 years), except a disgruntled consular employee who managed to build a case against her for being “rude and disorganized – and we don’t want rude, disorganized people in Korea.” She’s now gone back to my in-law’s place to sort things out and figure out a new plan.
And me? I’ve been burning it at both ends trying to hold things together for our little family unit. Shuttling Neil and Sasha to and from various medical appointments. Managing schedules so someone is always home with the dog. Hosting a houseguest in our small, messy apartment (we still haven’t had time to unpack or do the holiday laundry with everything else going on).
So while it might otherwise be nice to have the house to myself for a week, what it really means is I get to fly solo on monitoring and managing the dog’s infection, finally take care of the unpacking and wrestle the Christmas decorations and long-since-dead tree into storage/the chipping place. All in addition to the extra hours I was expecting to put in at work through January so things are ready for me to leave for 3 weeks in February.
As I said, not a particularly great start to 2010. And have I mentioned, in a desperate effort to fit into my vacation pants by the time we leave for Thailand, I have declared it to be “sober January”? Strict clean-eating diet, no alcohol. Goodbye usual coping mechanisms.
But that’s fine. It’s only 357 days until 2011. I can make it. I hope.
Sounds like my Christmas last year (the not-being-able-to-eat thing) – I had a mouthful or two of dinner, barely choked it down.
Lesson? Do not ski, go to South Korea or own lady parts. I’m sure things will improve in time.
.-= Darren´s last blog ..Four Words I Learned =-.
I think you might have the terminology off — a compound fracture means it broke the skin (generally referred to as an open fracture now, the old terms of “compound” & “simple” don’t get used much anymore) and I’m pretty sure you’d notice bone coming out. 😀 The most likely would be a closed fracture (the new wording for “simple” fracture.)
But Ouch, regardless of what it’s called!
.-= donna´s last blog ..Bullet Points =-.
January 8th, 2010 at 10:30 am
Entirely likely. I’m just repeating what Neil told me the Doctor told him. No bones protruding from the face, but something is definitely amiss.
I empathize. Nothing like a ski crash at the start of the new year to get things off to a rough start.
Hopefully the year will only get better? That’s how I’ve been trying to frame things lately, anyway 🙂 *hug*
I had strep throat one Christmas. I could only have yoghurt and ice cream for Xmas dinner: not fun when you’re older than 6. Sorry to hear about your illness, mine luckily waited until after New Years to show up.
I’m glad Neil’s facial injury isn’t as bad as you thought: having suffered a facial infection for months, I know what the pain can be like. Here’s hoping the swelling and pain calms down soon, as does the big puppy’s.
Isn’t it amazing how well we’re able to focus on the present when the present isn’t going very well, but when everything is just dandy, we’re all wrapped up in the future or hashing out the past? I’ve noticed this a lot lately with having a baby around. When she’s having a temper tantrum (aka insane screaming attack) and won’t go to sleep, all I can think about is how hard my life is at the moment. Then, when she’s all smiley and cooing away, I think about how shitty it’s going to be in a few hours when she’s fussy again, or about how I’m behind in my work or something instead of enjoying that things are really great at that very moment. This is my long-winded way of saying that ‘this too shall pass’ and life will be fine again soon, and when it is, hopefully you’ll be able to appreciate it because you’ll know how rough things have been before.
Poor puppy though 🙁 Darwin had a horrible infection on his nose a few months ago. At the time, we thought it was a spider bite, but now we think it was a reaction to something that they put on the lawns at SFU because we’ve seen glimpses of it again. Regardless, he was blistered and pussy and bleeding everywhere and had to wear the cone of shame for a week. It’s not a happy existence.
Have a wonderful time in Thailand. We were there 2 years ago and despite Michael getting horribly, scarily sick at the end, it was one of the happiest times of my life 🙂