Come Milk My Intestines, Please

ET is home!  He's moving around a bit.  Goes to his shanty, sleeps, goes to middle of terrarium, sleeps, go back to shanty.  It is exhausting being him right now.  The Boy took him outside for a bit today (in his Tupperware container to keep his underside safe), and reports that ET was very excited and practically frisky compared to how he's been over the past month.  However, we can't get too excited yet.  Not at all.  I must temper my joy, and remind myself that he is a very sick fellow.

After a weekend of anxiousness where the vet called every morning to update us, I went to work on Monday hoping I would get to go to Houston to bring him home.  There were no guarantees of this, and I tried not to get my hopes up, but I did bring my "emergency" bag of eyeglasses, lotion, sweater, sneakers and socks, a book, etc.  I prepared as if I was going to be stranded in Houston over night.  I come prepared, people! 

The vet had been calling around 10:30am each morning, and I spent the morning checking my cellphone and staring morosely at my computer screens (yes, two! Really three if you count my laptop).  It was one long morning of payroll and fighting off anxiety.  I called The Boy and bugged him with my nerves.  As much as I wanted to bring ET home, I was also scared stiff about driving to Houston and back by my little ol' self.  This is a totally dumb fear, and is the exact reason I take drugs.  I have driven a moving truck from Boston to San Diego to Austin to Boston, Austin to San Francisco, and Boston to Austin.  Sure, I was never alone during those trips, but for all of them but the San Francisco one, I was the driver (well, except for that short time I let Wikus drive in Tennessee, but then he tried to kill us and his drive time was over).  My brain just fears the unknown and really likes playing vague what-if games.  Anyway. 

After managing to do next to no work but feeling like I was drowning in work, and threatening to call the vet if she didn't call by noon, she called at 11:30am.  She gave really positive news of how he was awake and moving his legs and blinking his eyes, but then she said, "I would like to keep him one more day."  Gah! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.  She gave valid reasons like how he hasn't pooed and they need to give more fluids and what not to keep him hydrated to prompt his body to get the bowels moving.  Since I am quick goat thinker I asked if it would be okay if I got him, and then have my local vet give him fluids?  YES!  Perfectly okay. Thus I get to be reunited with him and save money.  Sweet.

I madly dashed around the office getting myself together (bathroom: check; out-of-office assistant: check, payroll complete: check; camera battery: oops, no).  My urban-race coworker loaned me her GPS but she admitted it was wonky (why'd it keep telling me to go right in the middle of a long stretch of highway?).  After an initial panic (call Boy, how the fuck do I get to Houston??), I made awesome time to Houston.  I am a master of cruise control (and kept telling myself Julie Cruise Control would be a good band name--I don't even know a Julie).  I was wearing a lovely spring frock and my awesome turquoise Fluevogs.  My iPod was set to my favorite songs and there was barely any traffic.  Lots of singing and cursing at other drivers (why oh why is it that people feel compelled to speed up when you are passing them and then they pass you and you have to pass them again because they start going slowly once they get back in front of you?  WHY?  I'm using my Julie cruise control, so I know I am not the one who can't keep a steady speed.  Assholes.).

Unlike The Boy, I found the vet hospital very easily (that is probably because I spent 40 minutes on the phone with The Boy on Friday getting him to the right place), and I swear the whole place is a vast underground hospital full of animals.  I met some big dogs and two ferrets.  There was a tiny dog.  No cats!  No other reptiles.  The exotic animal area is in the same place as surgery, so all the animals in there were either heading to surgery or coming home from it.  That could have been a really sad situation, but all the animals were jolly and tails were wagging.  At one point, an animal was rolled out on a stretcher complete with IV and oxygen mask, and I refused to look.  I studiously pretended to read my book (The Flying Troutmans: A Novel, by Miriam Toews), because looking would break me.  There's only so much my medicine can do. 

They finally bring me to the back, but they did  not have ET waiting for me.  The audacity of these people.  A really hot nurse (she was seriously the sexiest woman I have seen all year) explained the post-up care and handed me a bag full of condensation and THE stones!  One was about 1.5" in diameter, and the other was over 3".  The "small" one looked like chalk covered in moss.  The large one looked like a huge ball of concrete.  It was very hard and lumpy like concrete that isn't fully mixed yet.  It was appalling.  I hated myself.  I was in awe.  Those were IN him.  As his mom, I had no idea and do not even know how long they had been building up in him.  I was already making mental plans to buy a shadowbox, and thinking what wall it would look best on).  Then the vet came in and went over the post-op stuff again, and broke down the diagnosis and surgery.  It was a two-page long note.  More guilt.  Just terrible.  She didn't treat me like a tortoise abuser but she didn't go out of her way to assuage my guilt either.  She pressed home that I really need to get him natural sunlight on a daily basis, and we discussed my plan to build him an outdoor enclosure as soon as he is healthy enough to be left unattended in the yard.

The vet was asking if her nurse had given me the medications, and I stupidly, oh man, so stupidly was like yes, here, see in this bag, yep, I got his medicine, don't worry, right here, SEE?  And of course I had stashed the baggy of stones in the same bag with the medicine, and she grabs them and says in a scolding voice, "Oh, you can't have those!"  Sad.  So sad.  I wanted to fucking carry those around with me for a while.  Show people.  Look what my tortoise held in him without complaint.  LOOK.  She advised that they have to go to the lab to be analyzed and that they wouldn't be able to send them to me after they were finished.  She seemed worried that I was going to shove those stones down her throat, and nervously asked if sending me pictures would suffice.  I suppose.  At this point, I was tired of playing nice and just wanted my baby already.  Go behind the door for employees only and grab me an ET already!

She finally got to it.  He had a blue bandage around his middle and his head hiding in his shell.  Not a happy man.  She showed me how to change his bandage ("It's so easy a 5-year-old could do it! Oh, that sounded insulting to you..." She really said that to me).  Looking at his plastron made me come very close to losing my cool.  I wanted to grab him and run out of the place and cry in the backseat of my car.  It looks painful.  It is ugly.  It is a large bloody square with the shell wired back in place.  They did not epoxy the shell back in place, because she doesn't like how that makes it harder to go back in if there is an infection.  Therefore, on each side there is a loop of thick metal wire holding the square in place.  I touched it, and at least ET didn't flinch. 

We were finally released (I put the remaining $1200 on a 6-month no-interest card), and off we went.  I was starving.  He was sleep.  I nestled him on the floor where I could easily see him.  I was getting anxious again since it was rush-hour time by the time I finally left the vet (I may have summed it up quickly, but I was actually there for almost two hours).  I've heard that traffic is B*A*D in Houston.  Well either I'm really lucky or once again Texans do not know the meaning of traffic (seriously, go drive in Boston any hour, and tell me what you think about traffic now).  I did feel I should get out of Houston before I found me some food.  I saw a McDonald's right outside of Houston but it was on the other side of the highway, and I'll be damned if I have to do that loop-around shit just for a crappy hamburger (with cheese and onions, please).  At that point I started wishing there was an Arby's I could go to.  Yes, dirty, I know.  But man, I like Arby's.  I can't help myself.  I'm a sucker for that salty, gray deliciousness they pass off as roast beef.  And the curly fries!  Don't get me started.  I'm drooling over all the savory joy, and what do you know, the very next food sign is for an Arby's!  I shit you not.  After all this bad luck, I get an Arby's for an award.  Not so shabby.  It was even a drive-through so I didn't have to leave ET alone, and it was part of a gas station, and though I have a hybrid, I still needed gas if I wanted to make it back to Austin, and not, say, Bastrop.

After getting my food, I gave all the truckers a peepshow.  For free!  That lovely red-and-white, polka-dot and striped spring dress wasn't so friendly in high winds.  Hey boys, look at me with my dress over my head!  And pumping gas.  What an act.  No one gave me any tips, so I must not have danced and giggled enough.  Disappointed in my impromptu performance I booked it home.  This time singing and talking to ET while cussing out other drives.  Like that semi who thought he should take out me and the truck in front of me where I-10 curves in to 71.  Thanks guy.  Hey, asshole, you left your blinker on for over 20 miles.  There was also a truck towing a contraption that was designed like a side-show front.  Lights and drawings all over it.  Seems it was the "Sugar Barn."  There were cartoon bunnies on it.  I wasn't really sure what to make of it.  I saluted my favorite town name (Zapalaca, say it out loud, you'll see!), and made it home by 7:30pm.  What the fuck had I been all worried about?  I did an excellent job.  I denied my second-guessing to take hold of me, and I trusted myself to go with my initial thoughts, and it worked.  Yay me.

Now, as to ET.  It's not really good.  It's not bad either.  It is just limbo.  A lot of not knowing his future.  He isn't allowed to eat, because he has not had a bowel movement (damn you ET, please get back to shitting piles of steamy green poo already).  He has to be taken to our local vet every 2-3 days for force feeding of fluids (The Boy has first shift tomorrow, and I go on Saturday).  We have to buy him sterile pads and bandages, and change that out every 1-3 days while monitoring any discharge from the surgery site.  It's okay for him to leak fluids, but not okay to be bleeding.  He has to be given more shots of antibiotics every three days, and attempt to give him pain medication (orally, yeah right, as if he's going to open his mouth for us) daily.  There is no guarantee he is going to live.  It all depends on if he can get his impacted bowels cleared on his own (well, with the help of all the fluid pushing).  In humans, a doctor can literally pull out the intestines from the abdominal cavity, and work stuff out of them (they delightfully refer to this technique as "milking").  In a tortoise they can't do that.  They have to work within the shell and not all the intestine is accessible; therefore, the vet could only get out what she could get to.  All we can do is make him as comfortable as possible, which is pretty much leaving him alone and taking him outside daily.  We can't feed him, we can't bathe him, we can't handle him too much.  This is when having a reptile is hard--you cannot comfort him.  I just keep talking to him, and promising that I will do whatever I need to do for him.  He is my child, and I will spend all the money I have and don't have to keep him healthy.  He is supposed to outlive me for fuck's sake.  Make it happen ET!