Moving Forward

Well, it's been a week.  The mirrors are all uncovered again and we're moving forward. Thank you all for your kind words.  Sarah, your poem was especially awesome!  I'm going to cut and paste it here so everyone has a chance to see it.
 
                   A TRIBUTE TO EMMA

                  Emma, Emma, the beloved pet
                  Emma, Emma, they took you to the vet
                  Your passing has left a sad, sombre mood
                  Dying......not the best way to show your gratitude

                  Emma, Emma, sweetest little pig I never did meet
                  Emma, Emma, the blogs about you were always a treat
                  Yes, Indy's blogs about you were always fanatic and kind
                  Yet, sometimes I wondered, "Has she lost her mind??"

                  Emma, Emma, blog readers shared in your life through internet post
                  Emma, Emma, your passing will therefore be felt coast to coast
                  You've been immortalized by Indy whose blogs were funny and savvy
                  I just pray she's forgotten about wanting that big, gawky cavy!

                  So, dear Emma, on to greener pastures you go
                  You were truly the bestest guinea pig I never did know


Emma is buried under a tree in the backyard (and well, there were a lot of roots under that tree which made it hard to dig, so she may be more like planted than buried) and Juliana made a lovely marker for it.

I've got a bunch of houseguests coming tonight for the weekend, so I've been busy getting ready for that.  In the meantime, here are a few picture.  This was taken the morning of the surgery.  I commented on Juliana's cute outfit and she informed me that she had "dressed like Emma".





She was an excellent piggy.  We all miss her little tilty head.  I miss the way she would nuzzle into my hair and lick my chin.  I think by middle of next week we''ll start looking for a new companion for Spots.  She's seemed rather subdued, and I think a friend would help.



Edited to add: Sorry for the tiny pictures.  My pictures were showing up as red blocks (not even just the dreaded red X) and then when I went to try and add them again, they were red blocks on Snapfish!  They look fine as thumbnails, but when I try to see the larger view, I get a big red block.  So all I could post were the thumbnails.  Any ideas?

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Well, Hell

RIP Emma 10:35 PM

Emma

We brought Emma home around 6:30 this evening.  She's still pretty out of it.  Her procedure ended up being a bit more complicated and invasive than they thought and they also found an abscess in her right ear which accounts for the lingering head tilt.  She's on three meds right now and has to be syringe fed a special mixture. Her belly is all shaved and the poor thing looks like she's been gutted.  The vet said that with a regular spaying, she would've perked up by now but because she had so much done to her plus the underlying abscess, she's going to take longer to bounce back.  Right now she's a mess--can't stand or walk, won't eat--and I'm doing my best to stay optimistic. 

Oh, and all the extra things they had to do ended up doubling the cost.  I may need to get a job just to pay off the vet bill.    I'll post more when there's something to report.

Ready For Summer

It's 6:15 AM.  I got up at 5:30 and fed Spots and Emma their breakfast.  Emma and I had a nice long snuggle and now she's isolated in the "sick bay" which is our spare, small cage.   Ritu is going to drop her off at the vet on his way to work.  You'll be comforted to know that she seems calm and resolute.  I've seen no indication that she is struggling with the loss of her womanhood.

Now I'm sitting here with my coffee and laptop.  I considered getting back in bed, but today is the last day of school and I thought I'd enjoy some early morning quiet time.  I'm actually thrilled about school ending.  I'm so ready to be done with schedules and time commitments and packing those damn lunches.  (Here's a great post from Deana that sums up exactly how I feel about summer break.) 

Thus far, June has been cold and cloudy, so it's hard to get entirely into the summer mindset.  Allegedly, the weather is going to break today, but I'll believe it when I see it.  One of my friends is convinced the weather people are involved in a vast conspiracy to keep us all from cracking.  He says that every night he watches the news and they tell him that tomorrow will be cloudy, but the next day it will be sunny.  He makes it through the cloudy day and again checks the weather.  Again he is told tomorrow will be cloudy, but the NEXT day the sun will come out.  That elusive sunny day never arrives, but it's always right there keeping us hopeful.  (It's June 12th and I believe we've had exactly one sunny day this month.  And not only that, it's been cold.  Like, drag out your warm jacket cold.  Like, yesterday one of my friends had gloves on cold.)

I have lots of grandiose plans for the summer.  I got  energized the other day and decided to devote the summer to painting a bunch of rooms in my house.  (Hey!  It could happen!)  I want to find new places to go on nature walks.  I want to go berry picking.  I want to spend some time each day reading aloud to the kids.  Mostly I want to spend long lazy days sitting out in the greenspace with my friends while the kids run and play.

If you have fun ideas for summer activities, leave me a comment and let me know.  I saw a cool one that involved giving each kid a skein of yard and letting them wrap it all around a stand of trees until they've created a big spider web fort. 

For Everything Else, There's MasterCard

Well.

You know and I know that only one thing could bring me back to blogging:




It's time for another round of Adventures in Guinea Pig Medicine!

About a week and a half ago, I picked up Emma from the cage and noticed a large lump on her underside, close to where her right rear leg attaches to her body.  Wanna see?

(And God love Snapfish.  You know how they want you to buy their products by superimposing your photos on calendars etc?  Snapfish just suggested a lovely mug emblazoned with Emma's lump.)

She seemed perfectly happy and was eating and acting just fine.  Nonetheless, I took her to the veterinary practice and had an appointment with the same vet who saw her when she had her last head tilt episode.  This vet is a wee tiny little Asian woman and I love her completely.  She is so knowledgeable and sweet and it doesn't hurt that she refers to Emma as "Gorgeous".  She asked me some questions and pointed out a symptom I had overlooked, namely a thinning of her fur on her rear leg. 



After palpating her sides and abdomen she had her diagnosis.

Adorable Tiny Vet:  I'm pretty sure she has cystic ovaries.
Me: Well, really, who doesn't?

Apparently cystic ovaries are a very common finding in guinea pigs.  (I'll admit to never once even considering that my guinea pig HAD ovaries.)  Cystic ovaries result in an increase in estrogen production which causes a proliferation of mammary tissue.  That accounts for the lump.  Who wants to guess how they solve this situation?  I'll give you a minute to think about it.

Did you guess a tiny little guinea pig hysterectomy? 

I asked the following questions:  Isn't she a bit old (we think she's around 4 years old and a guinea pig's life expectancy is 5-7 years) to deal with the surgery?  and also: What happens if we just don't do anything?  The vet told me that she has spayed guinea pigs as old as 5 1/2.  As for leaving things be, over time the extra estrogen will begin to form tumors.  She also said something about Emma's uterus eventually filling up with <gag>  pus <barf>.

She wanted to do a needle biopsy on the lump to rule out any sort of abscess.  She also offered to trim Emma's nails for me.  She took her to the back to do these things and I sat there anxiously waiting for my baby to be returned to my care.  I cringed when I heard the high pitched squeal that guinea pigs make when they are in pain.  Finally they returned and the vet told me there was no sign of an abscess and she felt confident in her diagnosis.  Then she told me Emma was perfectly fine with the needle biopsy; it was the nail trimming she had objected to.

The vet printed me up an estimate of the cost of the surgery and told me to think about what I wanted to do and then call her back.  The proposed cost of the procedure plus bloodwork plus pain meds came to $235.  I collected myestimate and my guinea pig and went to pay the $99 fee I had incurred that day ($48 for the office visit, $11 for aspirating the mass, $25 for cytology, and $15 to trim her nails).

Soooooooo, on Thursday morning I'll be dropping Emma off between 8 and 9 AM to get spayed.  They are going to run bloodwork before the procedure to make sure she is healthy enough to withstand the anesthesia and if all goes as planned, we'll be able to pick her up after 4:00 PM the same day.  When I scheduled the surgery, the tech informed me that Emma needs to be fasting after 6:00 AM.  Yes, my guinea pig requires that I wake up at 5:30 to feed her breakfast, then place her in solitary confinement until it's time to take her to the vet. 

But how could I resist this gorgeous pig? 

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