NoodleDog

You may recall that I gave Rob a bit of a hard time about his spate of injuries in late November/early December, and now I have joined him in the ranks of the stitched. I whacked my head, right above my left eye, against the car door last night. I figured I had knicked it pretty good, but when I got home and looked at it, it seemed like a pretty deep gash after all. I had to go and find Rob and get him to drive me around looking for someone to stitch it up, after he kai-boshed my idea to super-glue the cut shut.

(I would have loved to super-glue the thing. I see nothing wrong with that – super-glue would be a great idea, and wouldn’t leave much of a scar. My next investment will be a little kit that contains sutures and superglue. And possibly an autoclave for my surgical instruments.)

So we called all the walk-in clinics near by, hoping there wouldn’t be much of a wait, but they were backed up for hours past their closing times. We drove to one clinic, where they recommended another clinic about 20-30 minutes away. I called my friend Bec, whose father is an ER surgeon, and she said just to head over to the hospital to get it sewn up properly, which we did.

The Rockyview hasn’t changed much… except there’s a little construction out front that eliminated the parking ticket dispenser, so our parking was free last night. They put up a Christmas tree in the Amtrak area, which is a nice touch – it wasn’t there the last time Rob and I were in. The process was, thankfully, predictable and familiar, and we were in and out within an hour and a half, again. Bec’s father had actually called ahead and told the Amtrack guy, Leo, that I was coming in. It was reasonable, I guess, and he froze the cut area before he sewed it up. That was the worst part, I guess – the freezing – because he stabbed the traumatized area repeatedly with a sharp, pointy needle. Once the freezing took, though, I didn’t feel a thing. Until the tetanus shot…

So far, though, our experiences with the emergency health system have been flawless. Really, I have no complaints whatsoever. I can see more complicated emergent health issues being a problem because man, was that waiting room packed last night. I guess if you go in to the emergency room with anything more complicated than, say, a cut over your eye, or on your arm, or possibly something foreign sticking out of your body, they have to think about it before they turn you loose. Don’t want to send someone with appendicitis back out into the rain, as it were, so they have to check a few different things, and in order to do that, you’d probably need a cursory exam at least, which means a bed.

I think part of the problem with the emergency room is that people use it for non-life-threatening stuff. Like random stomach pain. Or shortness of breath. Or dizziness. Sure, sometimes those things worsen, but for the most part, minor discomforts and stuff like that you can better pursue with your own doctor, and then if you do need to get seen by a specialist or admitted to the hospital, you’ll be in the right department with a bed already booked for you. I used to have wicked stomach pains, most likely caused by the Crohn’s disease (undiagnosed at the time, of course) and went to the hospital a couple of times at night when they were very bad, and nothing ever happened. Looking back on that, I see my mistake: I should have booked an appointment with my regular doctor, told him I needed to see an actual gastroenterologist and handled it through that avenue. And I’ve taken people to the hospital before with shortness of breath. They don’t do anything for that, either. They just tell you to lie back and relax, and by the time you get to a bed, you’re so tired that you can’t help but relax, and the shortness of breath generally goes away. And usually, I’d guess that shortness of breath is caused by some sort of reaction to whatever you’re breathing (dust, mold, mild toxins in the air), so you could probably just go to another location and try to relax with the same results. Same with dizziness.

Of course, if any of those things get worse, you could then go in to the ER… For me, though, I doubt I will be going to any ER unless I am: a) spitting up blood; b) completely unable to breathe at all; c) bleeding profusely from any large cut or wound requiring stitches; d) obviously suffering a broken bone, e) vomiting incessantly; or f) unconscious. For all other concerns, I intend to make my own GP work at finding out the problem, or have him send me to a specialist who can actually admit me without waiting eight or more hours. Seriously, there were people there waiting longer than eight hours. At the two hour mark, I would just go home. Why wait in the emergency room when you can relax at home? I might go and camp out at my doctor’s office, if it was really bad, and see whoever is in there on an emergency basis and get admitted to the hospital that way, but waiting in an uncomfortable waiting room is not for me. I just don’t have the patience for it, even if I am in pain.

This untimely accident occurred just after Obedience Classes. Beau did fairly well, but he barked his little head off because he couldn’t go and play with the other dogs. Beau still gets snippy with larger, strange dogs, so I don’t usually let him play with dogs he doesn’t already know (or can’t be introduced to slowly). So our homework for this week is to continue with the heeling, and teach him the word “no”. He has very little concept of the word “no”. I mean, I’m sure he knows I’m saying SOMEthing, but doesn’t really know what it is. Sometimes, I’ll say it loud enough to distract him from whatever he’s doing, but I’m reasonably sure that’s just coincidental, and he’s not stopping the bad behaviour because he knows it’s bad or because I told him “no”, he just gets distracted. Heh.

My mother brought her rescue dog, Penny, and Penny did very well in class. She listened well, and since she had a head start, she heeled pretty well. She was nervous, though, and my mother figures that she might have been worried about being abandoned again, because the setting was so strange to her. Poor Penny. She’ll get used to it, but she stressed herself out too much about the class last night.

Bullet’s adoptive grandmother came and brought him to class, too. Brian, Bullet’s new dad, is going to bring him to the rest of the classes, but had to work last night. Bullet did alright, and she got him a proper collar and he will learn more quickly, I think, with that. He’s a great little guy, that Bullet.

After class, I went and bought lottery tickets. This is my secret, and the cause of my accident. We parked at the teeny little convenience store on the way home, I got out, bought the lottery tickets, and when I went to get back in the car, whacked my head. I hope this translates into some sort of luck for the tickets!!

I hear that Angie and her puppies are back from Medicine Hat where they were temporarily staying (so she could have her puppies with an experienced dog person). Angie is one of the rescue dogs, a beagle, but she looks like she has maybe a little basset in her. She had Catahoula mix puppies in November, and they’re back in town to be fostered, so they can be more easily adopted. They sure are cute from the pictures I saw, and I’m going to do some transporting this afternoon to shuttle them to their new foster home. I’m sure the puppies will go quickly – everyone loves puppies. I can’t believe all the rescue dogs have not been adopted yet – it’s been three months.

That’s the news for now… I’m mostly hoping to get some sleep this weekend, try to relax with not too much going on. Our household is sort of settling down and getting into a routine. Beau is behaving fairly well, the cats are adjusted to him, the feral cat isn’t causing anyone any trouble, and we should be alright for a little lull in the social activities. I clearly need the sleep – if I’m injuring myself like this, I need to catch up so I can be more alert and reactive. Here's hoping, anyway...