Winter and the Future Moon
Tuesday gratefuls: the folks at OnPoint Urgent care, especially Leah and Trevor. Jon, for coming a long ways. Adrenaline. Murdoch and Kepler, that they didn’t kill each other. The replacement of Kate’s feeding tube. That 2019, not a great year for us, will soon be in the rearview.
Life odder than fiction. Here’s a story. A while ago a dog came to visit for a year. His name is Murdoch. He’s young, bouncy, a genuine joy. On Sunday he bounced his way down the stairs and got tangled up in Kate’s feeding tube while she was walking on the lower level stairs.
Pop. The feeding tube came out. Not out of the feeding bag, which hung suspended from her shoulder, but from her body. Geez. It’s the second time a feeding tube has come out, so it wasn’t quite the shock it might have been, yet it’s still her primary source of nourishment.
Call the oncall doc. Go visit your primary care doc on Monday. We did. They found a place to have a new feeding tube put in, but I only heard Adventist hospital and took us to the one closest to the doctor’s office. Wrong one.
Found the right one about a half hour late, but the doc had been working on someone else anyhow. Kate went in and came back out in twenty, thirty minutes, new tube in place, able to take nourishment again. Not a pleasant process, but not a huge deal either.
By the time we got home we’d been out of the house since 10 am and the clock had ticked over 6 hours plus. It was close to 4:30 pm. We were tired. It was a long day already.
I asked Kate to let Gertie and Rigel out while I put the Rav4 in the garage and let out Murdoch who had spent the time in the loft. He was bouncy and happy and at the door when I got up here, so I let him out. Meanwhile, unknown to me, Kepler had squirted out the door with Rigel and Gertie. Uh oh.
When I came out of the loft door after putting Radical Judaism and my notebook on the table next to the computer, I heard squeals. There, in the snow, in 20 degree weather, a brown, black, brown, black furry action movie was underway. Kep and Murdoch, finally in the same space, had done what we feared, gone for each other.
I ran down the stairs, deposited my book, Automatic Eve, and my phone on the cement landing at the bottom, and rushed over to the two fighting dogs. Never intervene in a dogfight. Well, sure. Unless the dogs look like they’re going to kill each other. And, these were two Akitas, bred to guard. When they bite, they’re serious about it.
Besides, who would want to call their son in Singapore and say, sorry about Murdoch? Not this guy, for sure. So, I intervened. It was red in tooth and claw. Kepler and Murdoch had already wounded each other and were snarling, way past growling, as they grappled. Collars came off in my hand. No handle.
I sat on their heads. Kepler had Murdoch’s lower jaw in his mouth. My scarf was all I had. Taking it off I tied it around their jaws, limiting their movement. Kate couldn’t help. Too far out in the yard for her oxygen. Besides, the feeding tube.
It went on about 10 minutes. Not sure I helped at all because I finally had to give up and stand up. They sort of quit on their own.
In the melee however I sustained a bite. The worst bite the p.a. who sewed me up said she had ever seen. Oh, good. It was a triangular gash, opened to the fatty tissue underneath and with a fortunately intact, but visible blood vessel right in the middle.
Jon came to the emergency room and helped me. I drove myself there and back. Got home about 9:30 pm, ten or eleven stitches later. Leah, the p.a., sewed my inside skin together first, then closed the gash. Lidocaine kept it from being impossible for me.
Not sure about doggy injuries though I know Kep’s rear left leg is hurt and Murdoch has a slash on his cheek. I left for Urgent Care after we got the dogs situated and when I got back everybody was asleep.
Come to me, 2020. 2019 be gone.
