Well, it took me quite a while to recover from the injured thumb.  It has recovered, but there was quite a bit of drama involved, as well as quite a bit of pain.  But all is well that ends well, as the bard said.  The really weird thing is that all the skin off my thumb is peeling because it was so stretched when it was swollen. 

About the time I thought my thumb was recovered enough to type, The summer olympics began.  I have been a religious olympics watcher from childhood.  So I have been spending my evenings glued to the tube rather than blogging.  Lots of good stuff, but it was keeping me up WAY too late.  

I do have to admit, I am also addicted to Project Runway.  Which is weird, because I have absolutely no interest in fashion and clothes are something you wear to not be arrested (or get a sunburn or frostbite).  They are showing the drag queen episode again today.  It is so good.  Lots of laughs.

MamaSan's kittens are doing very well.  They are growing like crazy.  She is a great mom.  In fact, she is a foster mom too.  Shelter to Home brought us a day old orphan kitten the day after the kittens were born.  So we rubbed a couple of MamaSan's kittens on the orphan and put her in the box.  I don't think we fooled MamaSan, but she took the kitten right on and she is flourishing.  Shelly from STH named her Lil Shera, I think to encourage me to take her.  She is the explorer of the bunch.  Even though she is the smallest, she was the first out of the box.  She likes to be held too.  Michael named the two black kittens Zam and Vader after Star Wars characters, but we named the others Lil Vera, Lil Debby, and Lil Steve to go with Lil Shera.

There have been quite a few interesting cases recently, but I hardly know how to start writing about them.  There have been many heartbreaks too.  Unfortunately, those two things go together far too often.  I hate to open the wounds to tell the stories.  We have seen a couple of litters of kittens with Calicivirus.  One of the litters presented with very odd signs.  Usually Calici presents with upper respiratory signs and tongue ulcers, but these kittens had skin lesions first.  Skin lesions are known to happen, but usually they present later.  Luckily, most of the kittens have survived.  We did lose one, but the others have responded to treatment with interferon, carafate, and TLC.

I guess I will wrap this up.  I am tired and am having trouble focusing.

Night.

Suffering from mental exhaustion and heat.  Too tired to post. .Too hot to sleep But feel guilty about no news.  Busy at clinic, but AC out.  Aaargh.

Boy I did not think it had been that long since I had posted to this blog. It has been a bit of a busy week for me. Monday was very busy with lots of calls since it was our first day back after vacation. The spay that we had scheduled for a breeder wound up being more interesting than I had anticipated.  Both sides of her uterus were in weird positions.  The right horn was in the same serosal loop as the colon.  That being the case, I could not remove the uterus without damaging the colon, so I had to leave it and only remove the ovary.  The left horn was not in its own supensory ligament, but was in the retroperitoneal space, but the ovary seemed to be in the omentum.  Very weird.

Tuesday we were moderately busy in the morning and I spent the afternoon and evening at Allen. Not much news there. Dr. Schneider is on vacation, so they needed me to cover on a Tuesday.  Thursday was to have been my last day, but Dr. Wrob asked me to cover her Tuesday afternoon and evening on the 29th.  I still have not figured out exactly what I will be doing with some of my patients.  Nothing, I guess.  Twelve hour work days kind of get me down.

Today was quite busy as well. I started out the day seeing four very cute Egyptian Mau kittens.  Then I started to do the two neuters and a spay that a ragdoll breeder had brought in.  One of the boys had a very slow heart rate.  That is very rare in cats (and according to the cardiologist that I spoke with, even rarer in young cats).  I needed some atropine, a medication to increase heart rate, which is commonly used for a preanesthetic medication in dogs, but never in cats, so I don't have any.  I will be picking up some tomorrow at Allen.  I hope the kitten responds to the atropine, because if it does not, that would imply that the cat has an electrical problem in his heart that would only be treatable with a pacemaker.  I don't know if they have pacemakers for cats.  I hope things are ok, because I have had to give this breeder a lot of bad news recently.  Unfortunately, she is on a bad run.  I hope her luck changes soon.

One of our rescue groups brought in thirteen kittens today for vaccination and deworming.  Boy was that a lot of tedious work and paperwork.  One of the kittens was to sick to vaccinate though.  I think it will be ok though, as we gave her fluids and azithromycin.  The rescue lady had this guy bring in a litter of kittens for her to take at the same time.  Four kittens and their mom join the bunch.  A cat comes in for observation.  Then there is Julie, our clinic cat.  And then the next appointment, who is urinating outside the box.  So at one point there were twenty-one cats in the clinic.  I was going a bit nuts.  The kittens the guy brought in (he told us they were ten weeks, Ann that they were eight weeks and both of us they were friendly) are closer to fourteen to sixteen weeks and more than a little feralish.  No that is not a word, but I like it.  Momma-san is supposed to stay with us to be spayed, but she looks like she is ready to pop with another litter.  We will radiograph her Friday to see if she is pregnant.  If she looks like she is close, I think we will let her have the babies and see if we can home them.

The good news is that being this busy means that I can pay a few bills.  Pfizer will be happy.  I hope that the trend continues.

Boy, I leave with a cliff hanger and what happens? Too many computer geeks at the hotel in San Antonio overloaded their servers and no more internet at the hotel.

What did Shera do on Tuesday? Not a darn thing. I got up in the morning and was struck with the worst attack of vertigo that I have ever had. Complete with falling, rolling, nystagmus, and motion sickness. I could not get out of bed for almost seven hours. Not the best day of vacation that I have ever had. So I did not make it to SeaWorld or the Zoo.

Wednesday morning I went to La Villita, an artists' "colony" in a small quarter of Downtown were they have moved and rebuilt old houses. There was lots of interesting artwork. Some really beautiful cat artwork.  Speaking of cats, there is a feral colony living there and the artists have done a good job of keeping them fixed and healthy. One of the artists does paper cuts a la Henri Matisse and I just loved them, but could not afford anything but looks. The buildings were very cool and I took lots of pictures. Maybe I can get Steve to put them on the web on a Flickr thing or something.  

I also went to Hemisfair Park, the site of an old World's Fair. There were a lot of old buildings there too, but none had identification.  So I took lots of pictures again.  There was also a museum of Mexican Culture there, but I did not go in, but there were cool statues and a Mayan stele.

After lunch, I just hung out as it was hot and I still was not feeling the best. We met with the other teachers from Divine Child and we went to the airport. The flight to Nashville was uneventful, if a little late. By the time we were to leave Nashville, the weather in Detroit was so bad that we were not cleared to go. We did not leave Nashville until after ten (eleven our time) and then had to wait forty-five minutes on the tarmac to get a gate. It was after two before we left the airplane and three before we got home.

There was nothing much interesting going on at Allen today. There was a hit-by-car dog in, but fortunately was not severely injured. I managed to run behind by almost an hour for a good part of the day after dealing with a kitten with totally novice owners. I can never get new pet exams done in less than forty-five minutes, but they only give me thirty. On the positive side, we were not too busy in the later evening, so I caught up and we actually were able to leave early.

We have no plans yet for tomorrow.