ER

I haven't yet told my mother this story, so I'm kinda counting on the fact that she doesn't read my blog on a regular basis. She has a tendency to worry about things, so I decided not to pass this little tidbit of news her way...we'll see how long that lasts.

My sister came to town this past week to take care of Bryony and me since I was scheduled to have my wisdom teeth removed. I hadn't seen her since October, so I was pretty stoked. Just one thing...she has a pretty severe allergy to cats, so Greg and Holiday had to make their grand exits before she arrived. Luckily a good friend offered to take them in for the week, but as I got out the travel kennels to start the journey to her house, Holiday had a freak out. She seemed to know what the kennels were about before I even finished putting them together. She managed to hide under my bed, then run out just before I could reach her. She flew down to the basement, and the phrase "cat-and-mouse chase" never held more meaning. She out-manuevered me at every turn, jumping through the air and dodging my attempts to grab her. I finally cornered her (cornered being the operative word) on the staircase, and as she leapt off I caught her in mid-air. Bad idea. My sweet little kitten became savage wild panther, roaring and hissing as she sunk her claws and then her teeth into my skin. I felt pain, then looked down to see that long scratches along my arms and hands were seeping blood. Shocked and annoyed, I yelled, "Holiday! then let her go. She ran and hid in the basement as I ran upstairs, light-headed from the searing pain, to clean off my wounds. What to do? Greg House was already packed away in his kennel and Bryony was crying from her seat in the car, waiting for me to finally come out to her. I had to make the 45 minute drive to my friend's house, then double back to meet my sister at the airport. There was no choice; I had to leave Holiday, who I could no longer find, at the house.

Within the next two hours, my right hand, which had two bite marks, began to swell. I had soaked all of the wounds in soapy water and poured hydrogen peroxide over them, hoping any bacteria would be washed away. However, the bites were puncture wounds, deep inside the tissue and any bacteria was inaccessible to the cleaning agents. I knew I was screwed, but there were things to do! I managed to drop Greg off, then turn around and arrive at the airport--albeit late--to pick up my sister. She was shocked by the swelling of my hand and none too pleased by the idea of terror kitty still being in the house. When we arrived home, I found Holiday perched on the living room sofa looking contrite, and I managed to coax her to the basement, far away from my dubious sister. The day went on well, but my hand increased in swelling and several friends advised me to take a cat bite seriously and pay a visit to the emergency room.

So, after dinner, I left my sis with Bryony's bedtime routine and I drove myself to the hospital, which is luckily just down the street. My right hand couldn't even flex enough to disengage the emergency brake or the gear selector. I knew then that going to see a doctor was the right move.
Once signed in by the intake nurse, I sat down in the waiting room amongst several sickly people under blankets. I wondered briefly what diseases I was breathing in just by sitting there. Then, I noticed the young couple seated a few yards away who sere letting their baby crawl all over the waiting room floor. I'm no germaphobe, but the idea of a baby being allowed to crawl on the same floors that countless people have bled, yakked and probably even urinated on disgusted me. When the baby's father was called by the nurse for some preliminary checks, his wife yelled out crassly, "Bring him back soon, 'cause I can't handle this baby by myself!" I knew then what my next blog post was going to be about.
The woman walked behind the baby as it crawled its way around the waiting room, eventually finding its way to a young couple around the corner. The girl sat with her large beach bag on the floor beneath her, and the baby kept crawling, crawling, crawling toward it. The mother laughed and said to the girl, "You'd better move your bag, 'cause he's gonna go through it! He always does! He LIKES bags!" The girl seemed confused, but picked her bag up just before baby hands started to rifle through it. Then the baby lifted himself into a standing position with the help of the surrounding seats and started to make his way toward the girl, his little grimy-ER-waiting-room-floor-infested hands touching her bare legs. I was watching all of this in awe, completely and utterly shocked that the mother didn't pick her child up and move him. The girl and her boyfriend were much more charitable than I would have been and just smiled as the mother laughed and then finally picked the baby up, only to put him back on the floor to crawl in the other direction. At that point, I decided to stop watching that bad movie, and instead read about holiday cookie platters in a December issue of Good Housekeeping.

The nurse called me back into a room fairly quickly to take my vitals and get information about my condition. My vitals checked out fine, and then I had to answer a series of questions.
Yes, it was my cat.
Yes, she's vaccinated.
I was trying to put her in a kennel and she freaked out.
Two bites wounds, scratches here, here and here...oh, and here and here, too.
Yes, I'll wear gloves next time, thanks for the suggestion.

I ended up having to repeat those answers three more times, for the physician's assistant, the doctor and the X-ray technician. I guess they wanted to make sure my story didn't change over time, suggesting that I was perhaps the victim of an abusive cat. Who knows? But, I stuck to my story, yammering it out machine-gun style as they jotted notes down on a clipboard. Between personnel visits, I read about Kate Middleton's sexy-and-showy sister Pippa in People magazine, then flipped through Ladies' Home Journal to digest the details of Nora Ephron's very ugly divorce from her second husband, and how Sela Ward has managed to balance her southern Protestant background with a marriage to a Jewish man. Hey, it passed the time.

The doctor came in, really hippy with bug-eye glasses and wild hair. She kinda looked like Professor Trawlawney in the Harry Potter books. She immediately made me feel at ease. So she said, "I hear you're a vet with a cat bite!" Since I'm not a vet in either sense of the word, I told her that no, I was a wildlife biologist who had been bitten by my own cat. She shook her head distractedly, apologized, and then scheduled me for an X-ray in case one of Holiday's teeth had broken off inside my skin. Yuck. She left and I went back to my magazine until the physician's assistant came back to check on me. Turns out, there WAS a veteriarian, right across the hall from my room, who had been bitten on the hand by a cat. I asked the P.A. if her hand looked anything like mine. He shook his head slowly and murmurred, "Hers is worse." I felt bad for her, but I totally wanted to see what worse looked like.

After the X-ray, I sat in my little examination room, flipping through my now-beloved copy of LHJ, waiting to hear the results (any cat teeth floating in my hand?) and to be told when I could go home. The nurse came back after awhile and told me I could leave, but he handed me prescriptions for tylenol with codeine and antibiotic first. I asked him if I'd still be able to nurse Bryony with those drugs in my system, and after checking with the P.A., he returned to tell me that I could not...for ten whole days. "You're going to have to pump and dump, unfortunately," he said sympathetically. "She'll have to go on formula for this amount of time." I shook my head quickly and explained that my daughter was too old to have to be on formula. "How old is she?" he asked. When I told him she was almost two, he came back with, "Dang, girl! You're still nursing that baby??" I felt my hackles go up instinctively; was a medical professional about to give me a hard time about extended breastfeeding?
I told him confidently, "Of course I'm still nursing her."
He marvelled, "Most women don't even make it to the six month mark, and you've been doing it for almost two years???"
I sat up a little straighter, and tilted my head to the side. "I am, by no means, most women," I said a little bit arrogantly, but mostly proudly.
He smiled and said, "Well, it's the best thing you could do for her, but I guess I don't have to tell you that!"

Way to end the evening on a positive note.

I drove home to find my sister typing away on her laptop while Bryony lay sleeping in her room a few feet away. All had gone well at home, thankfully. And while I didn't run into Dr. Ross or McDreamy, all had gone as well as one could hope at the ER.