St. Pat's Day: Knee and Cat Butt

Happy St. Patrick's Day and Happy Birthday to my niece Jeanne (mommymcgrady.blogspot.com) born on March 17.

Our family celebrated with the traditional Irish dinner last night instead of today; corned beef, cabbage, boiled potatoes, carrots and brown bread. Denny and Chris also had a Guinness but I abstained in consideration of my surgical date today. The meal was wonderful and thank goodness for leftovers.

All went well with my meniscus surgery today; I don't have much pain (yet) since the long acting local anesthetic in the knee has not yet worn off. Denny is tending to my every need; re-filling my water pitcher, bringing ice for the knee, coffee, lunch and snacks. Ahhhhh. We are using the telephone intercom system since he is downstairs studying for finals exams and can't hear when I yell for him. I think he's getting deaf.

The only crazy part of today (aside from getting up at 4:45 AM and receiving IV anxiolytics, narcotics, and anesthetics in my spine) was tending to the cat who is under the weather. Boo has been lethargic for 4 days and won't eat or drink much. Saturday I took him in to the vet who diagnosed "an infection" (site uncertain) and put him on liquid antibiotics twice a day. Today she called to give us the results of the blood/urine tests which confirmed her initial impression. She asked me to "check his temperature" (oy) and call back with the result. I knew we'd have to comply since if he had a fever, more IV fluids would be needed to avoid dehydration. Thankfully his fever is gone.

Picture this: Denny holding Boo steady on the bedroom chair, me with a large bandage on my right knee and still a bit high on drugs, greasing up the digital thermometer and sticking it up Boo's rear end (we'll throw that one in the trash once this temperature checking is over), and Boo twisting and turning in all directions while Emeril Lagasse gives a cooking lesson on the Food Network. I'm not sure that my orthopod's instructions to be "house bound for three days" included checking the rectal temperature of my cat but it's clearly NOT a one person job. Amazingly, "house bound" is not all that limited although he did say to keep my knee elevated above my heart and ice, ice, ice.

I'll try to be good. Promise.