Recovery

 

Did you know you can inadvertently bite your tongue so hard while doing something as unreckless as eating dinner that it still hurts and has a purple bruise nine days later?

Yeah, I didn’t either.

Actually I didn’t even know you could get a bruise on your tongue.

There will, however, be no sympathy from some quarters.

In January we discovered a small lump on Buck’s side, maybe pea-sized. Three months later it was more like peach-pit-sized.

Despite my avowal when we got Buck that there would be no veterinary care for this creature, when I looked in his soft black eyes…

I caved.

We missed him so much when he was gone that Caleb drew a picture of him and set it up in his favorite spot to sit during school.

$629 later, we brought him home from surgery. Wearing a “recovery shirt.”

He did not appreciate his recovery shirt.

It snapped just like a baby onesie, except it had a tail hole. A bunsie onesie, if you will.

Verbal and written instructions told us to keep his shirt on until he goes back to get his stitches removed in 14 days.

Two days later, an animal with no opposable thumbs succeeded in removing his own snapped-closed compression turtleneck. I fear what would ensue if he set his mind to, say, take over Europe.

Blissfully naked again

He spent the next day and a half taking out most of his own stitches with his teeth (ewwwwww).

Now he has a bald spot and a somewhat gaping wound, being no longer stitched together, but at least he doesn’t have to wear a shirt.

But he still doesn’t care to hear about the stabbing pain in my tongue.