Cone of Shame

Poor Lizzie is wearing the Cone of Shame today.

Today she will have her ACL surgery so last night we went to the vet and they put a Fentanyl patch on her leg to help with pain management and added the dreaded cone of shame to keep her from licking it.  (I don't remember where I first heard this shield called "cone of shame" but I have always used that term, 'cause it's just so descriptive).

Poor Lizzie is very confused, and very sad.

They told me that she would be able to eat with the collar on, and she could, but I had to find a more shallow bowl for her, because she couldn't get her face into the deeper bowl that she usually eats from.

She was not happy about it, though.

All evening we heard her banging into walls and trying to find a comfortable place to sleep.  Mostly she just lay out on the floor, though she did finally manage to, with difficulty, get into her bed and lie there, but not happily.

At night, when I lay down on the couch, she came up right next to me, as she often does before settling in for the night, but she just stayed there, as if hoping I'd take off this instrument of torture I was forcing her to wear.  In the morning she was lying flat out on the wooden floor, not curled up in the chair where she usually sleeps at night.

Lord knows what she is going to think of me tonight when she's had her surgery and is spending the night in a cage at the vet's office (I won't have a car this afternoon so I won't be able to get down to pick her up, even if she's ready to go home after her surgery).

They say that the cone can come off when the stitches come out in two weeks so we have a long row to hoe with this blasted cane.  I just hope that when it's all over, she will be able to put weight on her back leg again.

I visited my mother yesterday to bring her clean laundry to her.  She couldn't understand that wasn't going to stay for lunch, but I wore my "uniform" to reinforce the fact that I was on my way to work at the hospital.  

I'm going to try to have lunch with her today after I make a trip to Sacramento to see if Kaiser does, indeed, have the doctor's form about my eye ready for me (not really believing that they do!).  She told me yesterday how cute the photos of the two girls were (Brianna and Lacie) and asked who they were, then she asked if there were 2 photos of the same girl or if they were two different girls.

It was a quiet day at Sutter, though I am starting to wonder if anybody ever listens to me.  What was that old commercial about the bank or investment company..."when XXX talks, everybody listens"?  I'm starting to think when I talk nobody listens.  I've been thinking like this for a while, ever since I got into a group where we make plans by e-mail.  I will say "I'd like to do such-and-such but can't do such-and-such" and next will comed a message that says "Does anybody want to do such and such?" (asking about the thing I just said I was interested in doing).  This happens over and over again and I'm convinced nobody in the group ever reads what I write.

Yesterday an old man came looking for where the Neurology office was.  I wasn't sure and rummaged through a drawer looking for a list of the medical offices.  He wandered off looking for a nurse.  Then he came back and I told him where he could find the office, but he went and got a security guard and asked her. She repeated what I had just said.

Later in the afternoon a similar thing happened with another bewildered person.  I gave her the answer and she went to someone else to ask the same question.

However, the woman looking for her friend, who was in the ICU yesterday DID listen when I asked her if she was sure he had been at this hospital because nobody had any record of it.  She then realized he had been at the Woodland hospital.