We were driving through downtown killing time while Gizmo was having an unplanned appointment at the vet’s after being really off the last two days and I saw something that made me laugh, and so jumped out of the truck while at the stop light and Kirk drove around the block. It was just one of those odd and so seemingly random scenes. Why would someone put a fuzzy pink rocking horse on the outside windowsill….?
Thank Kirk for the title. I showed him the photo after processing and he said “Isn’t there a Beatles song with rocking horses in it?”
Yes…there is…Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds. And, given the neighbourhood….the presence of a fuzzy pink rocking horse and his pulling that song title out of the air, is ironic.
Why was Giz’ making an unplanned vet visit today?
Two days ago I noticed his head had an odd tilt and attributed it to just him looking at things with that sideways bird view, until I realized a couple of hours later that he was still like that. He was also grumpy Thursday…more than usual.
Then yesterday morning, even approaching his cage turned him into a raging attack bird….throwing himself at anything and attacking it, biting the fabric over his heating pad, flinging himself at the side of the cage, it was really disturbing. I couldn’t even attempt to get him out of the cage to give him medications until around 10am. I got one relatively shallow, but painful, bit to the side of my hand, and then and he would have delivered me the worst bite I’d have ever received, to my forearm, had he not accidentally latched on to my watch through my sweater. It was pure fury and I’ve never seen him that angry for that many hours. He was still aggressive in the late afternoon so I called to see if we could get him in Saturday. I thought he may have suffered a stroke in the past two days, and also that his aggression was alarming.
By evening he seemed fine and was more normal, happy to get out of the cage and sit on my shoulder (which took a bit of courage one my part to allow), but wasn’t keen on taking his medications or his handfeed mix. It niggled at me that one of the medications yesterday morning was a twice weekly non-steroidal anti-inflammatory and pain medication….maybe he was suffering both some pain, as well as some lingering confusion from a stroke.
The appointment slots were all full, but they said bring him in anyway and they’d admit him and get to him when they could; Dr. McDonald was solo today. So we left him knowing it could be hours, but at least he was in the best place.
A few hours later Dr. McDonald called and agreed with my thought that he’d probably had a stroke at some point overnight one night, or during the day when we were not home. She also asked if I thought he could see out of his right eye. I’d wondered the same thing and had been trying to ascertain if he was just ignoring me on that side, or if his vision was gone. She wasn’t sure either.
Eventually she said we could pick him up and we had a chat with her. She’s changed his medications a bit with respect to doses, and added some aspirin, presumably because of the stroke, I’m assuming as a blood thinner.
He had a scheduled appointment for next weekend, so back we go again, assuming we get through this week.
Since we’ve been back home I’ve watched his movements, his directionalities, and his decisions on choice of movement on the right side. I’ve decided that he “can” see from his right side, though the vision may be impaired a bit.
I’m starting to feel like the dam is leaking and we are just trying to plug the holes….eventually it will break. He is still upbeat most of the time, and we have not reached a point where the decision has become obvious yet, to us of to Dr. McDonald.
And so on we go.