"they're annoying as hell, in fact"

this is my 200th post.
ring a ding ding.
i spent my 3-day workweek in surgery. it got a bit tiresome. soft-tissue/exploratory surgeries are a blast; orthopedic/moribund procedures, on the other hand, not so much. i do not want to be monitoring a dying animal, or stultifyingly bored and sweating and unable to get a drink of liquid or pee, stuck with the doctor who doesn't talk and listening to his ipod of schlock (though he has stepped it up somewhat, and i realize how much i like spoon. he also plays a lot of depeche mode and radiohead, which i appreciate... but then there's utter shit like blue october... "lesbian coffeehouse music" one of my coworkers opined.)
sunday: the dog that ate pantyhose. the cat with the botched exploratory from vets-for-less (note to all animal owners: never have surgery done at a discount vet clinic unless it's a spay or neuter.). its incision site was dehisced and necrotic and the cat ("scooter") was going septic. it was euthanized the next day, the infection leading to respiratory failure. i have to turn my mind off to the horrors of such situations lest i run from this profession shrieking. this can be a very depressing line of work. and both of these surgeries, i might add, reeked. have you ever smelled something that has been lodged in an animal's intestines for weeks, saturated with gastric juice and decomposition? it smells like an acidic, shit-covered corpse. and the stench is thick enough to taste. a paper surgical mask does not augment the aroma whatsoever. usually someone comes into surgery and whisks the offending object away as soon as it is removed from the animal.
monday: ventral slot T2-T3 with the neurosurgeon. i love working with him. he is fast, clean, gay and gossipy. he bitched about the staff as he blithely hacked out diseased disk material from a six-pound shih tzu. the spinal cord appears blue beneath the vertebrae. back surgery is almost appalingly primitive. he uses a power drill to go through the bone and then chisels the tissue out, scraping it on the surgical drape like a dentist would with plaque. the dog began to screech as it was recovering from anesthesia, which is typical; but it proceeded to bark, nay, yell for the next 28 hrs until it went home. it ended up on too many drugs to count, heavy-lidded, a blanket over its cage door, in the cat ward with the door closed. it was all seperation-anxiety... they usually bounce around quite unsettlingly after cervical disc surgery, now that the pain-causing disc is gone and they suddenly feel better. are humans as resilient?
yesterday: i got shystered into both surgeries, first by s, who didn't feel like doing it (removal of 30 cents, two dimes and two nickels, from the stomach of a pekinese named pansy) (who also had acute anemia, and everyone was sure it was secondary to zinc toxicity from pennies. "no pennies" i called from surgery after they were removed, the coins a sickly sepia from the acid. anemia without an obvious cause is one of the most frustrating things in veterinary medicine. according to ask.com and wikipedia, nickels and dimes are relatively nontoxic, just annoying to digest. and before surgery they induced emesis in vain, and endoscoped in vain, and the bill was approaching $3000 by last night. "they should put the 30 cents towards their bill" someone said helpfully.) second surgery: radius-ulna fracture on a 4# pomeranian (maggie), complete with a tiny plate and tiny screws. i was asked to wipe the brows of the assistant and doctor. "is that weird?" r asked, apparently unaware that the doctor requests that regularly. "no, not at all" i said (hot myself but nonsterile, leaning against the anesthesia machine). "you would do the same for me."
i was mostly kidding, but he agreed anyway.
*
i left work early, for it was slower than shit and i no longer had a purpose as the specialist tech. it was still over 70 on the drive home. i walked downtown around 11pm. my hands were tingling and i was trying to calm my paranoia- no, this isn't the start of something, it's all in your head- and the eerie thing is, i can almost always talk myself out of the physical symptoms just by forcing myself to relax. "aren't you going to say hi?" a man called after me as i passed, oblivious. "hi!" i called back, turning around and waving. "why are you walking away? walking out of my life..." i was still smiling half a block later. is that the reality check i wasn't even aware i needed?
i missed both buses towards home and ended up walking around capitol hill at 1 am. the campus of seattle university is very nice, quiet, dark, the sidewalk lined with blue-lit emergency call boxes. it is a fucking jesuit school, for chrissake. i am reminded of the outcry over the call boxes in "who stole feminism?", one of the best books ever, that berates the earnest stranger-danger brouhaha for ignoring/overshadowing the fact that ~85% of rapes are performed by someone the victim knows, and usually knows well. and what would happen if i needed to use a call box at 1 am on a weeknight, anyhow? would the police park three blocks away and scamper down the pedestrian lane in the dark? or would i just drag my sorry ass those same three blocks to the massive swedish hospital?
there is a luxury to think such things with such belligerent detachment. there is ignorant privilege in having not been a victim.
in that respect.
yet.
in a cartoon of what single women think about: "is it possible to worry too much?" this is one of the funniest things i have seen lately. i will be driving along, remember it, and snicker.