Waking Up

 

Good grief!!!!

No, not good, frankly.  It's bad, very, very bad!

Tessa came out of her room tonight sobbing, something about blood.  I was tending a very unhappy baby, so Guy headed down the hall to investigate.  It was quiet a moment and then Tessa began wailing hysterically.  Guy came out with a report that the hamster was covered in blood.  I couldn't imagine what could cause a hamster, alone in it's cage, to bleed.  I passed the baby to a taller-than-me kid, and headed down the hall to face the unknown.

As I lifted the poor creature out of it's cage, I was shocked to see it's entire right side slick with bright red blood.  He, "Nibbles", had had a tiny scab on his shoulder about a week or two ago, but now in its place was a shocking hole nearly half and inch long and a quarter inch wide.  It went clean through the skin, but the skin was loose over his muscles like a window through the hide.  When I tried to clean him up, I became aware of something that suddenly made a giant hole in his skin the least of our worries. 

Nibbles is a long hair hamster, bigger than any I have ever seen before, and rather disheveled looking.  He is a pleasant little guy, not anxious to get out of your hands when you hold him, which I seldom ever have time to do.  Until tonight.  As I cleaned his injury, I realized that the large puff of black and white fur standing off his shoulder wasn't fur at all, but some massive growth, easily the size of a ping pong ball.  I, of course, don't know if it is an infection or a tumor.  Not that it matters; he won't last long.  Whatever it is, it is amazing the little fellow is alive.

You have to understand something here.  This hamster can't die.  I know he will, but he just CAN'T.  It is so wrong and sad.  Tessa lost her first hamster in early December, and has grieved about it bitterly.  She began having relapses of mourning when I was first hospitalized, and it got so bad that we had to take a framed picture of her hamster away from her because she cried when ever she saw it.  We didn't realize at first how her worry and sorrow paralleled all of my hospitalizations, until after the baby was born.  Tessa had become so anxious that she would not leave with anyone who came to take the kids for fun outings, and slept every night on our bedroom floor for the first two weeks after we came home with the baby.  She had heard a lot of conversations about the risks of the baby and I dying, and her way of dealing with it was through her hamster grief.

Tonight I cleaned up Nibbles the best I could, and had Ethan hold him as I held the wound closed and super-glued it shut.  In the process a drop of glue rolled down Nibbles' body and glued the towel to his side.  I couldn't risk pulling at it and re-opening the wound, so I cut the spot of towel that was adhered to his fur away and there it remains, glued to his side.

Poor little Tessa told me she wished she was having a bad dream that she could wake up from.  Haven't we all been there?  I ache for her and what she faces in the next few days, and knowing her, the next few weeks and months.

 

I held her as she slipped into sleep,
and, ironically, tomorrow she will wake up,
but not the way she wants to.. 

Bless her little heart when she does.