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Sunday, April 20, 2008

'Cold-stone' hearts vs. 'Warm' hearts -- a very tough battle today...

I just wanted the loyal/faithful M 'n M readers to know that I did not forget about the elephant pix this weekend, but due to an all-day-and-most-of-the-night power outage yesterday, I was unable to upload any pix. Of course, my plan was to do so today, but I had one of my most difficult, and certainly the most traumatic, days in this country for me so far.

Remember this comment from my last post?


2) Penga managed to pull out some stitches Wed. night, causing some panic yesterday (Thurs.) morning, as I called the vet in a bit of a state, worried all her innards would drop to the floor. Luckily, my panic was unjustified, as she seems to be healing o.k. (despite my failed efforts to put a bandage on it, as well as a collar to try to restrain her from biting her wound). She's a pretty strong-willed, energetic little kitty, and luckily hasn't managed to remove more stitches, so we think she'll be o.k. I'm pretty certain, however, that the vet thinks I'm a bit crazy. That's o.k. He's not the first to think so, and certainly not likely to be the last.

Well, as it turns out, unfortunately, I was NOT crazy, NOR over-reacting. Penga pulled out more stitches on Saturday, and again my pleas to the vet that morning to take a look at her went ignored. He offered to re-suture her on Monday, saying I didn't need to worry about her. I definitely put way too much faith in him, as my fears about her wound opening up were realized this morning. Without going into too much detail, what I described above is exactly what happened. Upon the discovery, of course, I panicked, as did Deliwe. Luckily, Harold (our gardner) was around to help us.

Of course, I called the illustrious HACK of a vet by the name of Dr. Bakili, whom I'm hoping to report to some sort of veterinary standards board (if such a thing exists here) and do my best to get his license revoked. He showed no concern AT ALL for my cat, and even when I described what had happened this morning, the only 'help' he offered was the phone no. of his assistant in Zomba (claiming he himself was in Blantyre), who agreed to meet me at the clinic, and then never showed up. We sat outside the clinic with our falling-apart kitty (suprisingly lucid through it all) for over an hour, trying to call every contact at that bloody clinic, and NO ONE would HELP us!

Please forgive me, but today I felt this "Warm Heart of Africa" slogan needed a drastic edit: "Cold-stone Heart of Africa."

Now, I know it's a cat, and not all cultures view pets the same way as Americans do. But, this guy was a veterinarian, assured me he had experience with cats, and could handle this surgery. I now know he was lying just to make an extra buck (about $35 USD, btw...)

Eventually, we did find a doctor friend of mine who runs his own clinic, and was able to help us find a real vet in Blantyre. The doctor called her, and she said as long as we wrapped the cat in a wet towel to keep her innards wet, she should survive the hour-long trip to the office to be re-sutured. Hallelujah.

But, the story of today's ugliness is not yet over. As we'd found a bit of renewed hope that we could save our kitty--Harold had her secured on the floor wrapped in the towel, she was still lucid, but calm, and didn't seem to be in pain (amazingly)-- we thought things might be o.k. Then, I end up at the first traffic stop outside of town, where of course they stopped me for the FIRST TIME EVER! I've learned that whenever I'm in a hurry, that's when those cops decide to scrutinize me. Of course, the illustrious cop looked at my driver's license and noticed that my license plates had expired at the end of March. I tried to explain that I'd been told there was a 30-day waiting period, and that I was planning to renew them this coming Tuesday. After a bit of panicked discussion (the details of which I cannot bear to re-hash right now), he of course confiscated my drivers' license, wrote me up a ticket, and told me I must appear for court in the morning. Great. Just let me go, A*&Hole.

So after that ordeal, we headed to the city, made it to the vet's office, where a nice young female vet from Kenya was waiting for us, ready to take care of Penga. Again, despite how dire it all looked (as you can imagine) the doctor was very calm, and said Penga would be o.k., that the only worry was keeping things moist, and getting good sutures on her. She put her under, and sent me outside to wait. So, we waited. And we prayed. Ya, even me. I don't do that much, but now understand that perhaps it can help, as in the end, our kitty was o.k., sutured up very well. She even gave her an I.V. drip of fluids to replace the ones she lost, telling me that all her innards were o.k., nothing was damaged (amazingly, considering some details I've left out of the story involving the way Penga moved around during a lot of this), and she didn't lose too much blood since there was no damage to the organs.

She also recommended (right after I requested it) to keep Penga for a couple of days to make sure her insides remain o.k. (mostly the intestines), and just keep a good eye on her. She also did an incredible suturing job, that looked like it should. The stitches were small, tight, and very close to one another. I realized then what a real hack that idiot in Zomba is... her sutures last week were too far apart, didn't look tight enough, and had long 'tails' at the end that she could easily bite off. The Blantyre Vet (Dr. Catherine K. Mutunga at the Mudi Clinic across from Maiawathu Hospital-- info. for the Malawian pet-lovers, especially) assured me that the first suturing job was not adequate, especially because the internal stitches were only done on one layer of tissue, when they should be done on two (which of course she had done). "One internal layer is not strong enough to hold," she told me.

So, now Penga is comfortably (hopefully) sleeping at the vet's house (her clinic is at her house) in Blantyre, and seems to be in good hands. I'll be picking her up on Wed., after taking care of the bloody license plate renewal on my car, assuming I'm not thrown in jail after my court appearance tomorrow.

Ya, bloody 'Warm Heart of Africa', alright. (Sorry, but that's how I feel right now... luckily, I did meet up with 2 'warm hearts' today-- plus, the watchman outside of the vet clinic who let us borrow his cell phone all day--to call the lame cold-stone hearts supposedly working there who couldn't be bothered to help us-- and also let us take the phone with us to make calls in Blantyre (since in all the panic, both Deliwe and I had left our cell phones at home). So that's one more 'warm heart.'

As a result, the 'warm hearts' did win out over the 'cold-stone hearts' today, and it appears to be leading to a happy ending (both for Penga's health and, with any luck, my legal driving status--hope the judge is a 'warm heart'). We shall see... I'll keep you posted.

I still can't believe I managed to write about this today. Was planning to keep it short, but I guess I needed the decompression of writing it all down. Thanks, loyal readers! Hope it wasn't as traumatic reading it as it was for those of us who experienced it...

Tiwonana later (don't know when yet...)

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