I submitted the last of my Spring semester grades on Monday, and I’ve spent most of my time since then doting on the dog. On Tuesday, Toivo had her stitches removed from the surgery she had earlier this month to drain a massive abscess in one of her hind legs, and tomorrow we have a physical therapy appointment to figure out how to encourage her to use her injured leg again.
I’ve never been to a doggy rehab appointment before, so today I filled out the necessary paperwork, read the rehab center’s frequently asked questions, and started doing some passive range of motion exercises I found on YouTube. When Toivo first came home from her hospitalization, I was afraid to touch her leg, not wanting to disturb any of her stitches, but at Tuesday’s appointment, our vet said her incisions are fully healed, so massage and manual manipulation of the leg would be okay.
The entire process of Toivo’s injury, treatment, and recovery has been a learning experience. J and I have nursed other dogs back to health after surgery, but Toivo is the first pet we’ve had who was hospitalized for a full week. Whereas our other dogs spontaneously started using their injured legs after surgery, it’s been a full three weeks since Toivo put weight on her leg: one week in the hospital, and now two weeks recovering at home. It’s not surprising that her muscles have atrophied during that time, so now we have to build those muscles back up.
When we first got Toivo, I bought a pair of grooming gloves I use to brush her fur, a process J immediately dubbed “mama-ssage.” Today, I brushed Toivo in advance of tomorrow’s rehab appointment, and as I massaged, flexed, and extended her injured leg, I hoped the power of TLC and some “mama-medicine” will move Toivo further down the road to recovery.
The past month or so has been crazy. Days after we put Bobbi to sleep, J left for a two-week business trip, leaving me to tend the house and pets during the busiest time of the semester…and while J was gone, Toivo spent an unplanned week at the Angell Animal Medical Center being treated for a massive abscess in one of her hind legs. Toivo’s been home for a week, J’s been home a little more than that, and today I submitted the first of two batches of final grades: not yet the end of my semester, but another step closer.
This past month or so has felt like a marathon with an ever-shifting finish line. Weeks ago while J was out of town, one of our neighbors invited me to an Easter gathering at her house, and I begged out, choosing to focus on my chores and paper piles instead. I finished those chores and those papers, but others appeared in their place: this is, after all, the nature of both housework and paper-grading. Every time I see our neighbor, she asks whether I’m done grading, and every time, I say the same thing: not yet, not yet. It’s not that I’m not making progress; it’s that there always is more.
For good or ill, this is what it’s like to teach college composition at multiple institutions: as soon as you finish reading one batch of papers, there’s another coming in. I’ve come to see my workload as being like the tide: first one wave, then the next, then the next.
Today when I submitted final grades for my classes at Babson College, I took a minute to breathe a sigh of relief…and then I wrote an updated to-do list with the final papers and projects my Framingham State students are submitting today and Thursday. My final Framingham State grades are due next Monday, and that is when I can gratefully collapse into an exhausted heap of relief. Until then, I keep my head down and count every item crossed off my list as another step closer to done.
I took these photos of the memorial labyrinth at Boston College weeks ago, after J had left for his business trip and before Toivo’s unplanned stint at Angell. It was a pretty day when I felt like I had my life and to-do list under control, and then things took a proverbial turn.
Hoarded Ordinaries 