What's Clean?
It's the end of September, and it is supposed to be chillier outside, but the Midwest seems to be experiencing what can only be described as an Indian Summer. It's actually sweltering out, if I'm being honest - the sun batters my backyard crispy, the humidity is up, and I'd be fine with all of this if it were, in fact, in July. But, as it were, we've passed the Equinox, it's autumn now, and I've consciously permitted the Pretty Girls to wear leggings and boots (with the fur) and to carry pumpkin spice what-ever-the-fuck the kids are doing these days.
What does this tomboy want to be doing? Well, the limited daylight has started ramping up my melotonin production (thanks, nature!), so all I want to do is let nature take its course: eat, nap, sleep. Alas, the work is never done, right? For someone who claims to be an amateur homesteader, I'm doing a shit job; between putting down training miles and then traveling this past spring, all I made time for was pulling the ever-present creeping charlie out of the flower beds around our house. Alright, that's not true, I was able to modestly maintain my titles of beekeeper, native plant enthusiast and hiker. But as far as my garden went... Oh, my God. It was a weed pit. Every weekend after I'd stumble off my bike, I'd vow, I will finally go pull those foxtails and lay down black plastic to kill off the roots of the f*cking creeping charlie.
No. Instead, I fell asleep in my hammock, or scrambled to catch up with a friend or family member I hadn't seen in so long. My upward thrust towards cycling domination came at a greater price than I anticipated this year.
So, on my on call weekend on this baked September afternoon, I finally make the time to do what I had been putting off for, literally, six months. Except it involves using our push mower like a bush hog. I wait until the brutal sun is behind the tall pines, and then I venture out with a liter water bottle in one hand and my blue-tooth speaker spitting folk and bluegrass music. I will slay this bitch, surveying the neglected barn and ground. I will reclaim my empire.
And so began bush-hogging our garden with a push mower. I did not slay. I did not reclaim.
What I did, while cussing and dragging and hauling and and and, was immediately regret not having fresh tomatoes from our garden that I could snack on throughout the summer. That my parents had decided they wouldn't call me in case I was busy, so I rarely saw them. That it was getting harder to visit out of town girlfriends because I'd fall asleep driving. That my career was intrinsically tied to a job position that I could not leave yet could not stay for. That my dog was a spoilt house hound that needed a good hike or ten. That my husband was basically my roommate who occasionally got laid as a thanks for cooking me dinner. That I still hadn't made up my mind to spawn a child and "give up" everything I had worked hard for and come to know as my reality for something so ... impossible.
Friends, for someone who claims to be dead inside, I had a lot of thoughts roaring through my head that day. As I like to say, you can take the girl away from Wildcat, but you can't take the wildcat out of her.
At one point, I looked down at what was becoming a macerated mess of foxtails, marestails, renegade cucumber vines and wayward Black Eyed Susans (those girls are out of control). Crawling over the bramble was one of the millions of praying mantises that inhabit our corner of earth. I went to scoop her up, like I did for the countless others, silently apologizing for destroying her habitat. Except this one has a crinkled wing. She couldn't fly away from the scary human trying to capture her. Fuck, did I do that, with the hot blades of our mower? Stupid human, always fucking up nature.
I had a vivid flashback of my morning: I was in some yoga pose at the studio, sweaty and getting sweatier. Why is it that us American idiots pay for a studio to heat their rooms up to 95-degrees Celsius, when we could slip and slide in puddles of our own excreted electrolytes outside? And, remarkably, I wouldn't have to smell the nasty fart of the old man next to me.
Sorry, the vivid flashback: my phone vibrated with Dr. M's number flashing on the screen. I squelched out of the room to answer and was greeted with her sweet voice, tinged with urgency, "Hi, I've got a horse in a bad way that needs an endoscope." No big deal! When I arrived at the hospital, though... Dr. H escorted me over to where the middle aged quarter horse mare stood, her flanks quivering from stress, her head and neck extended from fatigue, her ears positioned at 3 and 9 O'clock from pain and depression (not, as I learned, from sedation) - clearly, a horse in a bad way. He showed me the penetrating wound into her left thorax. With each inhalation, the wound sucked air into the chest cavity, and with each exhalation, air would rush out, sending pleural fluid and blood spitting onto the face of the observers (me, this time). From where I stood, I could see cracked ribs, torn diaphragm and some loop of colon that shouldn't be visible from where I was positioned.
"What the fuck happened?!" I asked. One of the veterinary students laid a hand on the chilly neck of the mare - the body, when experiencing hypovolemic shock, shunts the peripheral blood to core organs to try to salvage life - explained that the mare had been kept in a pasture with a field planter for years, but a couple days ago, a little pony moved into the field next to her, so maybe they got upset along the fence line...? Either way, they assumed the mare hit the field planter between 11 pm and 5 am, and this was how they found her. The mare's eyes were sunken in, her skin turgid, her mucus membranes muddy purple with a blue cast to them, and a heart rate that was barely auscultable on account of the fluid accumulation within the pleural space.
A horse in a bad way, indeed. Dr. H explained his surgical plan to repair the damage, and how he needed to visualize the internal structures prior to closing. I set about getting our 1-meter endoscope sterilized in Cidex, changed into scrubs and began gathering our thoracoscopic surgical packs. Then, Drs. M, H and T performed the sterile endoscopy: passing the endoscope into the wound to visualize the damaged lung, the torn diaphragm, the traumatized gut walls. They spoke in strained tones - even if the diaphragm could be fully repaired, there was a chance of peritonitis. To say nothing of the development of pleuropneumonia (not if, but when). The owners would be facing a $10,000 bill, minimum, with no guarantee of survival. They exited the room to discuss the surgical and medical plan with the owners, and we continued to prep for surgery. The room was quiet except for the hiss of the oxygen tank and heave of breath from the mare.
When the veterinarians, student and owners returned to the room, the look of horror on the owners' faces and sadness in the student's eyes said it all - euthanasia, however, was going to be the best course of action. We all left the room so the owner, her daughter, her friend with a tiny baby could say good-bye. I cleaned up, put away, waited and waited and waited with the veterinarians to assist with the euthanasia. It wasn't pretty - some horses go down easy, that's true. Most pets do, as the euthanasia solution is an overdose of an anesthetic: they lose consciousness, their heart stops, and their brain dies. Simple, and so much more humane than letting them die, so much so that I actually kind of resent human medicine. (Sorry, it's true.) But when the horse is in shock, hypovolemic, experiencing multi-organ failure, whatever that results in hypotension, they just go down poorly. Today was no exception. If you've made it past the gory details of the original wound, I commend your gall and spirit, but I still will not destroy your dinner or ruin your day by describing to you just how bad it was. No one was hurt, but the owners fled, sobbing from the room, and the students bailed out thinking they would get hurt. A senior resident yelled at an intern, and then I yelled at him for yelling at her, and then I thought, "Well, maybe they will finally fire me today, thank God for small mercies."
Nope.
"Look," I said to Dr. M, our newest medicine resident, "I've seen a lot of bad euthanasias. This one wasn't the worst." Considering ten years of critical care work in a referral hospital for large animals, that's saying something. Too bad it wasn't consoling, because of the handful that were "worse" than this one, well, they were pretty fucking awful. All of this ran through my head as I stared at the bloody spray on the white wall of the surgery room where the sucking wound had left its final momento upon our minds. I remembered my teenage fascination at a similar spray of blood across the garage wall when my dog shook her head after something that had ripped her ear in a fight. There was a sick swell of emotion in my gut. "Dammit," I muttered to myself. "God dammit." The owner came in with her friend, to say one last good-bye. I took the friend's tiny baby into my arms, thinking the wee thing didn't need to see something so grotesque, although who is to say that she would see and comprehend? Dr. M cooed over her sweet face while I stared in disbelief that something so tiny and innocent, positioned against the sadness of the day, could stand being held by me. We all left the room, the friend taking her baby back. Her oldest daughter, no more than ten, stood with her head buried in the vet student's hip, the student's arm firmly around her shoulders.
So, I scooped up the damaged praying mantis and planted her on an apple tree away from the roar of the mower. I stared at the ruins of my garden. I heard the tunes of the Lone Bellow, I smelled someone's campfire, I felt the heat from the day and I tasted everything from the past nine months in the back of my mouth: disappointment, failure, fear, loneliness, anxiety, triumph, exhaustion, joy, sadness. All these human emotions that drive us to collide into one another, to destroy ourselves and each other, and to never ever look back in remorse unless it is in the light of reconciliation, and when does that ever happen?
What does this tomboy want to be doing? Well, the limited daylight has started ramping up my melotonin production (thanks, nature!), so all I want to do is let nature take its course: eat, nap, sleep. Alas, the work is never done, right? For someone who claims to be an amateur homesteader, I'm doing a shit job; between putting down training miles and then traveling this past spring, all I made time for was pulling the ever-present creeping charlie out of the flower beds around our house. Alright, that's not true, I was able to modestly maintain my titles of beekeeper, native plant enthusiast and hiker. But as far as my garden went... Oh, my God. It was a weed pit. Every weekend after I'd stumble off my bike, I'd vow, I will finally go pull those foxtails and lay down black plastic to kill off the roots of the f*cking creeping charlie.
No. Instead, I fell asleep in my hammock, or scrambled to catch up with a friend or family member I hadn't seen in so long. My upward thrust towards cycling domination came at a greater price than I anticipated this year.
So, on my on call weekend on this baked September afternoon, I finally make the time to do what I had been putting off for, literally, six months. Except it involves using our push mower like a bush hog. I wait until the brutal sun is behind the tall pines, and then I venture out with a liter water bottle in one hand and my blue-tooth speaker spitting folk and bluegrass music. I will slay this bitch, surveying the neglected barn and ground. I will reclaim my empire.
And so began bush-hogging our garden with a push mower. I did not slay. I did not reclaim.
What I did, while cussing and dragging and hauling and and and, was immediately regret not having fresh tomatoes from our garden that I could snack on throughout the summer. That my parents had decided they wouldn't call me in case I was busy, so I rarely saw them. That it was getting harder to visit out of town girlfriends because I'd fall asleep driving. That my career was intrinsically tied to a job position that I could not leave yet could not stay for. That my dog was a spoilt house hound that needed a good hike or ten. That my husband was basically my roommate who occasionally got laid as a thanks for cooking me dinner. That I still hadn't made up my mind to spawn a child and "give up" everything I had worked hard for and come to know as my reality for something so ... impossible.
Friends, for someone who claims to be dead inside, I had a lot of thoughts roaring through my head that day. As I like to say, you can take the girl away from Wildcat, but you can't take the wildcat out of her.
At one point, I looked down at what was becoming a macerated mess of foxtails, marestails, renegade cucumber vines and wayward Black Eyed Susans (those girls are out of control). Crawling over the bramble was one of the millions of praying mantises that inhabit our corner of earth. I went to scoop her up, like I did for the countless others, silently apologizing for destroying her habitat. Except this one has a crinkled wing. She couldn't fly away from the scary human trying to capture her. Fuck, did I do that, with the hot blades of our mower? Stupid human, always fucking up nature.
I had a vivid flashback of my morning: I was in some yoga pose at the studio, sweaty and getting sweatier. Why is it that us American idiots pay for a studio to heat their rooms up to 95-degrees Celsius, when we could slip and slide in puddles of our own excreted electrolytes outside? And, remarkably, I wouldn't have to smell the nasty fart of the old man next to me.
Sorry, the vivid flashback: my phone vibrated with Dr. M's number flashing on the screen. I squelched out of the room to answer and was greeted with her sweet voice, tinged with urgency, "Hi, I've got a horse in a bad way that needs an endoscope." No big deal! When I arrived at the hospital, though... Dr. H escorted me over to where the middle aged quarter horse mare stood, her flanks quivering from stress, her head and neck extended from fatigue, her ears positioned at 3 and 9 O'clock from pain and depression (not, as I learned, from sedation) - clearly, a horse in a bad way. He showed me the penetrating wound into her left thorax. With each inhalation, the wound sucked air into the chest cavity, and with each exhalation, air would rush out, sending pleural fluid and blood spitting onto the face of the observers (me, this time). From where I stood, I could see cracked ribs, torn diaphragm and some loop of colon that shouldn't be visible from where I was positioned.
"What the fuck happened?!" I asked. One of the veterinary students laid a hand on the chilly neck of the mare - the body, when experiencing hypovolemic shock, shunts the peripheral blood to core organs to try to salvage life - explained that the mare had been kept in a pasture with a field planter for years, but a couple days ago, a little pony moved into the field next to her, so maybe they got upset along the fence line...? Either way, they assumed the mare hit the field planter between 11 pm and 5 am, and this was how they found her. The mare's eyes were sunken in, her skin turgid, her mucus membranes muddy purple with a blue cast to them, and a heart rate that was barely auscultable on account of the fluid accumulation within the pleural space.
A horse in a bad way, indeed. Dr. H explained his surgical plan to repair the damage, and how he needed to visualize the internal structures prior to closing. I set about getting our 1-meter endoscope sterilized in Cidex, changed into scrubs and began gathering our thoracoscopic surgical packs. Then, Drs. M, H and T performed the sterile endoscopy: passing the endoscope into the wound to visualize the damaged lung, the torn diaphragm, the traumatized gut walls. They spoke in strained tones - even if the diaphragm could be fully repaired, there was a chance of peritonitis. To say nothing of the development of pleuropneumonia (not if, but when). The owners would be facing a $10,000 bill, minimum, with no guarantee of survival. They exited the room to discuss the surgical and medical plan with the owners, and we continued to prep for surgery. The room was quiet except for the hiss of the oxygen tank and heave of breath from the mare.
When the veterinarians, student and owners returned to the room, the look of horror on the owners' faces and sadness in the student's eyes said it all - euthanasia, however, was going to be the best course of action. We all left the room so the owner, her daughter, her friend with a tiny baby could say good-bye. I cleaned up, put away, waited and waited and waited with the veterinarians to assist with the euthanasia. It wasn't pretty - some horses go down easy, that's true. Most pets do, as the euthanasia solution is an overdose of an anesthetic: they lose consciousness, their heart stops, and their brain dies. Simple, and so much more humane than letting them die, so much so that I actually kind of resent human medicine. (Sorry, it's true.) But when the horse is in shock, hypovolemic, experiencing multi-organ failure, whatever that results in hypotension, they just go down poorly. Today was no exception. If you've made it past the gory details of the original wound, I commend your gall and spirit, but I still will not destroy your dinner or ruin your day by describing to you just how bad it was. No one was hurt, but the owners fled, sobbing from the room, and the students bailed out thinking they would get hurt. A senior resident yelled at an intern, and then I yelled at him for yelling at her, and then I thought, "Well, maybe they will finally fire me today, thank God for small mercies."
Nope.
"Look," I said to Dr. M, our newest medicine resident, "I've seen a lot of bad euthanasias. This one wasn't the worst." Considering ten years of critical care work in a referral hospital for large animals, that's saying something. Too bad it wasn't consoling, because of the handful that were "worse" than this one, well, they were pretty fucking awful. All of this ran through my head as I stared at the bloody spray on the white wall of the surgery room where the sucking wound had left its final momento upon our minds. I remembered my teenage fascination at a similar spray of blood across the garage wall when my dog shook her head after something that had ripped her ear in a fight. There was a sick swell of emotion in my gut. "Dammit," I muttered to myself. "God dammit." The owner came in with her friend, to say one last good-bye. I took the friend's tiny baby into my arms, thinking the wee thing didn't need to see something so grotesque, although who is to say that she would see and comprehend? Dr. M cooed over her sweet face while I stared in disbelief that something so tiny and innocent, positioned against the sadness of the day, could stand being held by me. We all left the room, the friend taking her baby back. Her oldest daughter, no more than ten, stood with her head buried in the vet student's hip, the student's arm firmly around her shoulders.
So, I scooped up the damaged praying mantis and planted her on an apple tree away from the roar of the mower. I stared at the ruins of my garden. I heard the tunes of the Lone Bellow, I smelled someone's campfire, I felt the heat from the day and I tasted everything from the past nine months in the back of my mouth: disappointment, failure, fear, loneliness, anxiety, triumph, exhaustion, joy, sadness. All these human emotions that drive us to collide into one another, to destroy ourselves and each other, and to never ever look back in remorse unless it is in the light of reconciliation, and when does that ever happen?
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