Here is Edith yesterday, in her oxygen tent, post op…
Her personal physician and surgeon, Dr A Hunt, took her in to be spayed (on his day off - greater love hath no man than this, that he surrendered his free time so that no baby bunnies may be created), and he made a jolly neat job of it. ‘I can be neat sometimes,’ he said in the post-op interview, conducted by Edith’s concerned bunny mummy, Mrs D Hunt.
Rabbit anaesthetics can be fraught with various perils i.e rabbits can die easily whilst under them, and I did not know this until Andy explained the process about ten minutes before he set off with Edith in the cat carrier. And the fact that rabbit bowels are extremely sensitive and he had to avoid touching them as much as he could, which, given the size of a bunny and the close proximity of her lady bits to all other internal organs, is no mean feat. Even more so when the surgeon himself occasional refers to his operating digits as ‘sausage fingers.’
The operation itself takes about 25 minutes. The pre-op and post-op malarkey takes the whole process to around 4 hours. This includes two sessions in an oxygen tent. I went to work yesterday, then, feeling slightly on edge, even though I had used my early morning meditation to send Edith some healing and protection energy and I knew she would be okay. I also sent energy to Andy and his operating nurse that they might enjoy a smooth and trouble free process. Well, it pays to cover all bases, I think.
Much relief, then, when I received a text and photo saying Edith was fine. I tried not to read too much into the addendum ‘for now’ at the end of the text, and continued my work day, enjoying the sunshine we’ve been having and thinking how lovely that Edith could now be joined in her Bunningham Palace by young Sidney.
You may also like to know that Edith has a bunny onesie to wear to protect her wound. It is a sort of greeny turquoise in colour. It is still in its packet and I suspect there it will remain. Thus it was, then, that Edith was installed in the rabbit convalescent ward of our living room to make sure she stayed warm overnight. Anaesthetics can also make their body temperature drop suddenly. See what I mean about fraught with various perils?
This morning, Andy and I were both up at 5.30 because neither of us had a great night of sleep because you don’t when a bunny that you’ve become rather fond of has had an operation. We’d spent the previous evening tempting her to eat with luscious morsels of apple, dandelion, parsley, kale and carrot but she was too spaced out to be interested. Andy ended up syringe feeding her some smooshed up rabbit pellets which looked a bit like Oliver Twist gruel. She also had more pain relief and something to help keep her delicate bunny bowels functioning. Andy syringe fed her again, and I chopped up some more apple in the shape of tiny baton sticks which Andy slid into her mouth and oh! the joy to hear her chomping away on them! She had some more pain relief and more bowel booster, and immediately she was more energetic and returned to her ward for a grooming session, a bit of straw chewing and rearranging, and to eyeball Bambino who had been keeping watch all this time with, I have to say, a bit of a concerned look on his face. Well, I like to interpret it as concern.
As I write this, Edith is looking spaced out again. She is reminiscent of that scene in the second Bridget Jones film when the titular heroine has accidentally partaken of a magic mushroom omelette and is lying on the sand making sand angels whilst that cad Daniel Cleaver is calling ‘Bridget Jones’ to her in what she hears as an echoey voice because of her drugged up state of mind. (N.B Edith is NOT making sand angels. But I bet if she was on a sandy beach in Thailand, she would be.)
The day looks set to be another corker, with clear blue skies and sunshine. It’s just before 7 a.m and there is a light frost, so we shall wait a couple more hours for that to disappear and the air to warm before we take Edith outside, back to her home and the adoration of Sidney.
And then Andy is off to collect to his new bicycle…
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KJ