Love, Justine

October 19th, 2024

Saturday

2:20pm

I can’t sleep. Cool’s birthday was yesterday. My mother says he talks about social justice issues manically, but then calms down and is more normal. If only we all cared about social justice issues manically.

I found a Ms. magazine today that says: “Vote–Your Life Depends on it.”

I wish I could vote this year, but I’ll be in prison. We had another AA meeting on the Unit tonight. They’re always nice. They make me feel like I belong, even though I don’t really identify as an alcoholic. I don’t really know how that works. Everyone acts life once you’ve been addicted to something, you have to avoid that substance forevermore and identify as an addict. I’ve found differently in my life. It turns out that I can just have one or two. That’s a hard thing to explain to people. Maybe I’ll never understand that one. Another thing I can’t understand? Judgment in prison. You’d think prison would be a great equalizer, but it’s not. People still talk shit about everyone else and fight about who’s better than who.

Ridiculous.

I’ve been thinking about the Women’s Center a lot, and Mr. Big. I wonder if he’ll mention the email I sent him. I wonder what my response would be. Probably something like: “I’m a complete crazy person. Please disregard anything I ever said to you.”

Ugh.

I still think of Dubya every time I hear a country song, which is pretty often, because country stations are three of the six stations we get here. If I was being honest, I’m still in love with the person he was. I don’t know him anymore, so I don’t know about now. He seems bitter and hateful now.

I guess a broken heart will do that to a person.

I’m reading a book called “How To Tell a Story.” It’s making me rethink how I’m writing this book. It says that you should tell short, specific stories with a lot of details, instead of listing events like an overview that goes, “and then, and then, and then…” which is basically what I’ve been doing. I even glossed over Ethan and Kaylee dying. I have to remember how to write stories again, instead of just listing facts like a reporter.

So here’s a story about being a vet tech:

Hoping for a Miracle

It was a day like any other at the Cat Clinic, which basically meant BUSY. I, by now a seasoned and licensed Veterinary Technician, was standing at the front desk checking someone out when a very dirty man rushed in carrying what looked like a very dead calico kitten on a piece of cardboard. 

All in one breath, he told me that he was a landscaper, and he had found the stray kitten lying in someone’s lawn. Nobody knew who she belonged to. I stared at the kitten for a moment, looking for signs of life. I wondered what this man wanted me to do with a dead cat.

Her gums were sheet white, her mouth was open, and many fleas were jumping off of her body and onto my desk. Fleas tend to only abandon ship when their host animal has no blood left for them to feast on. This kitten had so many fleas, her skin fairly rippled with movement, so it was not hard to surmise what had killed her. The man pulled out a rumpled $100 bill from his grass-stained pocket and thrust it at me. 

“Please–do what you can,” he said urgently.

Right then, the kitten, inexplicably, took a shallow breath. I grabbed the kitten and said to the man, “We’ll do our best. NO PROMISES.”

I was immediately covered with hungry fleas. I walked quickly back to the treatment area, holding the lolling, rag-limp kitten.

I could not believe she was alive. 

I had never seen gums so white on a living animal.

I told the doctor what had happened, and he immediately took her to the sink both in an effort to remove the fleas, and to warm her cold body. Her temperature registered at a dismal and moribund ninety-degrees. 

A cat’s normal temperature is over 100. The water instantaneously ran red with all of the flea dirt–digested blood–in her fur. All of her blood was outside of her body.

I ran back to the front office to call my husband. This kitten needed a blood transfusion–and fast–if she was going to survive. She barely had a pulse. I told my husband to bring my biggest, huskiest male cat, Bruiser, to be a blood donor. 

In minutes, he was there. 

Bruiser marched out of the cat carrier, indignant. 

He had been napping. 

My husband held him while I quickly drew 12cc’s of bright red, fresh blood from his jugular vein, mixed with heparin so it wouldn’t clot. I ran back to the treatment area, where the doctor and the manager of the clinic were drying off the kitten. She didn’t look any better, and was barely conscious. I grabbed the smallest IV catheter we had–24 gauge–while Geri, the manager, went to heat up some IV fluids in the microwave. I shaved a small area on the inside of her back leg and applied rubbing alcohol, searching for her femoral vein, which should have shown up a brilliant blue, but didn’t.

I placed the IV catheter where her vein should have been, and then waited for what seemed like an eternity for the characteristic flash of blood in the hub of the catheter. 

Nothing.

Wait, wait…

Finally, the teensiest drop of blood imaginable showed up, just as I was going to pull the catheter and try again.

Hallelujah!

My heart soared. In a flash, I attached the syringe filled with blood, and the doctor reminded me to go slowly with the infusion. 

We all held our breath. 

Push, push, push.
I could see the blood go into her vein under her translucent skin. 

Push, push, push.

I finished the infusion and hooked her up to the warmed IV fluids to rehydrate her and warm her up. Her temperature had only risen a dismal two degrees from the bath. 

I put her on a heating pad and wrapped her in a fluffy towel. 

Now only time would tell.

The doctor gave me her antibiotics and put a drop of flea medication on the back of her neck to kill off any remaining fleas. 

We had done our best. 

Now all we could do was wait. 

I started filling out a chart with all we had done and documented her progress every 10 minutes. I sat next to her on the floor and waited.

Under “name” on her medical chart, I wrote “Hope.” 

In a wildly optimistic act of faith, I put some fishy canned Fancy Feast and water in her cage with her. 

And I waited.

At around two hours in, I started to wonder if she was brain-dead from the lack of oxygen created by having so little blood in her tiny body circulating to her brain. Her red blood cell count registered at 9% AFTER the transfusion, with normal being 24-45%. Her temperature was now normal, and she hadn’t so much as flickered an ear.

I was suddenly devastated. I had to get back to work. We still had patients to see. 

We had tried so hard. 

Now all of our appointments were backed up for the day, and all of this effort for noth–then, it happened!

Hope opened her eyes, looked around, and rolled over onto her belly and got up on her front legs in a crouched position. 

I stared, shocked.

She smelled the air, and, miraculously, buried her face in the canned food! 

She was eating!

I ran out to tell the doctor and Geri.
Geri was holding out the phone to me, saying that the man who had dropped off the kitten was on, asking how she was. 

I breathlessly told him.

“Oh good,” he drawled. 

I was HOPING for a miracle.”