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superglue stitches
Saturday, September 1 2007
This afternoon I found myself over at our neighbor Andrea's house installing a DVD burner and a printer with a display that had more pixels than my first computer. Gretchen and I had been having a little low-grade fight and I thought she was going to be going to Penny's house to pose as an artistic model, but then she appeared with the dogs, saying that Eleanor had just been mauled by another dog. Evidently some strangers had been walking by with a Labradoodle on a leash and Eleanor had run up barking (as she usually does in such situations). The meeting had gone badly and the Labradoodle had latched onto Eleanor's neck. You don't often hear the story about the Labradoodle that grabs a Pit Bull by the neck, but that's what happened in front of our house on Dug Hill Road this afternoon. The pedestrians and their vicious designer dog were gone by the time Gretchen noticed a nasty inch-long rip in the tender skin of Eleanor's throat.
I'd seen self-induced tears in Eleanor's skin before, so this one didn't freak me out all that much. In the past in such situations we'd taken her to the vet for stitches, but it was the afternoon of a Saturday, so the only vet available was an emergency one. Our dogs are so accident prone that Gretchen has them both covered with veterinary insurance, but it was unclear whether this covered trips to the emergency vet.
Since the gash didn't seem to be bleeding and Eleanor seemed content with devouring the lavish treats Andrea reliably spoils her with, I finished up all the computer stuff at Andrea's before going home and dealing with Eleanor.
I set a pot of water on the stove to boil and proceeded to shave as much hair as I could from the sides of the gash, uncovering a number of tooth puncture marks in the process. Then, using that hot water, I cleaned the wounds thoroughly, applied antibotic ointment liberally, and then fetched a needle and a thread. I sterilized this in alcohol and then went to make a suture. Unfortunately, the damned needle was dull and I couldn't just poke it through Eleanor's skin like a hyperdermic needle. When I tried, she jumped up and moved to another chair. So I tried Plan B even though I knew it would upset Gretchen. I superglued Eleanor's gash back together. (The reason I knew this would upset Gretchen is that she insists that her friend Annie permanently ruined the skin on her fingerstips with Superglue.) The idea is to hold the wound shut and smear superglue across the top so it forms an adhesive layer. I didn't quite get it right and allowed some of the glue to intrude a little into the well of the gash. But it worked amazingly well and Eleanor's wound held together from that time forward.
Later Penny called and told me to come over with the dogs, that I was being requested by her, David, and Gretchen. When I arrived, Penny had just finished a reasonably-accurate black and white painting of Gretchen. Now they were out in the yard sitting around the outdoor fire pit (which was lit and successfully holding back the early September chill), talking about whatever people talk about when I'm not there.
At length, Penny and David's friend Jessica arrived from the city and we all had a filling meal of pasta and Trader Joe's vegetarian meat balls. Gretchen was worried about whether or not Mr. Tivo was recording her women's basketball game, so she split early. I hung around and talked about the sorts of things I don't normally talk about when Gretchen is there. In this case it was my story about the time the FBI came to my door because of my fake Trench Coat Mafia web page. (I like the fact that Mr. Google gives me first dibs for searches of fbi at my door.) This story caused David to do his own Google searching on his Blackberry, eventually finding the article about the incident at Wired.com. Everyone present was delighted (perhaps in a way that Gretchen wouldn't have been) about the article's mention of my other parodies, particularly the one about "an 8-year-old boy obsessed with pedophiles."
For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?070901 feedback
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