Healing Prayers

memories fade when the attention is not paid. What matters to you today will not be the same as it was yesterday. Of course there will be plenty of time to lament for the things we have lost when our days are short, but for now, most of us just go through life on the basis of need.

Right now in this very moment I have a need to feel nothing more than what is burdening my heart. I am a little lamb lost, but a lamb with teeth and strength of arm. I suffer when mine suffers, and today my Lobo hurts so bad. She will be fine enough, but I have the unhappy task of playing nurse once again, only it is a "third world" knowledge we use because of the financial duress we have fallen under. I cannot afford the luxury of a doctor's visit or an ER visit even with the medical insurance. I cannot even afford to pick up my much needed medications that I am supposed to be taking daily. These are the times you wish you would never have to remember. These are the times of your past that we don't want our children to endure. Only the endurance of such times is a benefit whether we like to hear the wails of the innocent or not.

Lobo went to bed last evening and awoke to use the restroom. Upon going back to bed she inadvertently knocked one of our cats off the bed who then had gotten his hind leg caught between her mattress and box-spring and the frame. He was crying in pain and without thinking she reached down in the dark to free him. A nice gesture but never a wise one because our cats, like all peoples, have separate attitudes and separate temperaments. This was not the sweet tolerant cat. It was the one skittish and abrasive furry who we still love and adore. And in his fear of his plight he grabbed her for salvation and sunk his teeth into her finger almost clear to the bone! Now had he been a dog he would be put down and considered evil and vile and feral. As a cat he still is deemed so because people think animals should behave with more dignity than themselves when it comes to fear and pain. Not so, but whatever. Hiro didn't mean to harm her and even has forgiven her, yes his leg is fine and not broke though she was far more concerned for his safety than her own (I brought her up proper) and it was only a hip dislocation to which he is doing fine this day. But now...her finger...it's bad. I'm not going to lie to you guys and though I haven't told her how bad I suppose it to be I think she knows.

It will heal in the right circumstances but she will always have the reminder, not unlike the lovely scar on the inside of my left ankle, where a cat I loved and adored had ripped me a "new one," exists. She had two small puncture wounds on the topside of her forefinger just below the nail and the bigger one, a tear-puncture, to the bone, is on the second level underneath and deep. I thought about stitching her as I have had the necessity to do so in the past, but also remembered some basic but long forgotten medicinal rules from the past. As deep as it is, to close it now would be grievous and have disastrous results involving gangrene and possible partial if not all digit loss. I feel for her, really I do. I was her age when I was jumping on a bed and the inner frame broke to pin our beloved Siamese underneath and fracturing her tail when she reached out to grab my pants cuff and I tried to pull her free and it wouldn't hold so she sunk her teeth into my leg deep and was dragged out by her bite and my might alone. Fortunately she severed a nerve in the process, unfortunately a main nerve to the foot, and eventually the puncture was to heal leaving a hollow scar that looks like a window to my insides. She will remember her scar for the rest of her life if even the tale takes on a more heroic nature with each passing year.

So nurse I played and made joke of all the while wondering if I can do this...if I can be this poor and watch her suffer my ministrations. I rinsed her wounds thoroughly and wrapped them in sterile toilet paper (can be made sterile in a glass bowl in the microwave for fifteen seconds and then allowed to cool) and surgical tape. I didn't have finger splints and did not want to "bandage" it and cut off the blood supply. This would need to heal slow and be drained often as it was sure to catch an infection which is a good thing really, and, yes, I will explain. You see deep wounds most often do result in infection which kicks in the body's immune system, and when they are small punctures like that of bites or small caliber gunshot, they fair well if they do. You want the wound to stay open to drain as it will swell and without proper draining the tissue becomes necrotic fast resulting in gangrene. You will know gangrene has set in by the smell of the wound long before the tell tale colors of dead tissue. So far, twenty-four ours later, she is in great pain and fine. I had to play devil's advocate and facilitate the drainage by squeezing it and palpitating it from the wrist outward to encourage fresh new blood and new antibodies to flood the affected area. Ibuprofen keeps most of the swelling down, but draining it is imperative and cruel. Harsh is a better word, so with a towel in her mouth to ease the noise factor of her anguish, I did just so and relieved the pressure before her finger decided to burst on its own. Four times today and wrapped it again to allow it to sweat tonight and keep the tissue moist.

Tomorrow I expect the middle finger and thumb to have settled down as they were swollen too from just being neighbors to her poor finger. It is hard to be forced to such barbaric medicine and I am thankful for the confidence I have and the knowledge I know will save her. The good news is even if she can't recall this medicine a week after it is all healed, I know she will if her mate or her child requires it. We as "humanoids" are able and capable of healing ourselves and taking care of these things but through the advent of modern science and automatic equipment people have lost this knowledge in the backs of their memories in the closet marked "Never to Use Again." If mobe is right, Lobo's finger will be white around the opening of the wounds and tender and slightly swollen still oozing from the puss and infection but not as much as before. The "whiting" of the edges of a wound is a good sign to look for in a healing wound. I hurt with her and pray to the fates that the knowledge I do have isn't tainted by lack of use in the last decade or so. But I know she will pull through.~mobe's love to her all and her all to her loves.