A Foot, Some Firemen and a Frantic Family

All my babies. In happier, less-painful times.

First some background.

            This blog is usually devoted to the actions and words of my human child Chris, whose sassy mouth has yet to be matched. But I often leave out the just-as-interesting adventures of my two less vocal children: our dogs Millie and Viggo. Millie is our sweet little diva who loves to wear dresses – I  promise! I only had to force them on her the first time and after that she was excited to wear clothes. Ask anyone, I swear! She is a cuddly girl who preens when told how pretty she is and who stares adoringly into the eyes of whomever strokes her silky fur or lets her lick the ice cream bowl.

Viggo with the big button eyes

            Viggo is our skinny, adventurous boy who is full of character and whom we’re convinced is part deer. While he sometimes seems a little crazy, like when he barked uncontrollably at Chris’ Hello Kitty backpack as it hung on the doorknob, he is also in touch with his inner cat and lounges across the back of the couch or bats at toys while laying on his back. He will also fetch a ball, chew toy, sock or piece of trash no matter how many times you throw it across the room. It never gets old for him.

Just like a human child, it’s tough to see either one of my canine babies in pain. Viggo tested this last week.

            The following is a chronicle of events as they occurred on Sunday, Jan. 20, 2013. It is a true and accurate account of the medical emergency we faced with Viggo, although slightly exaggerated to illustrate the comedic atmosphere surrounding said events.

            4:16 p.m.- After dragging Chris inside the house because none of her friends were available to play, which is somehow my fault because I am indeed a horribly mean mother, I bribed Chris into submission with the promise of bathing her dogs in the kitchen sink. She’s only 6 so she still loves to do chores.

4:23- Millie was sufficiently washed and performing her drying off ritual of running circles while rubbing up against the couches. I told Chris to catch her to towel dry off while I started working on Viggo.

            4:25- I was immediately reminded of the difference between my two hairy kids. Millie loves to be bathed and will gladly stand still under the faucet of warm water. Viggo is a much different story. He clings all four paws to the sides of the sink with a look of sheer terror on his fuzzy face, as if I have every intention of drowning him.

            4:25.30- Viggo’s bath is abruptly interrupted by the most pitiful, high-pitched yelping imaginable. It soon became apparent that he was flailing with only three legs and I quickly realized his fourth foot was caught in the sink drain. I tugged gently. He yelped. I tugged a little harder. He yelped louder. I sucked in a deep breath and tugged once more. He YELPED! And snapped at me.

            4:27- While already sweating from anxiety, I yelled to Chris to call Grandma and Grandpa to come over and help. I’m sure they could hear Viggo in the background as I tried to calm him down and keep him from flailing. I whispered in his huge ears that Grandpa would be here soon and would surely be able to free him.

Millie: Please save my brother!

            4:38- We learned that I lied.

            4:39- Millie danced around our feet, knowing something was wrong and begging me to free her brother from his possible watery grave. It seems that in one horrible split second Viggo’s middle toe had become stuck in the hole of the sink drain. Grandpa began ripping apart the pipes under the sink thinking we could push Viggo’s toe back from the bottom up. Our hearts all sank when we realized that wouldn’t work either so we set about trying to unhook the entire drain.

            4:43- Grandpa realized he would need a pipe wrench and looked at me imploringly. My brain worked in slow motion as I thought, “Do I look like I sit around wrenching pipes on lonely Friday nights?”

            4:45- Chris was dispatched to the neighbors on the off chance that they would have a wrench. Alas, they did not so Grandpa made another trip back home to bring his back.

            4:52- While waiting for the wrenches, Grandma and I took turns whispering sweet nothings at Viggo, covering him with blankets to stave off shock, pouring cooking oil down the drain in the hopes of lubricating his toe, and pushing ice up through the bottom of the drain to try to numb it. Any time he moved slightly the yelping began anew, so he mostly still in the sink and shivered with big eyes.

            5:11- Grandpa returned with the pipe wrenches and set to work.

            5:16- The wrenches were no use so we broke down and called the fire department, hoping they had a tool to cut the drain off Viggo’s foot. While I dialed 911 I tried not to panic while equating the situation to fables of firemen rescuing cats from trees. But my heart sank as I relayed my crazy story of the dog stuck in the sink to the dispatcher and she sighed her answer, “We don’t really do that.”

How can you NOT save this face?

            “Well who do I call?” I begged. “I mean, a vet doesn’t have tools to cut people (or dogs) out of tight spaces.” She said she would call around to nearby halls to see if anyone was free and I said a quick thank you prayer when she replied, incredulously, that the hall around the corner was interested in checking it out.

            5:23- They didn’t sound the sirens or use the lights, but five muscle-bound firefighters did show up in their big red truck and curiously entered the house. Not embarrassing at all. They immediately set about assessing the situation and offering suggestions. One dropped to his back on the (probably) filthy floor to look under the dirty sink and popped up to ask, “Uh….how did this happen?” The show “Animal Planet” and the phrase “one in a million situation” were bantered about while I chewed my fingernails and finally noticed my other kid, Chris, was beginning to cry. I guess the sight of the firefighters brought about the seriousness of the situation and she exclaimed, “I’m just so worried! Is he going to die? Is he going to have to wear a cast? What’s going to happen?”

Sink Drain of Doom

            5:47- After discussing the possibility of finding an on-call vet to sedate poor Viggo, and after what seemed like hours of me trying to stay out of the way, Viggo was finally pulled out of the drain, slightly damp and wrapped in a towel. He mewled like the newborn baby he looked like as he was wrapped in a towel and handed over to Grandpa. It was then that I looked down and noticed the sink drain, which probably weighed half as much as him, was still attached to his foot.

            5:49- While most of the other firefighters high-tailed it back to their truck, undoubtedly discussing the filthiness of my floor and the idiocy of a lady who washes dogs in the wrong side of the sink, one pet lover hung back. Instead of leaving us to our own devices, because we obviously couldn’t be trusted alone with pets, he not only found an emergency veterinary hospital but apprised them of the situation and our impending arrival. I will always be grateful to the Avondale Fire Department for their assistance and we waved goodbye as we jumped in the car to drive our sink drain – oh! with a dog attached – down the street.

5:54- I drove while Grandpa cradled an exhausted Viggo in his lap. On the drive we discussed the possibility of amputating Viggo’s toe or even his whole foot. By that time the area was nearly black with non-circulation.

Groggy Doggy

6:01- We hopped out of the car at the animal hospital and the receptionist said, “Ohhhh, you’re the people with the dog stuck in the sink drain.” Already we were infamous. I asked if she had ever seen anything like this and she replied excitedly, “No! And after I talked to the fireman I got off the phone and said, ‘You guys! You’ll never guess what we have coming in!’” A nurse took Viggo from Grandpa’s arms and transported him to the back and we paced during what we assumed would be a long wait.

6:10- We were shocked to see the nurse return so soon and wiping off the sink drain in her hand. My first thought was, “Wow! They don’t take long to chop off toes around here!” Instead she said, “Viggo did excellent. We barely had to sedate him and then were able to slip the drain right off.”

7:20- The hospital ran my debit card for a $227. For a stupid bath. Gulp.

7:35- After monitoring him for a reaction to the medication, the nurse brought a groggy Viggo out to us with a bag of pain medication, an antibiotic to avoid tetanus, and instructions for rest and an Elizabethan collar.

7:49: We arrived home to a grateful Millie, Chris and Grandma, all who wanted to kiss Viggo at once.

Not a fan of the cone.

12:30 a.m. Monday, Jan. 21- Time for Viggo’s pain medication. It was wrapped in cheese and kisses. Millie had cheese too to avoid jealousy.

5 a.m.- Viggo wears the collar for the first time. Millie growls at the intruder who looks a little like her brother. Viggo bangs the collar on the ground and gets one foot stuck inside it in an effort to break free. He gives me dirty looks. I know what he’s thinking. “First the sink, then this collar? You’re the worst parent ever.”

           Footnote: After only two days Viggo was collar free and running and jumping as if the whole ordeal never happened. He is, however, keeping a wide berth of the kitchen sink.

Off to dreamland. Now how do we get back?

            See that picture up there above? That’s Chris on New Year’s Eve. The time stamp is 11:55 p.m. after an unsuccessful hour of trying to wake her up. She didn’t make it in time to see the ball drop. The sad news is the one person in the house who was most excited to ring in the New Year is the one person who couldn’t hang.

Here's another NYE shot. Mean we are.

            The funniest part is that we tried everything on earth to wake her up for the big countdown. Three noisemakers – and those suckers are loud! – were going off in unison inches from her head. I propped her up and stuck a glass of sparkling cider in her hand. And just like Weekend at Bernie’s, she made like a sack of potatoes and fell limply back onto the couch. So we did like all giddy party revelers and covered her body in party hats, blankets and dogs, and then laughed and took pictures. We weren’t drinking, we were just being mean.

Friend's kids could hang. Not Chris.

            You might think Chris had simply worn herself out from trying out her Wii dance moves earlier in the evening, or took a nosedive from her candy sugar high. But the truth is it’s not all that uncommon for her to sleep so hard that a bomb could go off and she would wake up hours later asking why the world was littered with debris. Many a time I have been startled from my own sleep by a shaking thud that left Chris sprawled on the floor unaware that she’s fallen out of bed.

            Fortunately in the early days Chris was an excellent sleepy baby. Now that more than six years have passed it’s beginning to get a little fuzzy. But I distinctly remember calling someone – possibly my sister the nurse – asking if it was normal for a newborn to sleep through the night and being yelled at to never wake a sleeping baby. Once I got over my own claustrophobic fears and realized babies really do like to be swaddled, we rarely had a lick of trouble getting Chris to sleep.

            For years I felt pretty smug when I heard new mothers complain about colicky babies who didn’t allow them to sleep more than an hour or two at a time. Then my own reality sunk in and I had to figure out how to wake my daughter up for school. I fear that when the teenage years hit I will have to invest in a spray bottle of ice water since air horn alarm clocks apparently won’t work.

            It’s baffling to me that someone could sleep that hard and not be comatose or faking it. I’m exactly the opposite in dreamland and generally wake up at the slightest sound. I have been known to wake up in an almost instant upright position, often standing on the bed with my heart racing and wondering where the whisper of sound is coming from.

Even playtime can't be enjoyed when you're tired.

            With Chris, we must have taken the baby books a little too much to heart. You know, the ones that suggest you don’t tiptoe around your child but make everyday normal sounds and they will learn to sleep through most anything. I can attest it really does work. But the major problem with it is that when you need then to wake up because you’re running late for work, you have to move heaven and earth to do so.

            And when you don’t want them to wake up, say on a weekend that you could sleep in, that’s usually when it does happen.

            A couple of years ago our air conditioner was on the fritz and we had to spend a sweltering night until the repairmen could fit us in to their busy Arizona schedule. So as not to bake, Chris and I spent the night downstairs barely clothed on the couches.

            Halfway through the night, I woke up to the sound of the back door creak-creak-creaking open. Convinced someone was trying to steal my third-hand coffee tables, I immediately sprung into action. So there I was, standing on the couch with hands in karate-chop position, kicking wildly and using all the best moves I remembered from my cardio-kickboxing exercise videos. It was then that my big toe connected with a puffy blond curl and I realized Chris was the one opening the back door.

Sweet sleepy baby.

            “What are you doing! Are you crazy?” I screeched, making sure any robbers or rapists standing outside would be afraid of the banshee jumping on the couch.

            Contritely she closed the door, so mature as she turned the deadbolt, and returned to the couch. She laid back down and said, “I just wanted to see if it was still dark outside.”

            You can guess what happened next.

She promptly fell into a deep sleep from which I did everything possible to wake her up to leave for daycare the next morning. Finally I had to promise donuts, which is my go-to move that works the best.

So now, in preparation of the high school sleeping years, I’m buying stock in Krispy Kremes. My advice to you is that you do the same.