Never thought I’d be doing that – or blogging about it.

Late yesterday morning I was watching Snowball and noticed that she was running around her cage with her eyes closed.  She was active, eating, acting normal except she wouldn’t open her eyes.  I watched her a little longer to make sure she wasn’t just playing then I called Petco.

I told the “rodent expert” what was going on and he told me to do what I was already thinking about doing. 

I got snowball out of her cage and got a damp washcloth and wiped down her eyes.  Nothing.

So, I called different vets until I finally found one that worked with gerbils.  (Who knew it would be so hard to find one of those?) They wouldn’t tell me anything over the phone and said that a vet visit for her would be $40.  Yeah, that’s going to over well with Pato. It’s 3 times what I paid for her.  So, I kept up with the damp washcloth every hour and finally last night her eyes opened.  I was so happy.  If they hadn’t opened I was going to make Pato suck it up and pay for the vet visit.

I got up this morning and waited for Snowball to wake up so I could check on her.  She woke up and it looks like Pato may have to suck it up.  Her eyes weren’t completely closed, but they weren’t open much either.  Back out with the wet washcloth and wiping down her eyes.  I’m going to watch her this morning and see how she does.  I don’t know what else to do except clean her eyes and take her to the vet.  The only problem I can find in little rodents is wet tail and she’s not showing the symptoms listed for that.

Pato was standing by her cage this morning and said it stunk.  I must be losing my sense of smell.  Jordan just cleaned out her cage a couple of days ago so it shouldn’t smell.  Plus, we use Carefresh bedding, which has never had an odor before in the 4 years we’ve been using it for our hamster and the gerbil.  I know if you use certain wood chip bedding that can cause respiratory problems (the whole reason we don’t use it) and that could possibly cause her to have problems with her eyes too, but with the Carefresh she shouldn’t be having any problems.

I don’t know, I just don’t want her to be sick.

I took a picture of her for my Project 365 Day 15 today.  That wasn’t easy.  She didn’t want to stand on the black cloth and pose.  She preferred scrambling all over the place with her new found freedom.  Then Christiano was trying to help me.  I’d put Snowball on the cloth, get my camera lined up, she’d move, Christiano would go for her, snap picture, not good.  Oh well.

Here’s another of the shots I took of her –

She’s awfully cute still.

On to other news.  Send some thoughts and prayers up for my mom. She has the worst luck of anyone I know.  After multiple car accidents (none of them her fault) she had deviated and bulging discs in her back and neck.  She had just gotten the pain under control a couple of years ago when she fell on the ice at work and did some bad damage to her back.  She can’t lay comfortably, can’t stand for long, can’t sit for long, is on pain medication, gets nerve blocks, had some nerves burned, nothing helps.  Yesterday, she was walking out to the garage and fell on the ice again.  My dad was at school (he went back to study computers I think), and thank goodness she could get up on her own.  She thought since she could move her arm that it was just a muscle.  She waited all day and the pain just kept getting worse. I talked to her and said when Jordan broke his wrist at 3, his hand was at a 90 degree angle from his arm and he could still move his fingers.  It’s one of the reasons that when it was in a paper splint that the dr thought it might just be a small fracture.  He said, we’ll xray it and see if we need to cast it.  He took the paper splint off and said, I’m an amazing dr, I can tell you by just looking at it that we’re going to be casting this.

So, mom went to the dr last night and they did xrays.  She broke her elbow.  Her elbow.  Lord have mercy that has to hurt.  I swear she just got her cast off from the bone spur she had removed from between her thumb joints.  She has to go to an orthopedic surgeon in 4-5 days to see if it needs surgery.  *sigh* It just keeps piling up on her.  I just told The Girl Next Door that my mom is just like what she posted about her dad, it’s one thing after another, and now it’s another thing.  It breaks your heart when your parent (or child) is constantly in pain and there’s nothing you can do to fix it.

and of course the Ricky Martin tweet of the day.

The Ricky Martin foundation is an awesome charity that helps children throughout the world.  They work to fight against child trafficking and violence against children. They also work to help children with birth registration, education, and help with their medical needs.  Right now they are working on something to help the children of Haiti after that horrible earthquake that destroyed too much.

Some information from here. And this was written before the earthquake:

Haiti continues to claim the dubious honour of being ranked as the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, with 80% of this Caribbean nation’s population living under the poverty line and 54% in abject poverty. Haiti’s sorrowful rank as the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere and one of the poorest in the world has been directly attributed to the degradation of Haiti’s natural environment (less than 1.5% of its original tree cover remains intact) as well as a lack of governance structures, underinvestment in social capital, obstacles to private investment, and a spiraling “poverty trap“.

If you’re looking for a way to donate to Haiti, that is a great organization to help take care of the children who are hurting because of this.  Those children were hurting so much before the earthquake.  It hurts to think how much they are going through after it.  You can also support them by getting things in their e-shop. I want to get the t-shirt and the cell phone dangle that are in the e-shop.

On other notes, I have a few giveaways going on right now: Win the book Sleep No More, a gift basket from Cottonelle, and a HP Mini 110-1100.

That’s all from me.  You go have a beautiful day!

 Link to this page

 Link to this page

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Tags: broken elbow, Gerbils, Ricky Martin, Ricky Martin Foundation

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