Teleidoscope

Thu, Feb 18, 2010

Kitty Dentist

Posted at 9:47 pm MST to Miscellaneous

Dinah has been leaving food in her dish and losing weight. Last week I took her to the regular vet for her annual checkup and rabies shot and she checked out OK for liver function, and a little borderline for renal function (not bad for a 14 year old cat). The vet said her gums looked inflamed and I've noticed that she seemed to be trying to chew on one side, so today she went to the kitty Dentist. here isn't a full-time dentist at the vet clinic I go to: he's only there on Thursday. (I assume he works at other clinics other days of the week.) So today was the first available day after her lab results came back last week.

It's been a long time since Dinah had any dental work done: cat dentistry is done under full anesthesia, so it is a big deal, and expensive. She spent all day at the clinic, and is still acting a little odd. But she is eating some kibble I soaked in warm water, which is impressive. Besides a clean and checkup, she had two abscessed teeth pulled and some periodontic work.

There was also some re-sculpting of a tooth: they had to pull her right upper canine, so the dentist blunted the lower tooth so she won't be constantly stabbing herself in the upper lip.

In a little while I will try to give her the antibiotics and painkillers. The painkillers just need to go into the mouth, but the antibiotics need to go down the throat. At least the meds are all liquid: I'm not sure I would want to try pilling a cat who has a sore mouth.

Modern technology is amazing. Because everything is done digitally, not with film, they gave me a whole sheaf of paperwork about the work that was done, including before and after close-up photos of kitty teeth, and the x-rays they took. And the kitty version of the standard diagram of upper and lower teeth, with annotations -- I guess some things are a constant in dentistry, regardless of the species of the patient. There is even a whole series of x-rays taken during the removal and restructuring of the fang: they put some artificial bone into the socket (which is proportionately very large) so the jaw won't collapse from the absence of the tooth root.

There was a note on the paperwork that Dinah was a very good kitty today. Actually, I've had good luck with all my cats and never had one like some you hear about where the vets and technicians deserve hazard pay.

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Broken 911

Posted at 6:06 am MST to Miscellaneous

This morning I was awakened at 3:05am by the response to a 911 call I did not make.

I am actually glad for whatever glitch generated the call.

They said that the call actually came in at 2:45 and it took them 20 minutes to find my house because their display showed the address as 6969 Marshall -- an address that has not existed in this millennium, since the county invalidated it in 1999.

I sent the phone company a copy of the Boulder Land Use notice that changed the address in 1999, a few days after I received the notice, so they have had 11 years to update their records.

I was unable to get back to sleep, I was so annoyed that after 11 years Qwest still hasn't got their records updated consistently.

Having Qwest repair guys be unable to find the place because half the time their records show a non-existent address has been annoying and inconvenient. Having the 911 records wrong could be life-threatening.

So far this morning I have emailed

Qwest (the telephone company)
Boulder County Sheriff's Office
Boulder County Land Use
Boulder Daily Camera (our local paper)
Colorado Public Utilities Commission

In the email to Boulder County Land Use, I also complained about the fact that GPS units and on-line maps can't find my house. Their Geographical Information Service may not be able to do anything about that, but they probably come closest to being responsible for such things.

In the emails to the PUC and Daily Camera, I mentioned that X-Cel also had the address records screwed up at least as recently as 2008.

I don't really expect much to come of this, though it would be nice to get the 911 response fixed in case I ever have a real emergency.

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