In Memory of Hammy

A couple of years ago, Cassandra had a hamster by the name of Henry. Upon coming home from a weekend in Yakima, we found Henry's eye had kind of popped out. Cassandra was so distraught. We rushed him to a 24-hour vet who gave us eye drops to keep the eye moist. Randy and I had promised our little girl that we woul administer the drops throughout the night (Randy took one turn and then snored through any attempts to wake him for subsequent turns). Upon morning, we took Henry the hamster to a vet that was more familiar with hamsters. That vet offerred to do surgery to try to put the eye back in. One look into our daughter's red, tear-stained eyes and we agreed to do the surgery. Henry made it through surgery, but died a few hours later. A couple of days later, we added Hammy the hamster to our family.

This evening, as we came home from a party at Cass's school, we noticed that Hammy wasn't doing so well. His entire body was cold and he was barely moving. Cassandra was completely distraught. She begged us to take him to the vet. It was evident that he wouldn't be with us for long. As Cass went to put him back into his cage, he sank his teeth into her thumb and refused to let go. Cass became hysterical! It took me a bit to pry his teeth out. Cass's thumb was bleeding and began to turn purple. We rushed her to the Urgent Care facility. They washed it out and told us to watch it the next few days. By the time we left, the purpleness was starting to go away. By the time we got home, Hammy had passed away. Cass was inconsolible, so we did what I am sure any parent would do ~ we welcomed Georgie the Guinea Pig into our family. We really need to be living out on a farm and start charging for admission to our little petting zoo!

In other updates, Randy had speech therapy again today. He worked on naming things in categories again. Today, he achieved 82%, which is an improvement from the 78% from last Friday.

Randy had his last day of physical therapy today. Julie had him walking outside without his cane. They started with a rock walkway, then went on to grass going downhills, then onto pavement, and then uneven rocks, and then a dirt path that was a tuny bit muddy, across a bark covered hill. Randy did well with walking without his cane on the uneven surfaces. Inside, Julie had him do ewights with his ankles. She also discussed having him use kickboards and weights during his pool therapies.

Later in the day, at the store, Randy had found he had forgotten his wallet. He thought he had left it in the car. His mom gave him directions to the car, but he wasn't able to go out and find it. I have noticed that he really gets turned around and confused on his location. This is definitely a "since the accident" issue. Randy was always a great navigator prior to the accident.

This evening, we went to a winter party at Cass's school. Cass is in the choir ~ the choir sang a few songs during the evening. We returned home with intentions of playing a game together and heading to bed early since I have to be at work at 6 am tomorrow. Of course,the rest of the evening went nothing as planned.

Tonight, on the way to the store to buy food for Georgie, Cass commented that in with "sad" there seems to always come "happy" too, but sometimes we don't always get to see the "happy" right away. In her case, she is thinking of the sad losing Hammy, the beloved hamster, and the happy is Georgie, a new friend. It made me think of all of the "sad" going on in my life right now and made me realize that I need to look for that "happy" more often. The accident was a horrible thing and life has been rather tough since, but it has deepend my relationship with Randy, and I think it has made me a stronger person and put me into a position that I can help others out there going through awful times in their lives.