Hello Everyone!
Behind schedule again, An ill rooster, A mysterious foot injury & Not letting my morale lose momentum!
Alright, I am running behind schedule with my writing routine after napping for far too long late in the day... yet again! Then, once I was 'up and about' I had to do all my late day chores, let the dogs out, brew some espresso... and get myself fully awake enough to start pecking out an entry here... without pushing my timing back any further.
Overall, getting back into the daily habit of making these entries has not been all that difficult... but getting the timing dialed in has not been quite as easy. I am sure that I will eventually settle into a schedule that works better than having to do these late night writing sessions... but alas I am not quite there yet.
Today turned out to be a drag because first thing this morning, when I went to let the rooster out of the coop I found him unable to stand on his own... and unable to hold his head up. After carrying him back to the studio, holding water up to his beak for him to drink... and putting him in a dog crate with some straw... I began looking up online what might be going on with his health.
Aside from perhaps a selenium or Vitamin E deficiency being the cause, the other thing that I found (that had all the symptoms) was something called Marek's disease. Not being a veterinarian and not having a whole lot of experience with poultry in general... I am still unsure about it all... but after following the advice that I found for treating a silkie with Marek's disease I did see some improvement.
Basically, I just got him in a warm area (inside the studio) got water in him... and then gave him a bunch of wet food that was easy for him to eat. After that he started walking around and holding his head upright... and although he seemed to not have a lot of energy... the improvement was more than a little heartening given that his brother had just passed away the day before.
As sad as all of that makes me, I also know that it is just 'part of nature' and 'part of farming' for such things to happen... and that I should not beat myself up too much over it all when an animal gets ill or passes away. I can only do the best that I can for them... and the reason that I try to avoid having a lot of animals (aside from it being un-affordable) is because I know how attached to them I get.
Anyways, after getting the little rooster sorted out I put the dogs in the dog yard... and began getting all my blankets off the clothes line where I had been airing them out for the last few days. I am unsure exactly how I injured my foot in all that followed... but I had all the blankets in a bundle under one arm, I let the dogs out (to go back to the studio) and they decided to make a beeline towards the road... where they had seen a neighbor a few minutes before.
So, I went to run uphill after them and within the first few steps... I noticed that something in my foot was feeling off because a jolt of pain shot up my leg from it every time it touched the ground. At that point, I just gritted my teeth, tossed the blankets onto the porch (causing me to almost fall over in the process from the pain in my foot as I shifted my weight) and then I continued my pursuit of the dogs.
By the time I got the dogs rounded up, I was limping really frigging hard... and the pain had become a constant shooting sensation that made it impossible to put any weight on the foot. Even now, it still hurts all these hours later... and it feels like there is a 'knotted cramp' in the center of my foot... but if I try to stretch it (or massage it) it hurts even worse.
All in all, I gave up on trying to walk on it very early in the day, ate one thousand milligrams of ibuprofen (to knock out the inflammation) and wound up spending a good bit of time working on that fictional material that I have been writing lately. It assuredly was not the 'productive day planting stuff' that I had hoped for... but I felt like I at least used my time to work on something meaningful.
Keeping my morale up, has become 'the name of the game' (so to speak) and after building all this momentum over the previous many weeks... I do not want myself to get sidetracked by an injury. In other words, if I am going to be stuck sitting around for a few days (as I heal) then I want to do it in a way that continues to bolster my morale as I head into doing all the stuff that I want to do during the coming warmer months.
Well, on that note I am going to wrap this entry up and get on with the editing and posting phase of things. I hope that everyone is doing well. Ciao for now.
