Wasted time

Last night, my novel-writing teacher described her creative process. “It’s not very efficient, but then, being creative is rarely efficient.”

I’m efficient in a great many ways. The journalistic writing that earns my paycheck, generally, is efficient. But other aspects of my life are not.

I walked around on a broken sesamoid bone for six months before I knew it was broken. How much further along in my healing I would be if I’d known from the outset that it was broken.

Isis has displayed serious anxiety for more than two years, and we only started her on Prozac a month ago. Could I have saved the expense of four root canals, and would she not have worn all her teeth down if I’d put her on Prozac sooner?

We’ve had Leo since late June and the dogs still can’t be loose in the same room together. How many months will it be before our dogs can cohabitate? Is there something I could have done differently from day one that would have made a difference? How much time have I wasted doing the wrong thing?

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Leo is still recovering from his surgery. The day after, he was leaping around so aggressively that I worried he would hurt himself, so we went back to the vet to get a cone and some sedatives. I’ve been very sparing with the sedatives, only giving them to him for his own safety, and not because, like, I’d like him to go to sleep and shut up for a few hours.

His incision looked fine to me, so I didn’t make him wear the cone. I didn’t realize that he would be more likely to lick the incision as it heals because it itches. The whole area looked inflamed to me on Tuesday so I took him back to the vet. They said it was fine. It looked inflamed and oozy to me on Wednesday, but I didn’t want to be a hysterical dog mom who brought him in every single day, so I waited until Friday. When they told me it was infected. Was it already infected on Tuesday? How much faster he would have healed if we started him on the antibiotics three days sooner!

So he’s pretty much wearing the cone all the time. I take it off for training exercises and walks. It looks better, but I’ll feel better when the scab falls off. He’s not going back to daycare until that happens.