I brought Raedthinn home from the vet four hours ago, settled him in an promptly attempted a half-hour catnap that lasted more like three. So, huzzah.
Anyway, Raedthinns second round of work resulted in some changes. Instead of trying to lash the loose incisors and the bone sliver back to the jaw, the vet simply removed them and closed him back up. So he’s short quite a number of teeth. Shouldn’t affect him much in the future when it comes to eating cat food, but for now he’s restricted to wet food.
He has suffered repeated trauma to his mouth… the initial injury, two separate operations. This no doubt hurts, even though he’s been medicated. Since the return home he has camped out under a bed.
Attempts at photography have not been terribly successful. This is about the best photo so far. I doubt that this new look is permanent… but man does he look unhappy.
Raedthinn is back at the vet. His incisors are sorts floating freely, rather than being locked back in place. So for the third time in three days, he’s going under, this time to get his teeth, and the chunk of bone they’re attached to, sewn or wired back into place.
He has returned home. The damages: he is short one fang and the bone immediately in front of it. The incisors in front between the two fangs were also yanked forward, separating a “sheet” of bone from the jaw. The vet basically just jammed them back into place and is confident that’ll heal up. So Raedthinn is on soft food for a couple weeks. The jaw isn’t as broken as the initial xrays suggested to the first vet, though apparently there might be a fracture right down the middle. It didn’t need to be wired together.
He needs to be on pain meds for several days. Shocking, I know.
Thanks to all who helped out. Costs were substantially less than expected due to the lack of wiring. Costs were less than donations. While I’d love to use the excess funds to go to Vegas or some such, I suppose the right thing to do would be to offer refunds to anyone who contributed. So, if you donated to the Tip Jar and would like a refund, partial or full, just send an email.
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Since I brought him home I’ve been trying to get a photo that shows his new situation, but without holding him down and forcing his mouth open – which I’m not going to do – it seems to be an impossible task.
I gave the vet clinic about five seconds to get up and running this morning and then called in to check on how Raedthinn is doing. I’ve been freaking out since I left him there yesterday because the last I saw of him, he was sedated really heavily to take X-rays… and at the time he looked very, very dead (look close and you could *just* make out breathing). So that was my last image of him. Anyway, the receptionist went back and took a look at him… he’s “bright eyed and bushy tailed.” So, huzzah. At some point later in the day he will see the surgeon, but at least he got over that first hump, getting over sedation. Cats and chemicals… not a good combination.
Many thanks to all those who have contributed. I’ll leave the “Raedthinn Restoration Sale” up and running for a while more.
UPDATE, 5 hours later: I spoke briefly with a receptionist at the clinic. Raedthinn is out of surgery, came through it well. Apparently the damage wasn’t as bad as the vet yesterday suggested; the jaw as a whole apparently wasn’t broken and didn’t need wiring together, but a piece of the jaw broke off with the one wonky fang, and that chunk, and the fang, have been removed. I’m hoping to speak to the surgeon later today when I pick up Raedthinn and get more definition on just what all happened.
Since the damage wasn’t as bad as expected, I’m hoping that the bill won’t be as bad as expected. So… I’ll leave the “sale” up for a little longer, but I’ll hazard a guess and say that donations are probably no longer needed. Of course, if you really *want* to, say, to say “thanks for all the cat photos, aerospace pictures and glitteringly brilliant political analyses…”
Today, Buttons and Speedbump have been their usual selves. But Fingers has been in hiding… she knows Raedthinn’s not here, and seems to be quite disturbed by that.
Raedthinn has suffered an injury requiring surgery tomorrow (managed to break his jaw – I think on the basement stairs – and it needs to be wired together). This has turned a “blah” Sunday into a rather dark time.
This won’t be cheap. So, if you’ve wanted to buy all the US Aerospace Projects publications, here’s your shot: all 18 Bomber Projects, all four Transport Projects, all three Spacecraft Projects, all two Launch Vehicle Projects. Normally $115, but until I say otherwise, lets say… $75. Slightly more than 1/3 off. Or if you just want to help with the Raedthinn Restoration, click on the “Tip Jar” and help till your significant other hurts you.
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UPDATE: Raedthinn is back; sale has ended.
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Raedthinn, like most cats, seemed to take his damage in stride. I saw him several times this morning, looking perfectly normal and content, even though his jaw must’ve been broken; I’m guessing he must’ve bit down on something this AM while I was out getting some grub and shoved the broken bit of jaw out of place. But even so, when I came home about noon, he was laying calmly on the bed and just gave me a look like “Sup.” I saw the tooth, checked him out, promptly freaked, called the emergency vet and dashed off.
I suggested to the vet that if he could be patched up so the tooth stayed like that, Raedthinn would look the utter badass. Sadly, the tooth is still firmly attached to a bit of jaw… a bit of jaw that has busted off and need to be put back in place. It appears his lower mandible is in three distinct pieces just now. How *exactly* Raedthinn accomplished this I’ve no good idea other than late last night he went bugnuts and dashed up the basement stairs, banging into everything on the way. I don’t know if the broken jaw is a result of the mad dash, or the mad dash was a result of the broken jaw.
Mikhail Lesin was Russia’s Minister of Press from 1999 to 2004 and founded Russia Today, a propaganda arm of the Kremlin, and amassed the sort of fortune that public servants are generally not expected to amass legally. On Thursday he keeled over at the DuPont Circle Hotel in D.C., cause unknown (or at least unannounced). Let the speculatin’ begin! Hookers? Drugs? Polonium?
Meridian, Idaho, is a town outside Boise that the Wall Street Journal has declared the best city in the US. Factors include low crime, low unemployment, that sort of thing.
The problem: by advertising how great it is, you’re inviting the likes of wealthy but dimwitted Californian and New Yorker hipsters to come in and buy up the place and turn it into another overpriced urban hellhole.
Of course, the better thing to do would be to build walls around major urban centers and then begin to slowly take them apart. Places like Manhattan can be appropriated by the federal government under eminent domain; the existing buildings can be emptied out and the whole place turned into a “museum of the dark age of high population density.” The current populations can be dispersed to a multitude of small towns built along the lines of Meridian… this would require the construction of several hundred such new towns. Most of northern Canada seems pretty empty, so the urban hipsters and whatnot can be relocated to the arctic circle.
The New Horizons spacecraft performed a course correction maneuver, imparting a 128 mile per hour nudge putting the probe on course to intercept the Kuiper Belt object 2014 MU69 on January 1, 2019. 2014 MU69 is about 45 kilometers in diameter.
Color artwork from NASA circa 1964 depicting Apollo-derived logistics spacecraft. The BALLOS (BALlistic LOgistic Spacecraft) was studied by several corporations such as Lockheed and McDonnell-Douglas as well as NASA; the artwork was done *for* NASA, but it’s unclear if it was done *by* NASA.
The full resolution versions of these artworks have been posted into the 2015-11 folder in the APR Extras Dropbox. Please check out the APR Patreon!
A magazine ad from 1963 depicting an S-IV stage (with six RL-10 rocket engines, as separate from the later, larger S-IVb stage with a single J-2 engine) staging from a Saturn I first stage. It should be noted that the RL-10 is *still* a top-of-the-line rocket engine, more than fifty years later.
Sure, computer generated art might be more accurate and clear, but good ol’ fashioned paint has a life to it.
