As I was saying....

Sorry for the long break in posting but I've been one busy gal. Recovery is a lot of work! First I had to start pooping again, so I had to take new "motility" medicine plus antibiotics and get extra feedings to get things moving again after the surgery. I have finished all my medicines and I can now safely report: Mission Accomplished. I am pooping really well. In fact, my tortoise dad declared a Poop-mergency just yesterday as I outdid myself. What can I say, I'm an overachiever like my tortoise mom.

I also had physical therapy twice a day to get the nerves to my back legs working again (stay tuned, there's a video). But I think what helped me most was getting to walk around the kitchen. Wow, that sure perked me up! There are new places to explore and barricade boxes to examine. I still can't figure out why I can't climb through this one box that has a dark label on it, a la Roadrunner cartoons. Some things are just fascinating at tortoise eye view.

I get questions about what I'm eating and what the set-up looks like where I spend 90% of my time. So here's the scoop: For now I stay in the bathtub of the guest bathroom. I have a little box at one end of the tub, away from the basking light so I can cool down when I need to. Plus I like my privacy when I'm getting a little shut-eye. The lights are on a timer and hang from an extra shower rod at a height that keeps the warm end of the tub in the low to 90s and the cool end in the mid 80s. I have to move around to manage my body temperature--there's no thermostat under my shell!

I have pesticide-free timothy hay in my tub so I don't have to slip and slide on newspapers when I walk. I guess I could try eating some but I haven't been interested in that. I do get Oxbow Critical Care powdered timothy hay and vitamins in my feeding tube. Then they flush the tube with water after. Talk about fine dining! Sometimes it was all a bit too much and I would open my mouth with the overflow, so they had to cut back on the amount. Lately I've been getting 20ml of the Oxbow hay with a 20ml water chaser twice a day. I was getting 15ml of water midday but yesterday my tortoise mom decided I needed to cut back.

I'll write more soon. The World Series is on and I'm a big Derek Jeter fan. You might think this is funny, but the tv really gets my attention. I don't like it when the dog next door barks, so I always cringe, but I listen to the tv. I might watch if they'd let me but so far I'm limited to easy to clean places--something about poop-mergencies.