So one of the other fronts in our pet rabbit's health: his nose. While he was sitting on the vet tech's table I happened to kneel down and notice he had a lot of boogers. White, gooey ones. More than he should've had. The vet tech was able to wrangle a few minutes with the senior veterinarian, one of the people the clinic's built around, and one of the top ``exotic'' vets in the area. He had a few questions for us, mostly about how our rabbit was eating. Our pet rabbit got a rectal thermometer reading. We got a new antibiotic prescription and another fearsome charge for the savings accounts.
And so we spent two weeks giving him an antibiotic for whatever was clogging up his nose, and a probiotic to make sure his intestinal bacteria stayed healthy through this. We also realized just how his sneezing had gotten to be this sloppy wet sound recently. He's always sneezed a lot for a rabbit, but it had been this dry, buzzing noise, the way an old-style amusement park ride's seat restraints buzz-lock. Not so much this time.
Ten days of that had cleared up the infection ... mostly, but not completely. Another couple minutes with the senior veterinarian and another fearsome charge for the savings account and we had another ten-day course of the new antibiotic, plus probiotic, plus a second new antibiotic that has to be kept in a protective bottle to shield it from ordinary light. They warned us our rabbit probably wouldn't like it and he did not like the taste on first exposure. We feared our good luck with him liking every medicine we've ever had to give him had worn off. But he's fickle, or perhaps just needs to get used to things. By the third day of it he viewed the new antibiotic as among his favorite things and would grab at the syringe like it was offering candy.
With that second course of a double-barrel antibiotic treatment done ... well, his nose looks better still and his sneezing is mostly normal again. But as I'd warned, he's at the point where he isn't ever going to be normal again. The best we can have is that he's managing well. For now, his nose isn't our big worry. But he is on a third round of antibiotics, shedding the light-sensitive one, now.
Our big worry is ... oh, you may want me to keep that behind a cut, when we get to that.
Trivia: The Apollo 11 Lunar Module equipment did not include binoculars. It did have a monocular, made from half a set of commercial binoculars made by Leitz and modified at the Manned Spacecraft Center. Source: First Man: The Life Of Neil A Armstrong, James R Hansen.
Currently Reading: The Camera Does The Rest: How Polaroid Changed Photography, Peter Buse.
PS: Reading the Comics, July 16, 2016: More To Life Than Mathematics Edition, in a good bit of art talk that includes no images.