Humph was finally home.
The relief was huge.
Nothing could possibly go wrong now.
And then his kidneys failed.
To be continued…
So it seems I’ve left this cliffhanger un-answered for several months.
After 8 months in the wilderness (i.e the garden of the block of flats that adjoins our house) Humphrey the tortoise had returned home.
But after a few weeks we realised that he was not his usual, athletic self.
Now this isn’t an easy call to make if your pet is generally as lively as a paperweight. But when he stopped eating and, indeed, moving, we decided a trip to the vets was needed.
And so I found myself in the waiting room of a vets in south Manchester, waiting for an expert opinion.
It’s interesting to see how worried people seemed waiting with their pets, compared to a GP waiting room.
Maybe your symptoms need to be a bit worse before you’ll spend £90 to see a vet, compared to pitching up for a freebie at the local GP surgery, so it’s reasonable to be more concerned?
It could be because you get anxious waiting with your pets at the vet, while it’s fair game to dump Nan and her zimmer at the front door of the surgery while you pop into town for a few bits, planning to pick her up later.
Probably.
I’m not saying that people forget, but in my surgery we still have three confused octogenarians sitting perched in the practice lost-property cupboard, left over from the flu-jab clinics.
Maybe we just like our pets more.
Perhaps because they like us more.
Dogs love their owners, who provide them with a home, food and attention. But I feel that’s more a case of Stockholm syndrome; the psychological phenomenon where hostages fall in love with their kidnappers.
Cats and their owners do the same, just the other way around.
When our turn came, the vet was worried by Humph’s condition.
Turns out they shouldn’t rattle when you shake them.
But only having one tortoise, I didn’t have much frame of reference to know how perky a tortoise should be. It’s like when your GP does an examination – it’s why you have two ears, breasts, eyes or goolies. You have two so that I can compare one with the other.
“He’s quite frail.” She explained.
I advised her that, what with their shells, a tortoise shouldn’t be too beefy or he won’t fit into his house.
It was like the time I bulked up so much in the gym that I couldn’t fit back out the door.
Sorry.
Not the gym.
Greggs.
I bulked up so much in Greggs that I couldn’t fit back out the door.
But it was more than that.
It turns out that if you spend a British winter sleeping rough, if the temperature gets too far below zero your blood freezes solid in your blood vessels, and that can have a disastrous effect on your kidneys.
And Humph had gone into kidney failure.
So he was admitted to the tortoise renal unit at the vets (a tank in the back where, rather than an extensive program of medication and dialysis, they kept him cosy and tried to tempt him with curly kale).
The vet took me to one side and advised me this could cut either way, and we should consider the possibility of him being put to sleep.
But…
The four-legged hockey puck somehow turned a corner.
Like the latest Richard Osman novel review, he turned out to be “un-put-downable!”
And he continued to pick up.
And, tortoise fans, he is still doing well.
He is, as we speak, in my kitchen trying to hump one of my crocs. And if you’ve never seen a tortoise with an erection, try and picture a massive, sexy drawing pin.
He was restored to, as far as you can tell with a tortoise, full health.
And then he set fire to our house…
To be continued…
Dr Brown is Getting Better 