We had our visit with the vet. I was given two options and chose what I felt was right, given the circumstances. Ruth was more attentive, vocal and combative on this trip. That combined with how she has been acting the past two days without food told me the time isn’t right just yet.
I got to see what is causing all of the problems. It looks like a small football on the underneath side of her tongue and it’s got a white tab at the end. That is a result of saliva calcifying. So it’s understandable why she is having problems, it would bother me as well. We talked about surgery for a moment. They would have to sedate her and then check the margins before they cauterized it off. Thankfully the surgeon on duty today was the other doc that I trust, she took care of Bear for years. She said that since I can’t give her pain medicine that it wouldn’t be recommended plus it’s very vascular and it would probably bleed for a bit. She has operated on two cats with the same thing previously and said that it turned into disasters. It would be the worst possible thing that I could do. So I took that advice, no surgery for my gal.
My choices were ….
#1 – Give her some fluids, a small dose of a steroid [in the hopes of shrinking the tumor] and another shot of the long term acting antibiotic. This would buy us some additional time, probably about a week possibly a little longer.
#2 – Make today her last day.
So obviously I chose # 1. I got the fluids for free. I told them I have some at home but given her attitude there is no way I could give them to her. At least I got something for free, even if it was something small.
We got home and no more crossed the threshold of the door and she wanted out of that cat carrier. I thought she was going to gnaw at me but I carefully and quickly opened the door and she bolted like lighting. She crawled to her hiding spot, which is under the couch. She stayed there until around 3p when I noticed her in the hallway by my bedroom door. She was a little more perky. I know the fluids made her feel better and hopefully the other medicine she got will kick in and she will improve if only for a short time.
She is back to eating, it’s still small but hey I am not picky. What she is doing now is an improvement from where she was at. I have a follow-up appointment booked for Saturday just in case things didn’t improve. I am pleased with what I am seeing thus far, as long as it continues I will cancel that appointment.
The next time she goes back to the vet it will probably be her last visit. I don’t want to continue to ride this emotional teeter totter it’s not something that I can sustain long term. My life is a mess right now, I am all over the board from an emotional standpoint plus while I know I shouldn’t be concerned I am worried a little bit about my job. I talked with my boss today and he said not to worry because he feels I don’t take much time off. Yeah but I try to use my allotment of time or come close to it. I’ve got 3 days left which is still comfortable but that can fly by in a hurry. I will have to be careful on how I use what I have left. I can tell you for sure without a doubt that when she passes if it’s during the week I will need a day. If it’s on Sunday I will need a Monday. Otherwise I should be fine. I hope that when she passes it happens at a more convenient time so that I can save my PTO but hey if I have to use it, I will. She is my family.
I’m proud of my girl for being brave and fighting, I think I have proven my love to her and she is well aware of it. I hope that whatever amount of time we have left together will be spent with love, caring and compassion. It was a very tough choice and I honestly wanted to let her go today to get it over with. However, if I did that I would never know if she would bounce back, so I have some peace of mind. Now I know I will want another miracle to happen next time but looking at this from multiple perspectives I don’t know that it something that will happen. Timing is a great part of it as well as what her odds would be and how much time I would actually get. If it’s another week for what I am spending it’s would be costing me more to keep her going than to let her go. The strange thing is that her and her sister have cost me the least amount of money and have been to the vet the least out of their entire family. I am watching the others when they lick their lips wrong I shudder and think are they going to get it too? I am told it’s not transmittable. I hope all of them are with me for a very long time but facing facts they are older so my time with all of them is limited. We just have to hope for the best. It’s times like these that remind me to savor each and every moment with them and that I do.
On a different subject. I thought it would be prudent to check with my city to see if they got my recent payment, since I switched banks. I was shocked when I stopped in and they said nope it’s not here. I told the bank to send it last Friday. Well I came home and called, one part of the site said it was sent electronically and the other part said it was sent by a paper payment. Okay, so thinking maybe it got lost in the mail I wrote a manual check and delivered it myself. It was a couple hours later when I got a phone call from the city, it showed up in today’s mail. Well isn’t that just my luck. I thought as I was taking the payment over that I should just be patient but I dismissed that because I wanted to deal with the situation to know for sure that it was addressed and not lingering. Where I live apparently they have been stiffed on Water, Sewer & Trash bills so if your account falls past due they shut service off immediately. There is no warning and no waiting. So they offered me one of the checks back but I told them to apply both of them, I would rather have a credit balance, I know it will come in handy to help defer or defray the cost next month.
Today must be my lucky day because when I got back from taking the payment up, the grass cutters showed up. I was coming home to call that joker but thankfully I didn’t have to. Now he screwed himself because he should have cut twice this month but since he doesn’t know how to use a calendar he shouldn’t be back until next month, which means I get to pay a little less this month. He is due to come back twice in October and then we are done. Now I may need cutting done after our end date, at which point I would sooner reach out to my brother than call this guy. However, he is so absent minded he might actually cut which would be fine with me. Last year I felt sorry for him and gave him extra money. This year if he cuts past the contract date I will consider it a donation of his services for all of the times he has fucked me over this year and I won’t pay him a penny. Contractually I wouldn’t be obligated and I would make him sue me to recover his money, it’s small change and not worth it. I’d actually love for circumstances to present like that it would make me feel good. However, as long as he honors his present commitment then I am fine and were done forever. I will worry about finding a replacement next year, which as I type this you and I both know it will be here so fast.
So baring any unforeseen emergencies I will be crawling out of bed a little before 6a and making my way to the office. Where I hope that I will be left alone so that I can finish up the large task I am working on before I get to move to another large and past due task. Timing is everything. Last time I was out for a day I had 150 messages and reduced that to 50 messages which turned to 25 messages and presto I am all caught up. I have no idea what I will be walking into and frankly don’t care. I will deal with it and do my best but I can’t say that I will go above and beyond because while I am told it’s appreciated right now I am not feeling it. I mean how hard would it have been for my boss to say why don’t you work from home for the rest of the day? I mean offer it help me out, since you said your there for me. Your there for me but to a limit and when we reach that limit you will run over me like a loose dog on the freeway. Don’t get me wrong I am thankful to have a job, especially when so many other people are losing their jobs. We have had a lot of lay offs in my general geographical area and there are more coming, it’s sad and depressing. Remember that people have emotions, business has no emotion it’s purely driven by money.
Well on to the rest of my evening. I have a large knot in my back that I need to work on trying to get rid of. Heat hasn’t done the trick and napping didn’t help either. TGIF tomorrow! What a week. Next week I will be on-call and not looking forward to that given my Ruth situation but I know I will make it.
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