If you don't want to read about sadness, maybe take a pass on this one folks.
Today was... not a good day.
One of my cats has clearly not been feeling well, as she hasn't been eating much. While my wife is a veterinarian, she's in hospice and palliative care, and generally doesn't need or have the bigger diagnostic systems, and doctors shouldn't treat their own family members anyway. So, I took our cat to the best clinic around, to get some blood work and maybe an X-Ray...
And the results of that weren't clear, but also weren't comforting, so I spent the rest of the day at an even bigger clinic that has radiologists around on the weekend for an ultrasound...
... and then a biopsy.
Full diagnosis isn't in yet. But cancer is the most likely. And, for the better form of that, if she tolerates chemotherapy... she has maybe a year. We can hold it off for a while. We can keep her comfortable. So, maybe it can be a mostly good year, a year worth having. But... it probably won't be a great year, and it probably won't be much more than a year.
Other than her care, the important, and kind of hard, thing is now to not allow knowing that to ruin the year. We have to soak up her goodness, and give her as much joy as possible, before she's gone. Allowing our grief before the fact to get in the way of enjoying that limited span, or otherwise seep into our lives and tarnish it, would be a travesty.
But, holding that anticipation at bay, not focusing on it, not letting it lead to bad decisions or fouling the time we have, can be hard. Knowing that grief before passing happens, however, is one key to managing it. So, here I recognize the potential, so I will be more capable of handling it as it comes.
Today was... not a good day.
One of my cats has clearly not been feeling well, as she hasn't been eating much. While my wife is a veterinarian, she's in hospice and palliative care, and generally doesn't need or have the bigger diagnostic systems, and doctors shouldn't treat their own family members anyway. So, I took our cat to the best clinic around, to get some blood work and maybe an X-Ray...
And the results of that weren't clear, but also weren't comforting, so I spent the rest of the day at an even bigger clinic that has radiologists around on the weekend for an ultrasound...
... and then a biopsy.
Full diagnosis isn't in yet. But cancer is the most likely. And, for the better form of that, if she tolerates chemotherapy... she has maybe a year. We can hold it off for a while. We can keep her comfortable. So, maybe it can be a mostly good year, a year worth having. But... it probably won't be a great year, and it probably won't be much more than a year.
Other than her care, the important, and kind of hard, thing is now to not allow knowing that to ruin the year. We have to soak up her goodness, and give her as much joy as possible, before she's gone. Allowing our grief before the fact to get in the way of enjoying that limited span, or otherwise seep into our lives and tarnish it, would be a travesty.
But, holding that anticipation at bay, not focusing on it, not letting it lead to bad decisions or fouling the time we have, can be hard. Knowing that grief before passing happens, however, is one key to managing it. So, here I recognize the potential, so I will be more capable of handling it as it comes.
