What I do know is that, no matter how Right™ you try to live, no matter how hard you try to properly see to those in your care, no matter how much control you try to exert on existence, it doesn't seem to matter. Sometimes, it feels like the more you try, the more it blows back on you.
I'm one of those people that ascribes to the whole "live within your means" thing and "save for a rainy day" and "save for retirement" ethos. For the most part, I've been able to meet those aspirations. That said, watching how others live frequently makes me feel like people who don't are often rewarded for flauting the fable of the ant and the grasshopper …or, at least, aren't as penalized for spendthrift behavior in a way that's adequately proportionate (which can feel the same as being rewarded).
At any rate, while I don't lack for things I truly need – and it viscerally rankles me when people ascribe the term "need" to things that are, at best, "wants" – and I do indulge in occasional luxuries or self-pampering, I don't do so with the frequency that it seems many people I know do. I shepherd my money.
What I do tend to spend on are things like healthy diet for myself, my wife and my pets. Similarly, I spend for regular/prophylactic medical care for myself , my wife and my pets. Unfortunately, there's years like this one – and felt most acutely on days like today – where it all feels like wasted effort. It's like tilting at windmills. My autoimmune arthritis continues to progress – if more slowly than it otherwise might. My wife's been in the middle of a months-long Chron's flare that looks to have her on a trajectory to another hospitalization. And today?
Today I found out that my dog (we have two – one that's notionally my wife's and one that's notionally mine), Lady, has a large tumor in her liver. I found this out because, as I was working from home, writing automation for a customer's cloud environment, Lady started an episode of repeated pancaking.
In the span of a little less than 30 minutes (from a hair before 11:00 to around 11:25 or so), she was falling flat for no apparent reason. First, I'd seen her get up from her one pillow to go get a drink. On the way, I saw her pancake out of the corner of my eye. It didn't look normal, but, I told myself, "maybe she just stumbled and it looked wrong because you saw it from the corner of your eye. Best to keep an eye on her." Self-delusion is grand. Unfortunately, as I feared, it wasn't normal. After getting her drink and starting to walk back from the dish, she shuddered, briefly, then pancaked again. She got right back up, though, so I didn't immediately panic. But then she went to go lay with our other dog, and pancaked again while taking a step up onto the main stairs. At this point, the sinking feeling really set in: barely controlled panic. I SMSed my wife to tell her to hurry home with the car before calling the vet to arrange an emergency visit. Between the SMS and call to the vet, Lady pancaked one more time before I brought her up on the couch. She had a worried look and I wanted to be able to soothe her. Donna eventually got home and sat on the arm of the couch next to Lady. Lady sat up to say hello ...then toppled back over against me.
Wife home, I went upstairs to get dressed so we could gather up the dog and head to the vet. The on-couch toppling was the last such event before heading to the vet.
We were able to run Lady and Kaiya (our other dog) outside to go to the bathroom without further pancaking from Lady. We were able to get them leashed and harnessed up for the trip (they actually had a scheduled appointment for booster shots, this afternoon) with no pancaking. Lady strode enthusiastically out to the car and hopped up into the back seat without any sign of lack of sure-footedness. Similarly, when we got to the vet, she hopped right down out of the car and did her boxery walk into the vet's office – all with no sign of problems.
The vet-tech took care of Kaiya's booster shot while we waited with Lady for the vet. Kaiya was in an irritable mood – she tends to be leash-reactive, especially at the vet's – so I had Donna run her home while I stayed with Lady. The office staff took us to a room to wait for an available vet.
Eventually he came into the examining room. We discussed what had prompted the change in plans for the day. He decided that some initial diagnostics were in order, but that it would take an hour or so to do them. So he offered the opportunity for us to leave rather than wait in the veterinary facility. Given that the pancaking happened a skosh before lunchtime and it was now 12:45 (and some of my panic had either semi-subsided or I'd been able to compartment it off), I was beginning to feel hangry. So, we took the opportunity to go home so I could get lunch.
Vet called a hair before 15:00 to come talk about Lady. We rushed back down. He indicated that there were some troubling indications in her initial bloodwork. Specifically, here blood sugar levels were critically low – and they'd tested twice to verify that there wasn't a labwork error. That had caused him to do some preliminary imaging. He indicated he wasn't an imaging specialist, but that it had looked like there might be a mass near her liver.
We discussed what this could mean – especially combined with the pancaking and blood sugar levels – and appropriate next steps. We opted to have their sonographer do a more-detailed imaging and analysis. This would take about an hour. Eventually, the results came back: a large, consolidated mass in her liver.
Obviously, my heart sunk through the floor and my voice wanted to betray me. But, I gritted through discussing prognosis and next steps. Because the mass seems to be consolidate/confined, he recommended an oncology consult and offered a referral. There's a chance that, given early enough surgery and that the tumor is as confined as it looks, she could potentially recover in a way where she'd have decent quality of life and not suffer from a premature-for-her-breed death ...but that the oncologist would likely be able to give a better idea.
We started talking numbers, both for today's vet visit, plus likely fees for consult, surgery, etc. Nice thing about numbers is it gives me something non-emotional to focus on. I was doing a running-tally of the current and projected numbers in my head versus how much I knew to be in our "rainy day"/vacation fund. The numbers were close but notionally wouldn't require making a life/death decision based solely on financial capability, and might not even require having to resort to credit cards or tapping into the investment-account (or, as I sometimes refer to it, "the really rainy-day account"). We agreed to a plan of action: he'd provide an oncology referral and steroids to help encourage her liver to release more sugar into her blood; we'd alter her diet to reduce simple carbs and increase protein and fibre intake (irony is that, with a hypoglycemia-inducing liver tumor, the diet change isn't "give her more sweets" but "feed her like she has diabetes") while simultaneously changing from twice-a-day feeding to an every-four-hours schedule (though same basic daily caloric intake) to help smooth out the glycemic peaks-and-valleys; we'd schedule an appointment with a canine oncologist and proceed based on the outcome of that meeting.
Given that we didn't get home till after 17:30 and tomorrow being a national holiday, won't even be able to call to schedule the consult till Friday. I've asked for multiple referrals so that I can take her to whoever's able to see her first. Fortunately, there's enough in the "rainy day"/vacation fund that I'm able to accommodate a "speed trump costs" strategy. In the face of (personal) tragedy, it's always good to look for things to be thankful for where you can find them.
Obviously, as of this writing, haven't had the oncology consult: everything could turn out to be moot.
Regardless of this particular incident, this will make three dogs to have been afflicted with cancer:
- Our first rescue-bullie, Lana, contracted a treatable cancer, but, it was discovered coincident to discovering she had advanced stenosis. Given her age, the stenosis and the toll treatment would take on her absent those other considerations, we opted to schedule a euthanization (so we could take her home for a few weeks of pampering).
- A month later, our second rescue-bullie, Puckett, had manifested skin lesions. A vet visit revealed them to be from cutaneous lymphoma: an aggressive, untreatable (in dogs, at least) form of cancer. Vet predicted a possible remaining lifespan of six months. We got half that when the cancer spread to his lungs.
- With Lady, our fourth rescue-bullie, I don't yet know the outcome. I suspect the worst, however. That seems to be the way of things.
By a small miracle (at least, it seems that way, at this point) our third rescue-bullie, Cira, was not afflicted with cancer. No... At just shy of nine years old (a skosh longer than six years after joining our household), she died of a sudden-onset, complete renal failure.
So, yeah, our pup-luck has been "not great". I mean, to date, we've been blessed with five really wonderful dogs, but three – and likely a fourth – we'll have only been able to share our home with for far shorter times than is normal for their main breeds' life-expectancies. And that's in spite of the previously mentioned attentive care.
In short, dog-owning life has had a way of really making us feel like the Universe is, at best, indifferent, many times cruelly-so.
