My wife’s cat is very sick, apparently his bladder is blocked. The worst part of this is that we found it out at 11:30 PM at an after hours vet. I might be getting ahead of myself, let’s rewind.
It started with my wife asking me to help her find the cat. I guessed he’d found a new hiding place, that happens in our house a fair amount of the time. I asked her the critical questions; whether any of the doors to the outside had been left open, and they hadn’t. So he was inside, therefor findable. After about ten minutes of searching I ended up finding him. We have a cat tree between the dining room and living room, and there’s a little hutch I found him in.
When I touched him, something felt off. I wasn’t sure what. I had her come get him out, and he seemed okay. She took him to his food, but he turned away from it. Immediately we’re worried. We try giving him cat treats, no luck. His breathing is shallow, and he has a spot on his stomach he’s very sensitive about. Neither of us can get him to purr, which is another red flag.
So my wife decides we are going to the after hours vet. She’s the only one earning money right now, she can make that decision. I can’t help if something happens, because I’m only useful as moral support. When we get there the vet tells us that she thinks that he’s blocked in the bladder and she wants to do x-rays and an ultrasound. Thank goodness the ultrasound was free, but between the exam and the x-rays it was somewhere between $400-$600. They confirmed that he is indeed blocked.
The thing was that this after hours vet was closing for the night, and he needed to have a catheter put in for the next 72 hours. We needed a 24 hour vet. At this point we were told that at a later point we could transfer him to a different vet to mitigate costs after he spent a night at the hospital, but this has since been disproven. Now we go to the 24 hour vet who tell us it is going to be somewhere in the area of $3000 to treat him, and we don’t get out of there until almost 1:00 AM. If my wife hadn’t qualified for credit I don’t know what would have happened.
Another difficulty is at this point I hadn’t eaten anything. So he’s checked in, we go home and I eat, she gets a shower. She’s at work today, I got lousy sleep.
This is a dangerous place for me to be in. High stress and bad sleep are two of my big danger markers for a breakdown, so I’m being really mindful for my own well being today.
I’ve pretty much given up on trying to make my application for grad school work, because it seems like the universe doesn’t want me to make it work. We can’t afford a move right now. I’m in a lot of emotional pain.
1 comment
I relate to this like you can’t imagine. My dog is undergoing cancer treatment, and the uncertainty, the stress and financial burden is absolutely crushing. For this to come at a time when you’re just starting to pull your shit together is, well, a monkey wrench to the face.
If there’s any way to make it less devastating, I’d say it’s to share the crisis with your wife as much as possible, keep communicating, venting, commiserating as much as possible. Because the worst thing you can do to yourself at a time like this is to withdraw into a shell and fester. Who knows, you may find a shared strength that will end up benefiting you both in other areas of life. Sometimes when you find yourself on a mission it can inspire other areas of self improvement.
Of course that’s me being as optimistic as possible because, well, what else can ya do. My first instinct was to go on a rant about the veterinary industry. But we’ve been thru the wringer and there’s no point in that. This is actually an interesting exercise to see if you can approach a problem from outside yourself (from the animal’s perspective) and just plow through it like a machine.