Last week was one that taught me the value of that whole, “don’t count your chickens before they’ve hatched” nonsense. You’ll remember, dear reader, that I’d shared my experience about taking the dog to the vet after his dental surgery a couple weeks back…? On the Tuesday of last week, he had his follow-up appointment, which proved to be a scary, difficult proposition: his weight had fallen significantly because he still wasn’t eating enough, and he wasn’t shitting well, either, The vet and I talked options while the dog sat there and shook in quiet terror; a plan of action was devised, blood was taken for tests, and we parted with everyone having a sense of what to do (as well as, on my end, no small amount of medication to give the dog).
Turns out, the dog had a sense of what to do, himself. Immediately following the appointment, he started eating well again. Even before I’d started giving him the medicine, his appetite miraculously returned, and his shits returned to normal. Across the next two days, I watched as he inexplicably returned to normal in seemingly every way. Had the vet visit scared him straight…? I didn’t really care: he was eating again, he was shitting again. Everything was good. On Thursday night, I told Chloe that I felt that I could stop worrying about him for the first time since his surgery, two weeks earlier. I felt a physical sense of relief.
This, of course, was my mistake.
On Friday, I heard from the vet that the blood work was back and it was not good. It wasn’t necessarily bad, either; it was mostly inexplicable, with the potential for things to be very bad: his liver numbers had rocketed through the roof, and they had no explanation why: as I was told, it could be entirely benign and the result of his not eating and being irritated post-surgery, or it could be cancer that they’d never noticed before. Either was a possibility, equally likely, as were all manner of things in between: gallstones, post-surgery infection, a testing error…
New plans were drawn up, for a new appointment later this week. I was advised that it could get expensive (again!) and that there may need to be end of life conversations. I immediately felt guilt, as if my saying that I could let go of my worry was the cause of it all.