Tag Archives: post op

Maybe I should just hire a staff vet…

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It’s Groundhog Day. Again. I schlepped poor Cordelia over to Delaware to get Spayed this morning. It was one of those things that was supposed to come “free with purchase” from the shelter, but after the various go arounds with getting Anya’s eye fixed up, I was more comfortable taking both of them to my own vet. That, of course, means paying all the freight for their medical care myself. Fine. It’s only money.

I feel like we’ve spent an inordinate amount of time dealing with vets these last three months with multiple visits for both Cordy and Anya. I like to imagine we’re going to get a break now that Cordy is finally “fixed.” Given my luck with animal health, I’m trying to mentally prepare for more of the same. If we can fall into a routine of annual visits, that’s great. If it goes the other way, well, we’ll muddle through that too.

The vet says Cordy did well and sent her home with a cone and some pain meds. She isn’t a big fan of the cone. She still doesn’t like to be handled even at the best of times, so hopefully the cone stays on. Catching her and getting it refitted or applying one of the other options would be one of those things I just can’t quite manage to do as a one man band.

I should apologize in advance to anyone I need to deal with over the next 7-10 days. I may be physically elsewhere, but I’ll be entirely focused on what this cat is doing and running every conceivable, statistically improbable what if scenario in my head. Yeah. It’ll be a good time for sure. 

What we’ve learned…

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After three days with Anya closeted away under medical supervision, we’ve learned a couple of things:

My girl is a perfectly happy cat, doing normal cat stuff, right up until the point where it’s time to take her medicine. Drops, pills, or even just generally being held result in adverse consequences for those attempting to make her do what she doesn’t want to do. Otherwise, though, she’s happy to receive the attention of her temporary keepers.

She’s eating, and drinking, and pooping, and getting the meds she needs to get over the hump following her eye surgery. It’s as good a result as I could hope for a few days after surgery.

I’d be lying if I said part of me doesn’t feel just a little vindicated after claiming so many struggles trying to get her through the first 30 days of treatment. I honestly was starting to wonder if I was somehow gaslighting myself about how hard it was to get this animal to take her meds. The professionals, however, have confirmed that she can, indeed, get spicy.

I’m glad to have confirmation that it wasn’t just me somehow being ragingly incompetent. However, it raises other issues. Unless Anya learns a bit more tolerance to handling and being medicated as she gets older, it could be well near impossible for me to single handedly deliver any kind of even slightly involved or complex home care. Sooner or later, it feels like we’ll inevitably run into a situation where following the best possible medical advice simply isn’t feasible because the patient refuses to cooperate.

That’s not an ideal scenario in a cat with FHV who is likely to need some level of treatment periodically throughout her life. In my more pessimistic moments, I foresee a series of hard decisions where we have to weigh treating the illness versus treating the patient. At some point there has to be a compromise between the best possible treatment and what’s physically possible. Now that we’ve addressed what I hope will be her biggest medical problem, I think we’ll be making future decisions based on quality of life overall versus the often simpler calculus of what’s medically possible.

When the time comes, someone please remind me that sometimes the best action is no action at all. I always find that hard to remember when I’m in the moment.