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Chandra,
First of all, it is great that he wants the food.
What is the liquid food you are feeding him? A full day's food would be
about 250 calories for an average sized cat. With most foods this amounts
to about 100 cc's per day. But the food you are feeding may be more densely
caloric, so the amount he is eating might be enough. It is a lot more than a lot
of cats with cancer get into them, anyway.
In terms of the shots, a vet would have to prescribe
them. It is possible the vet tech could get hold of the vet by phone and get her
ok and then give the shots, but you would have to ask her to do that. I would
guess that you would not have much luck contacting a new vet with this request,
as it is an unusual regimen to begin with and I doubt that a vet who does
not normally use it would be willing to do it on your first visit and without
having any relationship with you to talk it through. It might be worth a try,
though. If you want to try that, I would talk to the vet tech at your vet's
office and ask which vet is covering for your vet, as there must be someone, and
try that vet. If not, ask that tech for a recommendation for another vet to see.
Your vet knows Buddha has cancer and can not expect that you would not need to
see a vet for two weeks at the stage he is at, so I can only assume that she
left some instructions about this with the tech...
In terms of the emotions you are going through, it is,
unfortunately, what we all go through. I have stayed up most of the night
for weeks checking on sick cats. I second guess everything while it is
going on, and then worse after they pass away. What you need to realize is
that this disease is going to kill Buddha at some point, hopefully later rather
than sooner, but this means that you can not save him. There are things
that might extend his life and make him feel better for a while, but you can not
save him, in the end. That is the hardest thing to accept, when they are
our babies and we provide for them and take care of them and feel like we should
just be able to fix everything that is wrong. We can not protect them in the
end. This does not mean that you don't have to make decisions, or that the
decisions do not ever make a difference in length or quality of life. But it
does mean that, whatever decisions we make, we do not have control over the
outcome or the ultimate event. I wish we did, but we don't. We can only
try to do things, as they come along, that seem most likely to help. The same
decision, like using a certain medication, can have good results or bad
results. We do not know what the result will be when we make the decision.
If the outcome seems good, we applaud ourselves. If it seems bad we ask how we
could ever have made that decision. But it was the same decision, whatever the
outcome, made with the same level of knowledge and the same good intent. We only
have control over the decisions, not their outcomes. If we could know the
outcome in advance, they would not be decisions. We would just know what to
do.
What I am saying may not help you. I know these things, but
they do not help me. Right now my Lucy, who has FeLV, seems to have gotten
Irritable Bowel Disease, with diarrhea going on 2 months and some weight loss,
because of a decision I made to not do surgery right away to remove a bladder
stone because I thought the surgery would stress her and possibly trigger her
FeLV into lymphoma, and I wanted to see if the stone could be dissolved by diet.
If that had worked, I would be really happy I did not rush into surgery as the
vet suggested. But because I waited, she had to be on Baytril, a really strong
antibiotic, for the month we waited to keep the urinary tract infection from the
bladder stone at bay, and I also had to change her diet twice. And she got
persistent diarrhea from this that never has gone away, which could eventually
lead to intestinal lymphoma, and she had to get the surgery anyway. So it
was a terrible decision I made. But only because the stone did not turn
out to be one that could dissolve. There was no way to know that.
But do I feel guilty? Oh my god, I feel so guilty and question every day why i
did not just do the surgery right away like the vet said. But you know what? If
I had done that and it had turned out to be the kind that dissolves and she had
complications or got lymphoma within months afterwards, I would feel sure I
should have waited. With cancer, this catch-22 situation is much worse, because
in the end, whenever that is, your baby is going to die from it. So
whatever you do, even if it seems to help him in the short-term and makes you
both happy now, will make you question yourself in the end at whatever point you
can not save him. It is what happens. Some people are stronger emotionally and
can get past this feeling quickly, are able to viscerally accept the lack of
control over the final event and know that they did what they could out of their
love for their cat. Or child. Or parent. But some of us are not good at
that and live with these feelings for years afterwards. They ebb and flow, of
course, but they are there. You are not crazy or alone if you feel these
things for a long time. But you are also not crazy or alone or unloving if
you are able to get yourself past these feelings and truly understand that you
are doing the best you can, that you love Buddha to no end, and that he knows
this.
Michelle
In a message dated 12/16/2005 4:47:44 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] writes:
We have an appointment to take him in for another |
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