Epona - you've brought tears to my eyes, reading that. You did nothing wrong, honestly.
You know, my overriding feeling/memory of all of Charlie's problems is feeling overwhelmed and underprepared and somewhat impotent and not assertive enough every time I took him to the vet. He had so much prodding and poking. Every new thing that went wrong with him, they started from scratch wondering if it could be this or if it could be that rather than thinking "well, we know he's got a dodgy thyroid, let's see if it's related to that first" - and every single time (apart from when he had his teeth out, although that whole situation was kicked off by a thyroid event that went undetected for a while) it was his thyroid. He underwent 2 general anaesthetics looking for stuff that wasn't there. When his teeth were bad, the week before he had them out, the vet (not Ted, he was on holiday) had me syringing antacid into his mouth (banging against his teeth) twice a day, something that was unbelievably stressful for him, and completely unnecessary. She told me she did blood work and everything checked out so it must be something else, but she didn't check his thyroid numbers, and I didn't think to ask. I just assumed. Charlie went through so much unnecessary pain and stress for a couple of weeks because of that. Plus he underwent full mouth clearance while his thyroid and liver levels were dangerously high. Because it slipped through the cracks. All these extra things that he had done, investigations and pointless treatments, all contributed to his hatred of being handled and going to the vet. When it all began, he was very placid there and just put up with it. But all that treatment broke his spirit. And I find it very difficult to think about - that if he hadn't gone through all of that, if I'd been more assertive and insist they check his thyroid first and foremost each time, he would have been far more placid when it came to his tumour becoming malignant, and he would have been in a better place to be able to attempt long-term treatment. As it was, his fear and stress meant it would have been cruel.
So I understand, epona. I really do. Sometimes I break down in front of Charlie's picture, my face a disgusting mess of tears and snot, as I just cry over and over to him that I'm so, so sorry. (Here's my confession: it's all made even worse by my leaving him for 2 days before he died at the specialists... it had to be done but essentially I abandoned him there, and he was at his most terrified. On the way there, he reached out of his cage with his paw and pawed at my hand, as if desperately begging me to just take him back home again. He left three small scratches there. I go over them, reopen the wounds, so the scars never fade, because they are my penance.)
It's like a state of panic. Being at the vet, scared about what might be wrong, wanting to make sure they do what they need right away, and despite knowing a lot about animals and knowing our pets very well, there's still some kind of inbuilt deference to vets, because after all they have the years of training and every day experience. But we have our hunches, and we have the knowledge of our pets, and it all gets mixed up in our heads at times of crisis. I bet a lot of people here have similar stories. It doesn't make it any easier. And here's where I don't take my own advice at all: we have to realise it doesn't make us bad people, or uncaring, it just means we love them so much sometimes that emotion gets caught around the calm and collected bits of our brains and we just want them to get better, now, but the little buggers can't talk so we do what we do. I felt utterly adrift every time I was in that consultation room at the vets. I think that's probably quite normal.
(((epona)))
I won't be letting it in or anything, esp since I don't know if it actually has a home or not.
