Oct 28/09

Today has been a very emotional day for me. I took Hayes to the vet this morning to have surgery on her eye. The two courses of antibiotics did nothing so the vet was going to explore the swelling and remove the eyeball. There is an official medical term for this procedure, but the result is "one-eyed kitty" in my parlance. The vet called me this afternoon at work to let me know how the surgery had gone and to discuss what they saw during the procedure. Needless to say, I burst into tears after hanging up and had to leave the dispensary because the terms "carcinoma" and "euthanasia" were part of the discussion. I stopped by the vet office to see how she was doing with coming out of the anesthesia and one of the assistants almost did not let me go into the recovery room in case it upset the other animals in there. The look in my tear filled eyes changed her mind pretty quick so they let me go into see Hayes who was still so out of it that she did not respond to my voice with even an ear twitch.

The vet office called me a couple of hours later to say that Hayes was awake enough to come home so I rushed in to get here. The vet discussed pain relievers and checkups with me before showing me the chunks of tumor that are being sent to Guelph for histology (i.e to determine what kind of cells we are dealing with). Those chunks total the size of my baby finger, causing me to blurt out, "Did you really get all of that out of her head?!" They do not think that she has any other tumors, but the pre-op blood tests did show elevated liver enzymes which could mean her body is starting to shut down or it could be from the 3 weeks of oral antibiotics. Her weight has slipped a bit again as well so I am going to keep a close eye on that during the 10 days before we go back to have the sutures removed from her eyelids which are stitched together.

We spent the evening with Hayes wrapped in a blanket, snuggled into my lap, while I stitched. She was pretty wobbly and shaky when she first came home (think "drunken sailor") so I wanted to keep her quiet and comfortable under the anesthetic wore off. She has already been jumping from furniture to furniture and the purr has returned so things are returning to normal fairly quickly.

My mom said something to me tonight that gives me great comfort. I was telling her what the vet said about the possibility of the tumor growing back and how I figure that I will just take one day at a time until we reach that point that Hayes has a decreased quality of life. Mom said that I should feel good about knowing at that point that I have done everything that I could for Hayes. Hayes has given so much to me in the 15 years that we have been together and we will keep snuggling away as long as we can.