This Is So Hard

On a normal day, I am busy.  I work full time.  I run my child around to baseball practices and games.  I try to get involved in as many things at his school that I can.  I spend a lot of time helping him with schoolwork as he has difficulties that present extra challenges.  And of course we still need to eat dinner and have clean clothes and have lunches packed and have a home in a livable condition.  My husband works evenings, so unfortunately I’m left alone to accomplish most of this stuff.

And then the cat gets sick.  Not just a little sick, she has FLD (Fatty Liver Disease).  Treatment for FLD is to basically overfeed the cat until they can push all the bad stuff that is in their liver out, and giving them several different medications.  Doesn’t sound so bad, huh?  Well, when you then consider that the FLD causes the cat to be nauseous and have no appetite, and that the medication is in pill form, it makes it a bit hard.  The cat needs to be force-fed numerous times a day.  In order to do this, you must take the prescription canned food, mix in a little water, and put it in syringes.  If the can has already been opened and has been put in the refrigerator, the food first needs to be heated to room temperature.  Numerous syringes need to be used for each feeding.  In the mornings, the medication needs to be crushed and mixed in the food, because I can’t get her to swallow them whole.   And that is just the preparation.

When feeding, the cat needs to be placed somewhere she can’t where she can’t back away.  I’ve turned my dining room into Animal Hospital Central.  There is a large towel over the table, on which I have placed a medium sized cardboard box.  I place her in the box, and then put a towel over her to help me hold her in.  And then I have to try to hold her still while shooting about 2 cc’s of food into her mouth at a time, with a target amount of 40 cc’s to be fed.  She squirms.  She tries to claw me.  She tries to bite.  She spits some out, some with such force it ends up in the next room.  I’ve gone through at least a half a box of band-aids for my wounds.  She goes and hides in places I can't reach her so that I won't feed her again.

And after a week of this, she now gets so anxious when I even take her in that room she starts drooling excessively, and has started throwing much of it up after I have finished.  Luckily, I have gotten her to eat some food on her own.  Chicken nuggets from the pizza place down the street and canned tuna being the most tempting.  Unluckily, if she does not eat enough, she will die.  And I am in a position where her life is in my hands.  It is extremely stressful, especially when the cat is the beloved pet of your child.

This is really taking a toll on ME.  Like I said at the beginning, I’m already very busy.  Feeding the cat takes up all of the little free time I have.  I dream about the cat.  I’ve developed heartburn.  I can’t sleep.  I’ve lost weight (OK, I’m not going to complain about that one).  I woke up this morning so exhausted I could hardly move, had a headache, and my stomach was upset.  I called in sick to work.  I let my son out of the car in the school line a few minutes earlier than they are supposed to be there because I had to vomit, and the school line really isn’t where I wanted to do that.  I slept much of the day.

I took the cat for her vet appointment this evening so they could check on her progress.  She is improving.  The vet agreed with me that the force-feedings are stressing her and if she is just going to vomit it back up, it’s not going to do much good.  Because she is eating some on her own, I’m to keep trying to get her to do so, and cut down the force-feedings so maybe she’ll have more of an appetite for eating on her own.  So while the stress (and time) of the force feedings is decreasing, the stress of knowing if she is going to eat enough to live has gone up.  I’ve discussed the issue with my son, if she keeps improving, we’ll keep doing what we’re doing.  If not, we need to end her suffering, because we are basically just extending her illness in that case. 

This is really hard.  And this is really one of those reasons why they have wine.  Unfortunately, I’m too tired to drink it.