With an appointment scheduled with the oncologist for the following Tuesday, Kimberly and I began researching everything we could find and occasionally discussing it.
Kimberly had a a very traumatic experience with her previous pet, Ginger, who developed a non-specific autoimmune disorder very suddenly and had to be put down years before she had expected to even have to deal with it. I could see the shadow of those multiple vet visits, the hard choices, and the financial burdens in her eyes every time we talked about it...and even when we didn't. In just a matter of days, Ginger went from perfectly OK to sickly and lethargic and the only potential regimen for keeping her alive involved regular transfusions for the rest of her life and before she had time to really deal with the turnaround, she had to make the decision to put her down. And she still has days when she weeps for her.
We both could surprise Millie by bursting into tears when she would simply come and nuzzle with us and even when we didn't, the tears never seemed far away.
Our "discussions" were not exactly Socratic discourses, either. She would suddenly say: "You want to do the chemo, don't you?" and I would say: " I don't know....I don't know yet what it will mean...I need to hear what the oncologist has to say." and then hours would go by till one of us brought it up again. This does not mean we avoided it....but we had a real understanding of what our worries were and knew that we agreed on the important points: we wanted Millie around as long as possible....that might not be very long no matter what....and we wanted whatever time she had left to be as painless and happy as we could possibly make it.
And then: Millie came home from visiting the dog park in the early morning, one of her favorite weekend pastimes, with a puffy eye. Her left eye was slightly closed, but examining it revealed no injury, redness or foreign object...nor did it seem to trouble her. Our assumtion was she had gotten something in it briefly and it was OK, but we kept an eye on it.
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