A Not So Great Start

Well, the good news is, my mother's chemotherapy is going fairly well, and she has yet to experience any particularly nasty side effects - she's mostly just tired a lot. Which is good, because she's sleeping more and letting the drug do it's thing.

The bad news is that it has been an extremely rough time at the Elf house this week. Mrs. Elf's cat, Baby (yes, that's his name), started having problems last week and our vet made some assumptions and didn't run the proper blood test when they should have and the cat went into Acute Renal Failure this weekend. Even though he's currently one of the best vet hospitals in the country (UGA Small Animal Hospital), there's very little hope and we'll probably have to put him to sleep very soon. In fact, every doctor we've talked to is amazed that he's alive at all, that he's still fighting as hard as he has been. I'm not the least bit surprised, that cat is the most stubborn creature I've ever met.

My wife is devastated. She raised this cat from three weeks, when she found him abandoned near her job. She bottle fed him back to health, hence the name. He's only 9, so he's older but not at the age where this sort of thing is expected. He is quite literally her child in so many ways. And I love the little bugger myself, so that isn't exactly easy. But worse is how much I feel for my wife. I want to take her pain and carry it as my own. I want to be anything other than helpless. I can't be.

So it would appear to be a not so great start to a year I already have reservations about.

Not to be too sentimental, but give your pets a hug tonight. Then your family and loved ones. Like the song says, "No Day But Today."
Vampire Elf on 01.25.06 @ 05:42 AM EST [link] [284 Comments]