Selfish Love
IT WAS A HARD DECISION. One Marie had to make alone. Her poor, sick kitty couldn’t weigh in even though it was his opinion that should have mattered most. Cancer. It’s a bummer no matter the species.
The veterinary oncologist’s prognosis wasn’t what Marie wanted to hear. Without the surgery, Charcoal would get sicker and sicker until, eventually, the vet figured three to eight months, he would die. The surgery would buy him more time. Five months to a year. But that wasn’t a certainty. Truth was, the vet told Marie, even with the surgery, the cancer could come back or Charcoal could die on the operating table.
Marie had a lot to think about. But before she could do that, she had to cry out all those initial tears and scream out all those initial screams in her car in the parking lot of the veterinary oncologist office. On the drive home, with Charcoal calmly asleep in her lap, and over the next two days, Marie considered the options.
She determined that without the surgery, Charcoal would have a better quality of life even if it was a shorter life. The surgery meant taking him back to the vet oncologist, which would scare him, and there’d be recovery from the surgery, which would scare him. And he was an old cat. His sixteenth birthday was in four months. He and Marie had a great life. They traveled together, lived in three different major cities, he had always been an outside cat so she could only imagine the adventures he had been on without her. Her decision was to have the surgery. She wanted them to have as much time together as possible, even if that time was Charcoal being miserable and scared.
It was scheduled for the following week. While Charcoal was under the knife, Marie made a stop at her mother’s house. The hospice nurse was just finishing up her mother’s sponge bath.
“How’s she doing today?” Marie asked.
“The same,” said the nurse.
Marie tsked. “She’s such a burden. I told her the chemo would only make her worse. And for what? So she could live a little longer and spend the last dollar she has on you? On sponge baths and morphine drips? This extra time together really hasn’t been worth all the fuss.”
The nurse paused then asked, “How’s your cat?”
