Today, I Feel Like An Adult

Zoe's appointment for the surgery to remove her tumor was today. I was supposed to arrive at the vet hospital between 8am-10am and planned to go around 9am but I woke up randomly at 6am and couldn't go back to sleep so I took her in early. The reason she didn't have the surgery when I took her in a week ago to get her tumor checked out was because she had a really bad respiratory infection and the vet said that her chances of surviving the anesthesia were not good since her breathing is bad. So I gave her two types of medicine for the past week, hoping she'd get better. We went in this morning to get her re-checked and hopefully have the surgery, but the vet said that she still doesn't sound great. He has a semi-british accent and his advice seemed so rehearsed, "it's kind a catch-22 [imagine all of this in a british accent], if we do the surgery today then there's a 10-20% chance she won't survive the anesthesia, but if we wait a week for her respiratory infection to hopefully get better, her tumor might get larger and more difficult to remove. So I'm going to leave the decision up to you."

Up to ME? I'm paying you $29.00 for this "check-up" to get me back to where I started? At no other time in my life did I ever feel so old and independent, like an adult. It was the first time I wasn't given an expert decision about something involving another being's life. I expected the doctor to evaluate her a little bit and then advise me one way or another, but now it was up to me and it felt really strange. With each year that I've gotten older, I haven't felt older, probably because I haven't had reason to. It always seems like as you age, you're supposed to feel like you are actually aging, but it usually doesn't work like that. Today, I realized that becoming an adult doesn't mean getting older, it means learning that your own life and well-being is second to the lives and happiness of those around you. It means making sacrifices to help ones that you love and making wise decisions to help them, or trying to.

He prescribed her another medicine and we're going back in a week to see if she'll be ready then. She has been my best friend for the past two weeks. I regret not playing with and loving her more before all of this. She truly is a wonderful pet. Thank you for helping me to realize things I've never seen before.