Sometimes we have to make a huge decision.
Your mare is lucky to have the extra 13 years you have been able to give her. She is at a clinic that will keep her comfortable. I am sure she would not want to see you teetering on the edge of your world with a huge debt. Find out if there is a bereavement group or counseling at a local animal shelter, veterinary hospital, or university veterinary hospital for pet loss counseling.
Sometimes a huge decision is made for us.
I have been fighting cancer for 9 1/2 years as you have probably read in my other posts. My father also developed cancer and fought it for four years. The doctors fried him with 64 radiation treatments. The cancer came back a year later. They removed all of his lymph nodes under his right arm pit. He had a lot of trouble including a bad infection and lymphadema in his right arm. The last treatment tried was a full dose of taxatere. After the steroids wore off, he started to bleed internally. He collapsed at home and ended up in the hospital getting four blood transfusions.
He decided not to forgo any more treatments after that. The cancer spread to dad’s brain and lungs. My brother, who followed my father’s footsteps in the textile industry, was out of work at the time and came home to help care for dad. We were able to get nursing help from the Long Island Hospice Network, so my mother and brother could get some time off during the day to do other things, since dad needed around the clock supervision. He had the dignity of being able to die at home. Dad was 80 years old.
I tried to persuade him to go to different doctors and follow other more humane treatment protocols, but I had to respect my father’s choices of doctors and treatments. The hardest part was respecting my father’s choice of no more treatment and to die instead. The Hospice helped by keeping him pain free and by providing him with four hours of nursing help a day, and hard goods, such as arranging for a hospital bed, oxygen, and a wheel chair. The Hospice also provided counseling for the family of the patient. I chose to go to Cancer Care where I had been going for counseling for years to help cope with my own cancer.
[This message was edited by Reginapony on Apr. 04, 2001 at 09:42 AM.]
And you know, they are only useless if you think they are. You don’t, so there you have it!!!
