giveth and taketh away...

Friday it was official, I got the supervisor position at work. I also was approved for a raise, still don't know the amount but my boss said it should be significant enough that I don't have to work my second job. This made me say hallelujah! I was excited and on top of the world all day. Nervous, happy, hopeful. All the usual emotions. The girls also took it pretty well but we are also operating under the impression this is temporary until my boss is back from her leave of absence. They don't know that she won't be coming back to the department.



Today, I took the dog to the vet. The usual. Ear infection, skin yadda yadda. I was talking with a new vet about how she is chronically itchy and having ear infections, and that steroides were the only thing that helped her, and I understand the risk to her liver but she is old, and she doesn't need to be uncomfortable all the time, and she agreed.



Then she did an examination, and found that all of her lymph nodes are enlarged. She said that some skin diseases can cause this to happen and she certainly has that in her favor, but I opted not to have them biopsied, because the usual bill for all her issues is already $200. There is a good chance that she has lymphoma, and I had to decide what to do for her, which wasn't easy. If I chose to treat it with steroides, which will also help her incessant itching, chemo would be out of the question, because it hinders its effectiveness.



I decided that I would do the steroides. She's 12, and realistically, doesn't have much time to live as it is, and chemo would be hard on her. It would also put me in the poor house. I can't really see that she would benefit from going through all of that, and in the meantime, be miserable and itchy with swollen ears. The vet said that the lymph nodes could decrease in size since she is on steroides, but without the biopsy we can't know for sure if it's cancer.



I'm being optomistic, and not thinking it's cancer. If it is she only has a couple of months to live, and I can't wrap my mind around that right now. I'm just going to give her the medicine, use reiki (which she hates!) and be positive. I hope that it doesn't come down to me having to decide to put her to sleep, that is the worst part of having pets.



Me and my punkinhead sharing a smootch!