Monday, April 14, 2014

Isn't That The Way Things Usually Go?

Okay, so you know how it is when things are going along just fine and you have some extra money because your husband's new and improved job pays much much better than the old one, not to mention the months of being on unemployment, and you start to get caught up on things and maybe spend a few dollars on non-necessities and then BAM something happens that costs a lot of money?

I'm sure it's happened to just about everyone because that's just the way it is.

We've been able to get some money into savings and go out to dinner here and there, do some work on the yard involving new flowers and lots of bricks, gravel, and mulch, pay some extra on the credit card that got run up because we had no money for emergencies, get my crown and my expensive deep cleaning and laser treatment done on my teeth, and then Lucy gets sick.

On Thursday we treated her with the topical flea meds since it's getting hot outside and it's flea season, and then on Friday she was acting very lethargic and didn't want to eat, so I'm thinking she's just mad at us for putting flea meds on her or something. She didn't want to come into the garage in the evening where she's been spending her nights in peace and away from the stray cats that come around looking to eat her food. She was up in the tree and her face looked funny to me, like one side of it was bigger than the other. I really couldn't see because it was dark outside, so I got her some soft kitty treats and lured her out of the tree. She started eating the treats and then started growling and backing away and I realized that chewing the treats was causing her pain and something is definitely wrong with her face. She wouldn't let me pick her up and take a look, instead getting back up in the tree where I let her stay until morning.

Saturday morning comes and she is hungry and comes running up to me looking for food, but one bite of her food and more growling and backing up and the side of her face looks like she has a golf ball in her cheek.

I had taken Keith to work on Friday afternoon in case I wanted to run any errands on Saturday, but going to the emergency vet wasn't exactly what I had in mind. Plus, Lucy was up in the tree and how to get her down and into the cat carrier?

It wasn't easy, I kept rattling treat bags but she wasn't having any of that because hey, the treats hurt my mouth, and I couldn't reach her to grab her. After a few hours she jumped out of the tree onto the top of the gate where there is like a platform, so I went and got the ladder and was able to get her down, surprising the heck out of myself for being able to do it. Off to the vet, with an unhappy growling cat in the car, an unhappy swollen faced cat.

She got looked at and the diagnosis was most likely an abcessed tooth but the emergency vet couldn't do dental x-rays to be sure. He gave her some pain meds and antibiotics, got her re-hydrated, and said that it would clear up with the meds but if it's a bad tooth it would just come back and best to take her to the regular vet and get it all looked at.

In the meantime, Lucy had not eaten since Thursday, so I got some cat milk, having to go to two stores to find some, and some baby rice cereal to mix up and see if she would eat it. When she and the other two were being weaned from bottle feeding when they were tiny kittens, I used to give them the baby cereal and kitten formula and they lapped it right up. Even after so many years, Lucy must have remembered how good it tasted because she lapped it right up again. She won't eat canned cat food so this was all I could think of to feed her.

So, this morning I call our regular vet and of course they don't do dental x-rays, I called a few other places who also don't do dental x-rays, and then called a vet that we had taken Lucy and the others to when they were kittens, and yes they do x-rays and I could bring her in. Since she was already going to be put under for the x-rays, she would get her teeth cleaned and an extraction done if it was indeed a bad tooth.

It wasn't just one bad tooth but four, so this little adventure ended up costing almost $1000.00, which fortunately we have since Keith's job pays so much better, but it certainly wasn't a fun way to spend so much money.

I'm keeping her in the front bedroom for a few days and she does seem to feel better and the swelling had gone down a lot by this morning, so she should be good to go here in a few days after her extractions heal up.


1 comment:

lynney62 said...

Poor Lucy! There is nothing quite so painful as an abcessed tooth! So glad to hear she's feeling better!