This morning I took Buster for a short (sweltering) walk at the National Arboretum — a beautiful spot in DC and one of his favorite places to go for walks. Tomorrow we “move out” to Virginia from DC for the week, to be near the veterinary center that will do Buster’s radiation. While I feel uncertainty about how this is going to go, nervous about all the anesthesia and potential side effects that could start emerging in the next week or so, and I feel stressed out about juggling work while doing this, I feel pretty at peace with the decision. I hope that lasts.
One of the best pieces of advice I read in one of the tripawds fora, when someone was having a hard time deciding what to do for their pet, was to write down the decision making process so you’d always be able to remember how you made the decision of what to do so you don’t end up beating yourself up or second-guessing down the road if things don’t go as planned. My prior post was part of my way of writing it down, so if I end up putting Buster through a long and uncomfortable course of treatment but his cancer comes back, I’d remember why I thought I was at least making the best decision I could at the time. That’s really all I can do.
0 radiation sessions down, 18 to go.
I just wanted to wish you luck and commend you Mom your move to take care of the radiation! Wow! My last pup was needing to consider radiation (during MRI we discovered it wasn’t the best route) but I was well assured by the vets that radiation and the in and out of anesthesia is not as taxing as we fear. Of course I’m not a vet but I thought u might like to hear that today 🙂 Best of luck.
Thank you! That’s nice to hear, Buster’s vets have been very reassuring too and we’ll see how it goes!