On Olive

Mood spoiler: Roller-coaster, but hopeful in the end

Oh, Olive.

There are two parts to this overall saga of How My August Went, and I'll cover the air conditioning debacle in another post. For this one though, this is about Olive, my baby (cat) boy.

I had been going through an air conditioning system install which started on Friday, August 14th. Importantly, it did not complete on Friday, August 14th, so I was miffed about that. On Saturday, I checked in on Olive in his room, and noticed something odd; he was limping and avoiding putting weight on one of his hind legs. I took a look at it, didn't see anything visibly wrong from the outside, but it did look like something was a bit askew, so I figured he took a bad tumble at some point, and I thought I'd bring him into the vet if he wasn't feeling any better.

Monday morning rolls around, and he's still imping. I decide to call and see if I can bring him in, and my vet is good with that, setting me up for an appointment later that day. I get him in his carrier, we make the five-minute drive to the vet. All normal. While the doctor examines Olive's foot, she starts looking a little worried, and suggests we get an x-ray of his paw, which makes sense, if it's sprained or broken, it's better to know that.

Instead of a break, though, the x-ray shows a mass in his paw.

My vet and I, now both very worried, agree to get it checked out a little bit more, and I get a referral to an advanced pet care facility, appointment the following Tuesday. I also get painkillers for Olive, who had been putting weight on anything but that hind leg.

The next Tuesday appears, we go to the advanced care place, we get more scans. And it's confirmed; Olive has a malignant tumor. The only saving grace is that it didn't look like it had metastasized and spread. His only long-term treatment option would unfortunately be removing his leg. Then I got the facility's price for doing the procedure: $10K.

My blood froze.

On top of the air conditioner replacement costs, it would be very difficult to afford that.

I now had a very difficult decision to make for Olive's happiness and comfort, and I also had a hometown story in my mind, where a former web client had ended our engagement around the time they spent $10K on surgery for their own cat, which unfortunately didn't survive long afterward.

I got an appointment with my regular vet, to see if they were able to do a leg amputation, and I also checked out a place in Buford, where I had been referred to by the advanced care place.

$1,000.

A tenth of the price.

Suddenly, Olive's surgery was looking more viable.

I discussed it with my vet, who wasn't comfortable doing the procedure, but offered to refer me to another place in Buckhead, for $3K.

So, $10K ended up being the outlier, rather than the going rate. From what it sounds like, it's because that facility is set up for emergencies, so it'd be more of an emergency rate and such.

I'm good with the $1K. That's doable.

And so, a week after yet another appointment, I'm sitting outside of a coffee shop while Olive wakes up post-anesthesia, one leg lighter but one tumor lighter too.

It could be worse.