Old Dog Needs $6,000 Surgery. What Do You Do?

[politicat]

62. Entirely reasonable -- it's the author's money to spend as zie pleases.

I have a 20 year old cat. Yes, 20. That's 97 in human equivalent. She's winding down as any extremely elderly creature does, but she's still sassy and reasonably active mentally present* and mostly healthy. Like many very old cats, she has a degree of kidney failure, so we have to feed her carefully and she has to have subcutaneous fluid on a regular basis.

So far, we haven't spent that much on her in one go, but I'm expecting it at some point. More difficult in terms of time and anxiety, however, I enrolled her in a stem-cell study. Yes, my cat got stem-cells. And that meant committing to about 20 vet teaching hospital visits, which all include driving an hour each way with a cat who doesn't especially like the car. I mostly enrolled her because I'd like to advance the state of the science and improve the research on stem-cells, but I can't say I wasn't hoping for another couple years of her.

On the other hand, our cat has been on "hospice" care for a decade -- we won't do anything heroic for her if it's clear she's suffering. So far, no suffering (except for evil humans who shove her in her carrier and put her in the shaky nausea-making machine.)


*For a cat.