Universal Chat Thread

[Moonface]

Hello! Its weekend time

Get that grocery store money!

Indeed it is! I also get this whole weekend off due to shift swapping with my coworker which is nice.
As for that grocery store money, alas my store has cut the hours of all the part timers so I'm barely getting more than 12 hours a week currently compared to my 25+ I was getting before. I get that's it because business slows down in summer and we have to save budget for the busier holiday season so there's more hours for part timers then, but it still sucks because now is when I have more free time for work due to no classes.

[Mr EliteL]

We were also limited by width too but just assumed depth would be fine until we looked at the dimensions. I'm also paying for it, so woohoo for having to spend on my birthday.

Why the heck are you the one paying for the washing machine? On your birthday no less?!

Because my mum's paying for decorating her room and possibly another room that needs doing, my sister has a car and I'm doing jack, so yeah I'm fine with taking the bill for the washing machine. Ended up being not as expensive as the ones we were looking at before, just came to £520 in total.

Damn, down to 12 hours a week because of summer holidays. Is that only two days then you're in for two 6, or three for 4 hours? It is stupid you don't have classes yet able to work more but get less instead. 

[Dragon Lord]

Today sucked. Woke up to something wrong with Zoey (my oldest cat), and of course being a Saturday night, there's no vets open until Monday morning. She seems to be doing okay right now, but the fact that I have to get through another night and hope that nothing takes a bad turn before I can get her in some where tomorrow morning really, really sucks.

I didn't even do anything the entire night. No gaming, no watching, nothing. I pretty much just sat and stared into nothingness. I'm pretty sure the problem is that she's constipated, and I'm just hoping it's early enough into it that it won't cause any major problems. She's a lot more calm now and we're taking steps to try and relieve it as much as we can. Hopefully everything works out for the best and we can get her onto the road to recovery and back to health. Though of course I also know that I must prepare myself for the worst, because as I mentioned, there's unfortunately a lot of time between now and tomorrow morning for things to take a turn.

Really sucks not having any vets open on Sundays, and the Animal Hospitals in the area are either really bad or give you a "Sorry, we're not taking any new patients, you'll have to go somewhere else for your possibly dying animal that might not make it through the night." Like what's the point of being an animal HOSPITAL if you're going to turn people away in an emergency? Plus apparently the two that are in reasonable distance from me (less than 2-3 hours) are crazy expensive. Like $300 just to book the visit. Then add on whatever for tests, medication, any procedures that they do. Sadly reviews for both places say that the staff at either give off a "We don't actually care about your stupid animal, we're just in it for the money" vibes. Another common theme in the reviews is that they misdiagnosed a lot of people's pets and they had to go back to a vet instead the next day to get the right problem figured out and their animal on the way to recovery (one review sadly mentioning that they couldn't get their kitten to proper help in time after it was incorrectly diagnosed at the hospital). Just really makes you wonder what the hell those places are even doing being open. If you're not going to actually care about people's animals, and you're only going to help people who have been consistently coming to you for several years, then what the fuck?

Eh, sorry for the long rant. Normally not something I do here, but I've just been highly stressed out over her condition all day, and the fact that I still have to wait another 17+ hours to be able to actually get her any professional help is just making it a lot worse. I just needed to vent it all out some where in hopes that doing so might calm me down. I had a god awful experience with losing my first cat at a young age due to a health problem, and this situation is just bringing back the horrors of those memories. Granted Zoey is a lot older (12), so she's had a full life, so in the worst case scenario where we have to put her down, at least I can find comfort in knowing that I was able to provide her that in the end. I just hope I can give her a few more good years before her time though, she deserves it.

[Moonface]

Damn, down to 12 hours a week because of summer holidays. Is that only two days then you're in for two 6, or three for 4 hours? It is stupid you don't have classes yet able to work more but get less instead. 

Basically just three four hour days. 5-9 each shift.

@Dragon Lord: Dang I'm sorry about what you're dealing with right now dude. I hate that vets and even regular doctors are just so commonly closed on weekends which leaves emergency options at best which are like pulling teeth to have as the only choice available. It's like everyone is expected to not have a medical matter on weekends.
Is she acting relatively normal otherwise at least?

[ShiraNoMai]

Noooo not the baby I'm so sorry about the situation. Having been in a similar spot, it's the worst. I wound up taking the L a few times and just eating the hundred dollar bills so my boy could be seen and fixed. He has pancreatitis and when a flare up got real bad, I was grateful they were able to fix him, cuz even if it cost us $4000 in the end, my boy is still here and alive.

Sending good, hopeful vibes to you and your baby

[Dragon Lord]

Her behavior is pretty much normal outside of showing some discomfort at times and also not eating. Thankfully she is still drinking water.

She's calmly resting, which is a great sign. She's gonna have a very stressful and eventful morning, so it's good to see her getting plenty of rest right now.

And i agree about being willing to pay a little extra to get help faster, but unfortunately from the sounds of it for these two animal hospitals, it would be a lot more than a little extra. They also demand full payment before you're allowed to leave with your pet and they offer no payment plan options for people who are on a tight budget. Everything about them just sounds like they are out to rack up your bill to be as high of an amount as possible and then use your animal as leverage to force you to pay it before you can leave. With all of the 1* reviews talking about misdiagnosing as well, I don't know if I would have been able to trust them to even give her the right treatment in the first place. I think I'll be much more thankful in the morning taking her to the vet we've gone to many times before, because I'll be able to know that they'll give her the treatment that she actually needs, and they actually care about the animals.

I'll admit, I am a bit worried that I might have to make the very hard decision to put her down, but I am hopeful that we'll be able to get her back to good health and she'll get a few more good years in her life.

[Moonface]

Yeah I definitely wouldn't give my business to either of those vets, even if I was a lottery winner. Not just because they have shit reviews, but also because what they're doing feels like extortion or something to me. It reminds me of how when I was present in the room for a cat being put down and I get handed a letter asking what cremation option I want; it was so obviously trying to play off the current emotions to prevent anyone making a reasonable decision and just going for the expensive one because it was worded the best.

If you haven't done it yet, I hope the vet visit goes well for you DL.

[Mr EliteL]

Hope your cat got to see the vet today too, DL, the one you said you usually go to anyway. Not those other two places that are clearly only there for making owners part ways with their money. Screw them. Sounded like she had a good rest before that and wasn't too uncomfortable with whatever she had, that would've had me stay up with her or sleep downstairs near her like I did once for one of my cats.

Had a whatever day back at work, almost our entire produce chilled delivery wasn't worked when I got in, but it wasn't weekend levels of stuff so there wasn't too much to sort out in the warehouse after everything was worked afterwards.

[Moonface]

Glad you had a good day EL. Mine has been.....horrible really. As of tomorrow most plugins are going to be disabled due to incompatibility and better yet, I can't fix profiles on Woolly World because it gives me an SQL error for no good reason. At this point I've basically given up for the day on trying to achieve anything from how much has gone wrong.

[Dragon Lord]

The visit was... not what I was hoping. I was really hoping it was just something that we'd be able to take care of and she could go back to normal and enjoy the last few years of her life. Unfortunately that's not going to be the case.

The problem was not constipation. It was liquid in her abdomen. What the cause of the fluid doing that is, we won't know exactly for sure until they can run some tests on the fluid. The most common things they told us that it could be is 1) her body is no longer able to absorb nutrients like it should, and that's causing all of this access fluid to get out and bloat her. If this is what it ends up being, she'll be required to be on medicine for the rest of her life to try and help her system pass the fluid.

The other option, and the worst of the two, is that it's a mass. Unfortunately there was too much fluid in her that they wouldn't have been able to see anything on an x-ray to tell what it was. So they are going to test the fluid for cancer cells and get back to us by the end of the day on whether or not that's what it is. They didn't sugar coat anything, which I appreciate. As much as it hurts to hear, I'd rather know what I might be in for rather than have them tell me, "oh no, everything will be fiiiiine" and give me false hope.

All we can do right now is put her on a treatment plan and see how it goes. Either she'll show signs of improvement and slowly get back to health (but as I said before, she'll still have to be on medication the rest of her life in this scenario), or she'll continue to degrade and... well, sadly we'll have to say goodbye to her.

It's just a waiting game and it absolutely sucks.I have to take her back in next week for a checkup to see how she's progressing, pending anything going wrong between now and then..

[Moonface]

Man I'm sorry to hear that DL. As much as option two sucks, at least they'll try to get a result back today so the uncertainty of that isn't going to hang around for too long. I hope things work out as well as they can for you and your kitty.

[Mr EliteL]

@Moonface: Been looking at the logs and the topic you made mentioning the plugins. Don't stress out too much if you're still doing it and just stop for the day if you need to.

@Dragon Lord : Darn so there is something wrong in your cat. Then may it not be the cancer cells and rather other thing and hopefully the ongoing treatment/medication aids her into having a decent life after this hurdle.

[Moonface]

@Moonface: Been looking at the logs and the topic you made mentioning the plugins. Don't stress out too much if you're still doing it and just stop for the day if you need to.

It just bugs me that when tomorrow comes I have no clue if things will break more or not because so far today things I didn't expect to break have done so and that was just through testing. My stress levels have definitely hit the ceiling today though. x.x

[Dragon Lord]

Unfortunately it seems like it is the worst case scenario. They said they did find cells in the tests of the fluid, and while they can't 100% confirm it's cancer until they do an x-ray next week on her follow-up visit, the vet is pretty sure that it is cancer. Sadly if it is, I'll have to say goodbye to her, because even if I could afford to pay for the surgery, I'm not sure how well she'd be able to take that kind of procedure at her age. I have a feeling the vet will say the same thing, because she already alluded to Zoey's age and her current weakened state and not being an ideal candidate to handle a major operation.

I'll have to wait and see how things go next week, but it sounds like I may only have another week or two with her.

[Moonface]

*sigh* I was really hoping to see better news from your next post DL.
That really sucks, but I guess a silver lining you can try to look at in all of it is at least you know now so you can prepare and also not find out later when your kitty may have suffered more and you have less time to process it. Obviously way easier said than done though.

Just give her all the best and know that whatever you do you did the best for her, even if the best choice feels like the worst one to be doing. *hugs* 🫂