InsaneJournal

Current mood:	anxious
Entry tags:	pets, rl

I may dislike the vet more than my pets;
Actually, I'm convinced that taking an animal to the vet puts me into more of a knotted ball of ANXIETY than it has ever done for any of my pets. That's not to say all vet visits are awful, but it's always the worry/bad news ones that stick with me.

The vet we use is a clinic/animal hospital, so there are several vets and they are all lovely professionals, but there is one there for which the associated stress just makes me call her Bad News Vet and any time we get her, I'm always waiting for something minor to turn into something major. This poor woman - I KNOW HER NAME, she's an excellent vet, she's very personable and I definitely don't dislike her, but she's thoroughly stuck in my head as Bed News Vet because over the course of, what, 12+ years, she's been the vet we've gotten when something 'not exactly good' is happening. She's the one who diagnosed growths as 'potentially cancerous', the one who had to deliver the worrying news for blood tests, recommend medicine for advanced-age pets with 'decline' problems, and so forth.

So Phoebe goes in today over this small swelling/bump on her upper gumline that I just spotted this last weekend. And we get in there and it's Bad News Vet. Now, we've gotten through NORMAL visits with this vet, so it's not like I'm saying OMG CURSE. I'm pretty chill, she checks Phoebe out, then goes to look at the bump - and finds it's not just this swelling/bump/lump, but also a patch of skin on the roof of her mouth. This, apparently, is not the best of things, and she's making these serious faces of SERIOUS, so Bad News Vet breaks out her usual technique that always leaves me swallowing too hard to keep from having a MOMENT right there over what might well be NOTHING. I get that it's typical, but god, every time this speech starts, my mind goes straight to the WORSE CASE SCENARIO and stays there.

On the best case side, it could just be a non-cancerous mass with surrounding areas affected by it's existence. On the worst case side, it's cancer and cancer in the mouth is very bad, especially if it's in the roof of the mouth, but hey, they have "RADICAL TREATMENTS" that can include removal of the jaw bone if infected and radiation/chemo and etc and at this point she kind of started sounding like the teacher on Charlie Brown because I'm torn between repeating this steady mantra of "It's fine, it's fine, chill out, don't you dare well up in the damn vet's office, it doesn't have to be cancer, you know Bad News Vet always does best case/worst case, it's fine, CALM DOWN" and bouncing Zoey, who's getting cranky that the vet is getting to pay all the attention to the dog and not her. Luckily, Husband Boy was there and so the tiny bit I missed to "wah wah wah" was heard.

So Phoebe gets her bloodwork panel, since she'd over the age of five (just turned six on the 14th of this month) and I made it out of the vet without making an ass of myself. Later, Bad News Vet calls and the first thing out of her mouth is "this is definitely good news!" for which I almost choked because there is NO WAY this poor woman could know I refer to her this way. Anyhow, the bloodwork all came back shiny fabulous within a few hours (because they didn't even have to send it out to their send-away lab), so while it doesn't rule out cancer (as they don't do cancer screenings there), it means Phoebe is otherwise perfectly, fantastically healthy. Let's hope it stays that way.

Surgery is on the 13th, in which they'll do both surgery and a teeth cleaning and they'll remove the mass & surrounding affected tissue, or as much as they can as sometimes not all of it can come out in this sort of surgery in this particular spot (mouth), and they'll send it off to be biopsied.

If any of you out there are animal people, some good vibes sent Phoebe's way would be really great. <3 Me, I'll be over here reminding myself that the worst case scenario does not always equal ACTUAL SCENARIO.