Apparently the vet thinks if he suggests the idea of surgery every single time he sees me, I'll eventually cave.
But I won't. Jasper is so old; putting him through surgery would be ridiculous. I can't fathom having to watch him come through the recovery from a cancer surgery at his age (if he came through the surgery itself at all).
He's got to be like 90 in people years. It's just illogical. And the vet continues to push the issue, as if he hasn't heard me all these times politely tell him "I'm not going to put Jasper through a surgery that you and I both know wouldn't be the only surgery he'd require."
Just to fill you in, if you're not familiar with Jasper, which you're probably not. He has a tumor (who knows what kind) pressing on his pancreas and causing him to create more insulin than he needs, thus causing him to have dangerously low blood sugars.
Today the doc said somewhere around 120 would be nice to see. Today the doc also said his blood sugar was 42. Several weeks ago, I woke to get ready for work and Jasper was slumped over the edge of his hammock, paralyzed. When we rushed him to the vet, they determined his low blood sugar was the cause of the temporary paralysis (according to their test, his blood sugar that morning was also in the 40s). They gave him so dextrose water and he perked right up. The doc also put him on some medicine (which I'm going to have to force him to take every single day for the rest of his life) and told me to have him rechecked in two weeks. So I did that. And when I brought him back, his blood sugar was 71. Yeah, I guess. That's much higher than 40 something.
Today, I woke Jasper, let him run around my room a bit while I got ready, packed him the car and toted him an hour and half to the vet's office to have the doc tell me his blood sugar was back in the 40s and this wasn't good news. Meanwhile, he's not paralyzed. No, far from it. He's running around the examining room, climbing on furniture, trying to open the door, climbing up my pants leg all the way to the top of my head, and chasing my feet. He is not even remotely in the same condition he was when I found him paralyzed. How could his blood sugar possibly be that low again?
It can't. I don't believe it.
I feel like every time I go there, they charge me for something else ... a doctor visit, a glucose test, an analysis, a consult, labs (which should be the same as a glucose test, being as that's all they should be drawing for), meds ... etc. And with the way the doctor is pushing surgery on me, for MY seven year old ferret is not only uncomfortable, but also disrespectful. I've clearly defined my stance on surgery at this point on more than one occasion with this doctor, yet he neglects to listen.
And truthfully, I believe he thinks I'm a complete dingle berry when it comes to blood sugars. When in fact, I'm pretty educated on the topic. I've accompanied others on doctor visits for as long as I can remember for more topics than I care to count. Having to pretend I care to watch this vet draw me a diagram of how activity level is affected by blood sugar was like having to pretend I care about the WWE championship.
I hate being talked to as if I'm a child or as if I couldn't possibly understand. And blood sugars ARE something I understand. So I started dropping terms -- like 'bottom out,' 'insulin,' 'one touch gluco-meter,' and 'endocrinology.' Yet still, he didn't talk to me any differently. But I quit caring and I tuned him out.
If he wasn't going to hear what I had to say about NO surgery, then I wasn't going to hear what he had to say about hypoglycemia in ferrets.
I tried to make the vet understand that I wasn't interested in causing Jasper any more discomfort than I already am by forcing him to take this foul-tasting medicine. From the moment I met this vet, he suggested surgery, and even before he explained to me that it wouldn't be just one surgery -- that generally, when a tumor is removed, many other tumors that had been suppressed will typically begin to take over, and thus cause even more damage -- I made myself (what I thought to be) very clear. Jasper will receive no surgeries.
Yet here we are, fourth visit or something, and he's still pushing it on me. In my eyes, at Jasper's age (ferrets don't live much longer than seven), there is no sense in surgery. Not even from a money standpoint, but surgery isn't worth it to me. He's just such a tiny body that I'm afraid such a traumatic surgery would be too much for him to overcome, whether he were in the last bit of his life or not.
I look at it this way:
If we went through with a surgery:
Risk: He dies in surgery. He dies after surgery. He has complications from surgery that require even more surgeries. He never regains his personality. He never fully recovers. He is forced to take even more medicine for the rest of his life.
Reward: There isn't one worth any of that.
If we do NOT go through with the surgery:
Risk: The tumor on/near his pancreas continues to grow. He continues to have hypoglycemia. The cancer (if it is cancer, we don't even know) takes over his body. He dies.
Reward: He doesn't have to spend the last of his life in stitches and gauze, or surgeries. He doesn't have to take piles of medicine each day. He doesn't go through recovery periods and painful check ups and operations. He gets to live the rest of his life the same way he's lived it up until now -- nestled in hammock with Charley, playing hide and go seek with me, and staying happy and at home and not in pain.
That is how I want him to live -- happy, with me and with Charley, and not in pain.
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