Sunny’s bad time

Last week wasn’t a good one for Sunny—or for me. She came through her ordeal very well, and seems to be adjusting to her new reality, though I don’t know that she’s worked out that things have changed for her. That’s probably for the best.

The vet removed a lot of Sunny’s teeth, including all four canines, and a bunch of others. They gave them to me in a plastic specimen jar, but I have no idea what to do with them; throwing them away seems wrong, somehow, but I don’t want to keep them, either.

The vet nurse who rang me after they were done told me that Sunny handled the sedation really well, and woke up quickly. She added, “in fact, I wish they all woke up so well and easily.” All her blood tests were really good, though her in-surgery ECG showed her heart was sometimes adding a beat—like me, she has an arrhythmia, though hers is because of her heart murmur.

When I first brought her home (photo above), she was subdued, which figures: She’d been under general anesthetic and had endured traumatic dental surgery, even though she didn’t know about it. As time passed, she became more like herself, and since then she’s eagerly eaten the (soft) food I’ve given her. She also gobbles down the pills I put into some of her food and feed to her by hand. She’s been really good, in other words.

The vet is concerned about her heart, though, and suggested I put her on heart medication (she said her own dog is on it). It costs about $2 per day, for life, but I have a philosophy about that I’m sure I must’ve shared in the past: She didn’t choose to live with us, so that makes it my duty and responsibility to make sure she has as happy a life as I can give her, for as long as she has a good quality of life. That costs money sometimes, but so be it. It goes with the territory.

The procedure itself was at the higher end of their estimate, and that includes the post-op check on Wednesday. However, they want to check her blood pressure and do an ECG while she’s awake to find out the extent of her heart problems. That costs extra. It is what it is.

So, Sunny endured her bad time really well, and is pretty much her old self again, just less a few teeth.

As for me, I was right in my post last week: Friday was a difficult day. I planned to do some stuff to keep occupied, but all I really managed was to go the supermarket after I dropped her off. I was up late the night before because I knew that if I was tired the following morning, it would be harder for me to dwell on the worry. I was right about that, but not about the possibility of having a nap: It turned out I was too worried to do that.

I cried after I hung up from the phone call telling me Sunny was okay, and that was from profound relief. That was the first time I’d realised exactly how tense and wound up I’d been. When I posted about this on my personal Facebook, I added in the comments:

A postscript: I actually started this update as soon as I got home (I stopped at the supermarket on the way home). I was interrupted twice, first when my sister-in-law called in for a coffee, then when my mother-in-law rang (my brother-in-law also rang me this morning). So, while I’m going through this alone, I’m not *actually* alone.

That evening, family came round for takeaways, as we usually did on Fridays before lockdown. So, if things had gone badly, I’d have been supported. I also knew that, of course, and my distress was never about that, but about how badly I felt that Sunny had to go through that, and how much it would have broken my heart if I’d lost her, and so close to losing her other daddy. This time, the story turned out better.

I hope that continues.