Topic: Immune-mediated thrombocy
The purpose of my blog overall is to bring a daily focus to living life out to the fullest, without fear. So, this is an interesting twist in my life. How to cope and live through this too.
I didn't try to read any studies of people feeling guilty about the condition of their pet due to a disease, or parents about same for their kid. I do know that I get these feelings all the time. It is probably normal to feel guilty or bad and to second-guess yourself and shift through the history to see if it was something that you or someone else did to cause the disease, and my personal answer to that is:
- you'll never know what happened and why
- you couldn't have stopped it because you couldn't have known
- it is easier, I think, to hold someone responsible, even yourself, then to have no one at all to blame.
- Accept the fact that the animal is ill, and focus on spending time with the animal, enjoying the animal, and on getting the animal back to health. You can't change anything that already happened.
- If the treatment doesn't go well, don't blame the doctor. Treating this disease is more of an art then a science, a ton of complicated factors to consider. And it's a rare condition that responds poorly to treatment. There is a limit to what anyone can do. You are confronted with physical, human, time, and money limitations and you have to accept those limitations and work within them.
- Just keep telling yourself: this too shall pass. Not necessarily how you like, but you'll move out of this phase in your life to something. Whatever that is. You have to live through this too.
I also want to share that it has been a mental challenge to:
- Cope with the constant threat that the dog can just drop dead at any second.
- Dealing with the fact that we've spent a small fortune on treatment.
- Dealing with the demands of every-day life - work, family, friends, while taking care of the dog.
- My parents are worry warts. I've had trouble telling them about the disease and the different stages because they'd just worry and cry. I've not told them what she has. They already call to check on her a lot. The care for her has added 1-5 hours of time to my and my husband's day, and taking daily or hourly phone calls from family to give the latest worrysome update just didn't seem like a good idea.
- This is the first big animal I've owned. When I got her, when she was shivering inside my jacket when I was carrying her home for the first time, I vowed I'd never let anything bad happen to her ever. Have I failed? Did I fail her? This part is very hard.
- I have a tough, demanding job. Lots of travel and stress. Being able to care for the dog/deal with the dog possibly dying has been tough.
- I am lucky to have my husband to help me get through it in the mental, emotional, physical, and financial way of it.
- Dog has to be medicated sometimes several times a day, depending on what's happening with the disease. Making time through this is hard.
Posted by anteojos
at 12:34 PM CDT
Updated: Saturday, 9 September 2006 12:43 PM CDT
