As I mentioned last week, I had to put my beloved cat to sleep last Sunday (yes, it was not the best Easter I’ve ever had). It’s a long story, but what I thought was an asthma/allergies flare-up was actually a blood clot in her lungs. To say that I’m devastated is an understatement. She was a wonderful pet and I miss her very, very much.
Along with my emotional pain has come a pretty hefty amount of financial pain, too. Let’s just say that the money in my Freedom Fund was nowhere near enough to cover the cost of her care, which included two X-rays, multiple shots of anti-inflammatory drugs, time in an oxygen tank, an overnight hospital stay….and that’s just the really expensive stuff. I’m going to write more about how I plan to cope with these costs in another post, but today I want to know: how far would you go – financially – to save your pet?
When the blood clot was finally properly diagnosed, I was faced with a very difficult choice: put her down or authorize a very expensive (about $1,800) and very risky treatment that could have saved her – temporarily. The vet was clear that it was very likely my poor kitty would get another clot and I would end up going through the same thing again in a couple of months. As soon as he said she would probably never be “cured,” I knew I had to put her down. She was suffering, I was suffering, and no treatment was going to provide her will good quality of life in the long-term.
However, if the vet had said that the $1,800 treatment would have cured her condition and that she would have gone back to having a normal, healthy life, I probably would have gone through with it. I’m fully aware that I don’t have $1,800 cash-on-hand. I’m fully aware that I would have been putting myself into well over $2,000 in credit card debt, when you factor in all the other costs I had already incurred.
But I would have done it and I wouldn’t have regretted it.
So tell me readers, in hard financial terms (I want a dollar amount here!) how far would you go to save your pet?
