Vet Visit

First little tomatoes in my garden this year!

Well, Lexis had her trip to the vet day before yesterday. The surgery to remove the tumor she has is going to run us more than $500. $130 of that is because the vet would like to run a lab analysis of the removed tissue to see what kind of cancer it is (in rats that present like this, it's under 1% chance it's anything but benign). He says he believes the tumor might be growing too fast to be a run-of-the-mill mammary tumor; so now I'm figuring he needs me to pay that $130 so that I can:

A--find out that everything is fine as suspected.

or B--find out that the rat has a malignant cancer in which case there's not much we can do anyways until she's bad enough that I have to shell out MORE money to have her euthanized.

Why do I need to pay this $130?

Mr. Borealis had the same reaction I did--we sat in the living room for a long time in silence. When the vet told me, I went through every possible reaction in about 10 minutes. Everything from "yes, she's our baby and we must absolutely do this," to "I'm a bad person if I don't do everything I can," to "We don't have five hundred dollars--good God, I'm already eating microwave noodles one meal a day!"

Mr. Borealis looked at me and said, "It's five hundred dollars for a fifteen minute surgery on a seven dollar rat? I don't think we can afford that..."

To which I replied, "Go tell her she's just a seven dollar rat."

We both decided at that point that we're going to have the surgery done. She's only 18 months old, and potentially has another two years in her.

I'm desperately seeking paying employment now; I have my first dental visit in over a year at the end of this month. I was supposed to go last July, but then we were so busy fixing the house and with everything else. Then I rescheduled for January, but then Mr. B lost his job and we had no insurance. Mr. B's last cavity cost us $400 even after insurance, and that's weighing heavily on my mind.

Need. A. Job.

On the bright side, I've named that little rapscallion of a squirrel Alan. I figured he needed a name here because he hangs around so much now.

Wish me Luck!

Alula