Little star, revisited

Well, I called the vet and they had the test results and they were not at all what I was hoping for. Turns out Twinkle was extremely anemic. They made an appointment for me at the emergency clinic nearby. I had to leave work and rush home (if you can say that of public transit). I was pretty worked up by the time I got here. I was half convinced she'd be dead.

She was sitting by the front door where I'd left her in the morning. In roughly a minute I had her in the carrier and out the door. I made the appointment, and she's there now. She needs a transfusion.

Low end is $2700; high end is $4000. And that's before they start treating her for whatever the underlying problem is.

So, my bank sent me a message last month that I was pre-approved for a line of credit. I scoffed at it but, like everything else they send me, I hung onto it. I just called them, asked the interest rate (something like 5%), and they told me to go into the branch near where I work tomorrow and sign the paperwork. Then I have to transfer about half the "low" end to chequing and pay by debit. Hopefully I can move that much in one shot using debit.

Meanwhile I'm looking at the pet insurance I took out last Christmas. Deductables, limits, co-pays... hopefully I stand to get at least something back, but still... if I recover half, I'll be lucky. As a side note I can say, and not with an iota of smugness, that if anything makes me grateful people two generations ago got serious about socialized medicine here Canada, it's this kind of thing. It's bad enough going through this for a cat I love, where I'm sitting there thinking, what can I afford? How far can I take this? How many years I am going to be paying for this? But just imagine if this were my child, my spouse, or myself I were asking these questions of.

The important thing is to get Twinkle back in good health. But if that goes beyond about ten grand, I don't know how I'm going to swing it. :(