mzrowan

Nothing punches my emotional buttons harder than knowing that I could have prevented something bad from happening if I'd only been more on the call – done more research, had more cope, been more organized. No amount of rationalization about how stressed and busy I've been helps soothe me much.

Like for instance, our house is currently having almost all of its wood shingles replaced because I didn't get it painted sooner. Which is expensive, time-consuming, and noisy.

Or, the one that's really got me frantic today – my cat is now partially (totally?) blind, and I might have been able to prevent that.

See, my cat is hyperthyroid, and has been for maybe years? The first sign was low potassium years ago, which the vet misdiagnosed as early-stage kidney disease. Then she had her stroke a year ago (the cat, not the vet), and the hospital found she had high blood pressure and put her on medication for that. Some time after that, a locum vet at my regular practice put 2 and 2 together and suggested I get her tested for high thyroid levels. And lo! that had been the real problem all along.

So then she went on methimazole for that, which my research suggested wasn't an awesome long-term solution. But in December, when I asked her main vet about getting radio-iodine treatment to cure her thyroid issues, she put me off, saying we might want to play with her thyroid levels to mitigate any possible kidney issues as she aged. I eventually spoke to another vet and mentioned that recommendation, and from the other vet's tone, I could tell it was...not great advice.

And then of course my life went from slowly falling apart to total catastrophe in January. Eventually I took the cat back in and they found that now she was anemic from the methimazole. So then she was off that, and on a low-iodine diet, and now radio-iodine therapy was the way to go. Great.

But she had to come off the diet at the end May so she could get tested for the correct iodine dose, but the tests came back late so they had to delay her treatment, so her thyroid levels have been uncontrolled for three weeks...and now she's blind.

She went in for her radio-iodine treatment yesterday and the vet noticed right away that she had vision problems. She was apparently walking into the sides of her cage because she couldn't see them. I'd just thought she was agitated from high thyroid levels, and confused. She's never been the brightest of cats.

But yeah, now she might have detached retinas from high blood pressure from hyperthyroidism, says Dr Internet Vet. And there's nothing to be done about detached retinas if you don't catch them in the first 48 hours.

So...if I'd asked for a second opinion on radio-iodine treatment in December...if I'd known vision loss was a potential side effect...if I'd done something sooner about her dilated pupils...if I'd realized she was having trouble seeing and not just a little more confused about things...my cat might still be able to see. Now she might never see again. And it's my fault, and nothing can convince me otherwise.