We Lived To Tell (or meow) About It

Since all of you are dying to know (or at least I’m going to pretend that you are), my trip to the allergist was met with bravery and triumph. Sort of.

I started off getting the regular 40 injections where they test for things like dogs, cats, mold, ragweed, etc. The nurse pricked me all over both my arms, each time with a different liquid. It didn’t hurt too much, but then she told me that if I reacted to something, I would begin to itch. And let me tell you, boy did I begin to itch. But the worst part is that you’re not allowed to scratch. So for 16 of the longest minutes of my life, I had to sit and not scratch while my arms grew welts as big as quarters. QUARTERS. After the 16 minutes were up, I finally got to find out what I was allergic to. But wait… that would have been WAY too easy, especially for me. There were 8 spots that they weren’t sure about- they reacted, but not as big as the others. This means that I had to get 8 REAL shots, under the skin, and completely painful. Then I had to wait again while those injection sites swelled up like quarters.

After another eternity of waiting and itching, the nurse practitioner came in to give me my diagnosis. Well, she said, looks like you’re allergic to everything. No joke, that’s totally what she said. Cats, mold, ragweed, dust, pollen, and oak are just a few of the things that came up positive for an allergy reaction. She gave me a whole packet of reading material and I’m faced with the decision of getting allergy shots sometime in my future. No more shots today, though. I think I was already traumatized enough.

It went about as well for me as it went for Oscar. His eye still isn’t much better and he has to keep his cone on for another week. Which trust me, is just as bad for us as it is for him. And on top of all that joyous news, the vet charged us $47.50 for the “re-check” and $18.00 for his third dye test. Yes, that’s right; a simple re-check put me over $60 in the hole. We really dislike this vet, mostly because we seem to spend endless amounts of money and the cat isn’t showing much improvement. It’s also putting a huge financial strain on us since Mark (or Eliot depending on how you know him. That’s correct; he goes by two different names. I’ll get into it eventually) is still unemployed. We don’t need to go spending hundreds of dollars on the cat all within the span of a month. The vet briefly mentioned that if it doesn’t make much progress in the next week, we might have to consider seeing a kitty ophthalmologist. Oh good lord, she did NOT just say that. But she did and I was not the only one who heard it. Across the exam room, Mark was motioning (jokingly of course) that we should just remove the eye. Don’t worry, we would NEVER do something that drastic unless it was absolutely necessary. On that note, please keep your fingers crossed for a super-speedy recovery for cone-kitty.