It feels like we'll never see each other again

Alright, dropped him off at the eye place... they'll let me know when they start surgery on him. Gatsby's at a slight risk since he has a heart murmur and he has hyperthyroidism but hopefully it'll be okay... ugh I'm so anxious.

Oof, had a rough couple of days. I went to go see Alex for his birthday last weekend, and it was fun to see him again but it does make me a little sad to go there. His house looks really nice, it's really lovely and he loves it there, and I guess it just emphasizes that gulf of distance that can only really be temporarily crossed. I don't want to live in the desert, and he doesn't want to leave it. It's just how it is. He's been busy lately so we haven't had much time to play games together either.

I was already feeling kind of melancholy after I got back, but then my mom found an old bag of Nana's that had a lot of photos of hers I hadn't seen before. More than that though, it had the note that she had taped up to her wall. Nana sometimes wrote out things on paper and taped them up for whatever reason. I don't remember exactly when she taped up this particular one, but it was basically her begging God to help her or save her when she was sick. Every time I went into her room to check on her or get her for treatment or ask her something or when she needed help, I'd see that note on the wall just "please please god help me" and it broke my heart. I never talked about it and she never talked about it but it was always just there, hanging there. I'd kind of forgotten about it until I saw it again and it just rocketed me right back to that time period again. I guess I was kind of numb when I first saw it and then the pain of it hit me more slowly through the night. I ended up crying for a while about it at various points over the past few days. Grief never really leaves you, I guess. Mostly just feel tired and sad.

Today I took Gatsby in for a follow-up on his eye. I forget if I mentioned this here or not, but Gatsby's left eye started looking strange a while back, so I went to get it checked out at an opthalmologist. They can't tell what's wrong with his eye exactly, but something is clearly wrong with it. The pressure in it is sky high and he's lost vision in it, and it's probably causing him constant headaches. I tried one course of medication which got the pressure down a bit, and this second course I was hoping would help even more. His eye looked better to me! But when I took him in it turned out his eye pressure was sky high again, and while his eye didn't look as dark as it did before, his pupil is strangely shaped now, which points to some kind of tumor in there. They recommended the first time that I get the eye taken out, but it's such an expensive procedure... it'll run some 3700$ or so, which is just, a LOT.

I was hoping the eyedrops would help with it. The cost of the operation is considerable of course, but I was also worried about him in other respects... he's older now, like 14, and I'm worried a bit about how he'd handle the anesthesia. I'm worried about if they send the eye out to get checked and it turns out he's got some kind of malignant cancer in him somewhere. It could be a benign tumor in his eye, they can't be sure. The other eye is fine and he otherwise seems to be behaving normally, although he walks a bit slowly and he sleeps a lot. I can see blood in there sometimes too, but not all the time.

I don't know. I'm taking him in tomorrow for a blood panel, since the eyedrop meds also have their own side-effects. I feel like at this point I have to get the operation done, things point to it just getting worse as the meds stop working, and what if it spreads to his other eye? I keep feeling guilty about not taking him in sooner, like if I'd just been more proactive about it maybe it wouldn't have gotten this bad. I felt like this about Nana too, like if I'd just encouraged or pressured her more to get checked out by doctors sooner then she'd still be alive. I guess both situations are kind of echoing each other and leaving me in kind of a bad place. I got some dustjar ideas the other night which hasn't happened in a while.

I feel really tired and heavy. I haven't gotten too much sleep. It feels like there's stuff happening every day this week. I want to draw but I can't find the time, or when I do I can't get started, or when I do I feel guilty I'm not doing the next Defrag page, but I never feel like I can find enough time to finish it. I think that might just be an excuse to not start on it. This could all be a combination of a lot of things though, really. Contributing factors. There usually isn't a simple explanation for things.

If I do get Gatsby's eye out, and everything goes well, then he'll be laid out for two weeks and I'll have to keep an eye on him, keep him medicated, all of that. Once those two weeks are up and he gets the sutures out though, then he should just be good to go. Like after that, his life should just go back to normal, and he can go back to just the thyroid medicine each morning/night, which is actually super easy. I just grind up the tablets and put it in a treat and he eats it right up, not even a problem. Right now, or well, up to today, I was giving him eyedrops three times a day... and morning/night there were two drops that I had to stagger by 10 minutes, so it was a bit of a time investment... there's all this stuff to do but I felt kind of tethered by making sure I got Gatsby's drops all done in time. I think I did a pretty good job... I missed a few drops here or there, or a day or two due to stuff happening, but I tried to be really consistent with it. I mentioned that to the vet tech and she said it was unlikely anything I did would have messed anything up...

I don't know. I have some money saved up, I can afford to get the procedure done, I think... I'll have to see what the blood panel says when they get it back. They're checking it to make sure he'd be good for surgery, as well as the side-effects of the medication. It's possible maybe they can't do the surgery and there'll just be nothing I can do, and I'll just watch him die. No, those are grief thoughts, I can't take those seriously. My head is just in a really weird place right now. I love Gatsby so much, I don't want to lose him. I'm trying my best with him. Maybe if I got him in sooner it wouldn't have done anything. It probably doesn't help to think about it either way.

I haven't been getting much sleep lately which also probably doesn't help. There's so much to do and it feels like Halloween is so close. No idea what to wear or what I'll do, or what to draw. What I need is to eat and sleep and take a shower and not let this kind of stuff eat at me.

It turned out my niece came over while I was at the vet's, so when I got home I had to put on a kind of more upbeat kid-watching tone/face, which I could do just about although I didn't have a lot of energy. Gatsby was walking around meowing after I let him out of the carrier, but now he's just sleeping so I hope he's not in any pain or anything. I think he just gets huffy after I take him to the vet, like how dare I do that to him! He's probably going to be unhappy tomorrow when I take him in AGAIN, I'll have to try and sneak up on him quickly. It'll be early in the morning, so I shouldn't stay up too late tonight... I don't have anything drawn for Friday, I barely managed to get something done for today. Am I going to have time sometime on Thursday to get something done...? If I can focus enough when I do.

This is really kind of a stream of consciousness thing, but that's what journals are really meant for after all, haha. Just a lot going on lately...

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