Doctor Bills

The patient will live. The doggie oatmeal worked and the rocks are out of her system. Hooray! Now we don't have to get a second mortgage on the house to pay for her surgery. Hooray!

Does thinking about the cost make me a bad person?

When one of our cats had some thyroid issue and the vet said we should give him radiation treatment to the tune of $1,000.00, I sure thought about the cost. I thought, "We can't afford that. Poor kitty. Oh well. I guess it's curtains for you." There's nothing like a large vet bill to clarify my priorities about just how my animal companions fit in my life.

I love our pets and think of them as part of my family, but I don't rank them on a par with the human members of my family. I'm sure if a human family member needed surgery I wouldn't even think about the cost. We have health insurance which helps, but even so. I can't imagine thinking, "Oh well, honey, you'll just have to cope with that intestinal blockage because we can't afford the doctor."

Of course, people without health insurance are forced to do that all the time. I've read that people without insurance go to the doctor far less, and far later than they should for conditions that would have responded to treatment if caught in time. How awful to know that a person you love has died because you could not afford the treatment.

I do think it makes us a bad society to put money ahead of the health of our fellow humans. I don't feel the same way about animals, even while I realize that domestic pets are dependent upon us to care for them. Certainly that makes me a species-ist, if not a bad person.

I don't know what the answer is. While all living things do eventually die, it seems a crying shame for people--and yes, pets--to die prematurely from something that could be cured if only there were enough money to pay the doctor bills.