After Doug and Noah left yesterday, I loaded the children into the car for errands. Molly hopped in and sat on the front passenger seat. Molly loves the car, hates being home alone and is better behaved than the children so, I like having her with me. Whenever the car stopped at a light or red sign, I reached over and pet Molly as I always do. Last night I felt a lump on her abdomen. I looked in the dim light from the other cars and it looked like she had some sort of inverted nipple. So, of course, I pinched it. Doug hates that I pinch things. Tommy howls and screams if I even look closely at his face. “No! Don’t touch it!” I gently pinched and something popped out, but not loose. I leaned over to see what was now protruding from Molly’s abdomen but got distracted by the blood that was all over my fingers and Molly. I stopped the car to assess the situation. I pulled fast food napkins from the glove box and began blotting at Molly’s tummy while I noted that Evan was asleep and Amy could see from the light I had turned on that Molly was bleeding. Amy crawled in the very back of the car and started crying. I looked at what looked like a tiny piece of intestine dangling beside Molly’s nipple. I assigned Sarah and her friend to calm Amy who was now in the back of the car moaning about Molly dying. I called my mother because of her decade spent working at a vet office and described the scenario much quicker than I am describing it now. I was shaking and felt strongly that Molly needed the animal ER.

I called Doug on the way to see my mother. Molly is very much his baby. I can imagine the gears turning in his little OCD brain. In case you’ve never met him or read his blog, Doug likes to try and control everything and everyone. That way, all accidents and mistakes are all his fault. He wasn’t here to see the problem, to decide about waiting or seeking immediate help or how to act on the vet’s recommendation. I know that caused him pain. If he had been in a car of his own, he would have come back home last night. My mother met me at the midway point between our houses, the middle school. A quick examination later and we were on the way to the after hours emergency animal clinic known as Animal ER. The teenagers were annoyed that they weren’t loitering at the mall as they had intended to spend their evening, but Amy was giggling at their antics to keep her distracted. Evan woke up as soon as he was pulled out of his seat and he and Amy went into that overdrive that children use to keep themselves awake in the teeny waiting room while we waited with a woman holding a tiny, listless kitten across the room as a young couple collected their animal’s ashes. Once I was called back to see what looked more like a vet tech than a vet, they let me know that they had never seen anything like it before. Not comforting words when you are already very scared. The vet felt it needed to be removed since it might tear loose if we waited until morning to have the regular vet look at it and I reluctantly agreed. I don’t trust strange vets. During my mother’s decade and then some spent working at veterinarians’ offices I saw enough to know that the compassion and skill varies greatly among animal doctors. I took the children and “we’re not children, we’re teenagers” home and my mother waited for Molly to have her minor surgery.

An hour and a half later, Molly came in looking very much like a drunk. I had a vial of formaldehyde with Molly’s growth to give the vet. It was the size of a quarter and resembled a fleshy snail but the jar and bag that it was sealed inside kept me from getting a good picture. My usual grab the camera reaction had gone out the window and I have no pictures except for Molly’s stitched up incision. We settled in for the evening. When I wasn’t petting and fretting over Molly she slept deep. So deep that she wet the bed. My bed. I awoke early to strip the bed and bathe before heading to the vet.

Molly hopped in the car and instead of her usual spot in the front seat, she slunk to very back of the van where she hid behind the back seat, peeking out occasionally. Instead of smiling and wagging at the vet’s as she usually does, she shivered and tried to hide behind me. The vet had that concerned but caring look on her face and said it would take about 5 days to get the pathology results on the growth. Then she talked about the worst case scenario which would have been fine except that she didn’t offer a single other explanation. Obviously she thinks it IS the worst case scenario. I started doing research on the only thing she talked about but had to stop. I can’t face this until I get the lab report. In the back of my mind I suspect that we have less than a year left with a very important member of our family but I’m going to repress and deny that for now. Amy still cries big tears for Lucy and until now I have tried to ease her pain with Molly’s help. We should have more than 10 years left with Molly in our family. I feel weak and a little nauseous. Why does everything have to be so hard?