Feel guilty?

Hey all.

For those of you with sick pets, do you ever feel guilty you have to go to work? I would love nothing more than to stay home with my kitty, but in order to pay vet bills, I need to work (or win the lottery. I swear I'm getting close). How do you deal? When I'm at work, all I think of is her...

Thanks!

Of course. It's like leaving a sick child at home.

Fortunately I haven't had anything like this with the cats, but one of my birds was feeling pretty cruddy from ascites and I couldn't get a vet appointment right away, so every day that I had to go to class or work in between I felt terrible that she was just sitting in her cage breathing hard and not feeling like herself, especially when all she wanted was to be near me. I always had the fear that when I came home, she would have taken a turn for the worst. In her case, it's a lifelong thing, but just waiting that day or two before she can be seen by the vet again is a bit stressful and worrying even though it's never as bad as the first time.

If I can work hard and busy myself with work or school-related stuff, time tends to pass faster and I can rush back home to be by their sides.

I do not work but I have many pets and feel guilty that the sick one can only get so much attention and usually ends up caged short term if it needs any pills or monitoring of food intake.  From seeing so many decline over the years I usually have a sense of who is going to recover and who will not and that makes it worse when I have had one with same issues not end well I find it hard to care for that one.  

I work full time and so does Rick. Most of the time, I'm OK....we've not had a cat that was so sick I didn't feel comfortable going to work. But we had Banshee who had some health problems. She had a heart murmur, but was on meds for it and it wasn't too bad. Then she started having seasonal allergies. And then her thyroid started acting up and we were trying to get her thyroid under control with meds for that. She got to the point where she was OK, but still having some issues from time to time. 

One day, I was sitting on the top step of the living room and she came over to me. I even told her that, if she had to leave, it was OK, that I would understand. I was doing everything I could for her, but it was difficult because she simply wasn't healthy. She sat on my lap as we talked and she started to purr. I think we sat there for about an hour, me talking to her and telling her how much I adored her. She got up and walked away. As she went around the corner of the living room into the kitchen, she stopped and looked back at me. And I looked at her and said, "Know this, Baby Girl. I will always love you. Always."

That Monday afternoon I came home from work and she was not sitting at the top of the steps. And I knew. I went out to the kitchen and she was lying on the floor. Her heart had given out. She was only 14 years old.

To this day, I feel guilty that I wasn't there when she died. For months afterward, I dreamed that I was looking for her. I could hear her, but I could never find her. I will never forgive myself for going to work. But I honestly didn't realize she was that bad. Her vet didn't realize she was that bad. We were trying to get her thyroid under control with the meds. But the guilt is something I will live with for the rest of my life. She died alone.

Rick says she didn't. She was with BooBoo and Whisper. Whisper was her surrogate mother and they were very close. Banshee and Boo were "like that" all the time. Together in a cuddle when they were sleeping. Fighting when we were getting their meals ready. Rick kept saying not to feel bad, that she really wasn't alone. But I still feel guilty. And I still miss her.

She's been gone five years now. 

I am fortunate that DH is retired and home all day to tend to Cindy.  If he wasn't, I would feel very guilty and probably go home for lunch every day to check on her.  It would also be very hard to tube feed her on the schedule we have now.

Absolutely.  When I was in nursing school, we could only miss a very limited amount of days and the reason did not matter.  A short stay as a patient in the hospital could mean being out of the program.  I had to be in school while my cat was in the Emergency Animal Hospital and it was brutal.  

DH and I are on opposite shifts.  The only good thing about it is that someone is almost always home.