MilSpouse Friday Fill-In #20

Check out Wife of a Sailor for the 20th week of the Friday Fill-In:

1. A different twist on last week’s question. This week, the first question is: what’s the nicest thing a MILSPOUSE has ever done for you?

During Mr. V's deployment last year EVERYTHING went wrong. And I mean everything. Search back through my blog posts and you'll find endless lists of everything that broke or went wrong while he was gone. About 2 weeks before he came back, one of my cats got sick....REALLY sick. Moses was the cat that replaced my 8 month old kitten that I lost to leukemia a few years ago, so he's pretty special to me. He had crystals and a blockage which is bad, but most cats can be unblocked pretty easily. Not Moses though. He went from having basic crystals and a blockage to needing emergency surgery for bladder stones, only to find out when they opened him up that he had a torn urethra, which would ultimately lead to death if it didn't heal. The vet had him in surgery when she called me to ask if I just wanted him euthanized right then and there, while he was already under anesthesia. Because Moses is so special to me, and because so much other stuff had gone wrong, I completely lost it and broke down. The vet had given him a less than 1% chance of survival. I said no to euthanizing because while I didn't want him to suffer, I needed a few moments to even process what was going on. I tried to track down Mr. V in Iraq - unsuccessfully. I didn't want to agree to anything until I talked to him, and while we had managed to talk almost every day, of course this was the one day I couldn't get in touch with him. I also wanted a chance to see Moses and say goodbye to him before they put him to sleep. So I called one of my friends crying, and without even hesitating, she packed up her 8 month old and met me at the vet to be with me while Moses was put down. That may seem like such a minor thing to some people, but I didn't want to be alone at that moment, and she didn't even hesitate or think about what she was doing. She just came out to be with me. I honestly don't know if a non-military friend would have done that for me. I like to think that they would have, but at the same time I don't think they would have understood how hard it would be to go through something like that while your husband was deployed. I'm very attached to my animals and since this news came on so sudden and quick, it was just horrible to deal with alone. I'll be grateful forever to her for dropping everything she was doing to come to the vet to be with me.

And on a happy note, by the time we got to the vet, I realized I made the right decision in saying "no" to immediate euthanasia. By the time we got there the vet had done some research and called a specialist for advice and Moses' chances of survival had been increased to 20%. Now almost exactly a year later (and after several weeks hospitalized and several months of medicine) he's still here with me alive and well :-).

2. How often do you drive faster than the speed limit?

Umm every single day. And I have a nice track record of speeding tickets to prove it. I try to never go more than about 8 miles over the limit, but my pile of tickets prove that I don't always manage to do that. I should really make a point of slowing down.

3. Did you have a nickname in school? If so, what was it?

I never had a nickname in school, but I did work at a camp where we were required to have nicknames (based on a tradition of it being too formal to call your counselors "Mrs. or Miss" but too informal to call them by their first names) and my nickname was Vega. In college my roommate started calling me Brooklet and thats the nickname that has really stuck around. Several people still call me Brooklet.

4. If your life was a book, what would the title be and how would it end?

I'll have to steal my blog title for this and call it "Life and Times of a Displaced Jersey Girl" because that really is my life. As for an ending, since I'm still hopefully very far away from the end of my life I'm going to leave that one unanswered for now.

5. Look back (in your planner if you have one) to September 14th… what did you do that day?

Absolutely nothing. But I took a cat to a feline cardiologist on the 13th and took a soap making class on the 15th. However, the 14th appears to have been a pretty relaxing, "do nothing" day.