Have you ever had one of those days/weeks where you have intentions to get things done but higher priority things unexpectedly pop up that force you to stop what you’re doing and shift your focus?

That pretty much sums up how Thursday of this week went. Here’s what happened:

Earlier last week Ed discovered a bump on Mojo’s lower tummy (for those that don’t know, Mojo is our toy poodle). We both got really nervous after seeing the bump but didn’t immediately panic.

Ed and I both thought, “how can this be possible?” She’s such a young dog, she get’s her daily exercise, we feed her really good food, AND she comes from a line of show poodles with really good genetics. We thought, she can’t possibly be sick…

So anyway, we decided to monitor the bump for a few days to see if it got bigger or slowly disappeared.

Well, the bump didn’t disappear.

In fact, it got bigger over the course of a few days. Once I saw it was growing in size, I immediately scheduled an appointment with our vet so she could check it out.

I get to the vet’s office on Wednesday of this week and the vet examines Mojo’s bump, squeezing it and feeling it, she decides to do a “fine needle aspirate” to get a tiny sample of the cells and examine it closer under the microscope.

Well, 20 minutes goes by and the vet walks back into the exam room with results. For some reason I just knew something wasn’t going to be normal…

The vet explained that the cells looked odd, inflamed, and that the bump would have to be removed and biopsied to get a full diagnosis. She suggested the surgery to be performed the very next day.

At this point I remained calm while asking more questions to the vet but was secretly panicking inside (I won’t get into details but our childhood poodle (Prince) we had growing up had a few lumps that didn’t end very well. This immediately came to mind).

Without hesitation I scheduled Mojo’s surgery for the very next morning (Thursday).

Thursday morning came around and Ed and I drove together to the vet to drop her off at 7:30am.

The vet called in the afternoon saying Mojo’s surgery went well, she is okay, and ready to come home. The second we got the call, Ed and I jumped in the car and drove to pick her up.

We brought her home and she looked so sad, so out of it, so not herself. She could barely even walk straight. Her stomach was upset from the pain medication. After all, she just had surgery. All we wanted to do was snuggle up with her, love her, and give her belly rubs.

And so we did.

We laid on the sofa for the rest of the day, snuggled Mojo in a fuzzy blanket, rubbed her soft belly, scratched behind her floppy ears, watched the rain pour down outside (it was gloomy and rainy all of Thursday), and ate cereal for dinner. It was that kind of day.

And my daily to-do list for Thursday?

Well, that didn’t get done. But guess what- that’s okay. Because sometimes higher priority things pop-up that make “working your to-do list” not a priority at all. And your health (and your family’s health, pets included) is no exception.

When something higher priority comes up like this, I drop it all, and focus my attention on what matters most. In this case, all of my attention went to Mojo instead of worrying about “getting things done.”

So that’s my lesson for the week.

We’ll get Mojo’s results in 3-5 days. Until then, the bump is gone, she is back to her normal, playful, mischievous self, and we are confident that the results will show that she is healthy as can be 🙂