What???

The doctors at San Luis Rey x-rayed Truffles skull and brought me into the office to see what was going on.  I knew that the minute she asked to have the "owner" sit down ( as I had brought a contingency with me for support) that this would not be good.  They showed me the x-ray and it looked like there was a golf ball inside her head around the area of her eye.  I didn't hear much after that.  I was pretty upset.  I heard words like surgery, euthanasia, dangerous and no other choice.  My beautiful little girl was not going home tonight.  I looked at my husband and prayed that he wouldn't see the price tag on all of this.  We are not rich, we just have a horse.  I don't know what I said or did or what a must have looked like at that moment but I went out side and called my vet.  My REAL vet; the one who has stood by my side through my trek with horses for the last 20 years.  He and I have a code.  He cannot advise me but he will always tell me what to do if it were "his horse."  He told me that there had been a ton of success with this surgery that they were proposing and without it she would just become an unpredictable and potentially dangerous horse.  The pressure of all the arthritis, and bone growth cause other bones to pinch off nerves and she could break the base of her skull just by whinnying to me.
I was toast then.  I couldn't think anymore.  It looked like my decision was to have the surgery or to put her down.  My husband made the decision for me.  She would have the surgery the next day and we would say goodbye to his credit card.