So. To fill anyone in on what happened - we’re not sure yet. The bottom line is this:
Garrosh died unexpectedly at around 4:30 AM on 11/11/23. He passed in his sleep, at the neurology-specialist’s hospital.
More info on the lead up to this below the cut. I am shattered.
The week prior to his death, I noticed some diarrhea, but that cleared up after a few days. He also had some decreased appetite, increased drooling, and lethargy. He went from running the perimeter of the yard every morning for a security check, to walking outside and laying down in the sun. A strange change.
I took him to the vet on 11/8, and we both agreed he probably had some sort of stomach bug - his vitals were all normal, no temp, and decided to start him on anti nausea meds. He was clearly a little out of it at the vet, but his tail was still wagging and he was happy to see everyone. So.
It wasn’t a stomach bug.
The anti nausea meds didn’t seem to have much of an effect in the following two days. He didn’t eat at all the day I took him into the vet, and he showed no interest the next day either, but I was able to coax some beef and rice into him by hand feeding it to him, piece by piece.
At around 2AM on 11/10/23, Garrosh was laying on the bed, and I needed to take him out to pee. I had accidentally fallen asleep next to him and we had missed our before-bed pee. So I clipped the collar onto him, and gave it a tug.
He screamed.
Just. A sharp horrible wail of pain. And he shakily got off the bed, but was listing heavily to his left side, unable to look to the right. If I tried to turn his head the other way, he yelped.
I took him to the emergency vet.
They told me he had probably pulled a muscle, and to stop letting him on the bed. They gave him an injection for the pain and told me to give him some Gabapentin when I got home.
We wrangled him into the car, and I woke up my poor neighbor at 5am to help me lift Garrosh out of the car, as he was unable to get himself out. He growled when my neighbor tried to lift him out, so I had the neighbor take the back legs instead while I lifted his front. He yelped and cried and screamed in pain, but wouldn’t growl at me. Oh, my love. I’m so sorry.
At this point, the injection had kicked in and he was panting heavily as a side effect.
I forced him to take the Gabapentin. He was finally able to lay himself down and pass out. But it was just… he was standing int eh living room, and then laid down where he stood, and didn’t move from that frozen position. He wasn’t relaxed. But he slept.
I camped out on the couch to watch him.
At around 8am it became apparent something was very wrong. He hadn’t moved from his position at all. He couldn’t seem to get to his feet, or want to try.
Boyfriend came over. This usually sparks a parade of joy and playtime. Instead, his head stayed down, the only way you could tell he knew what was going on is that his little tail started wagging like crazy. But he couldn’t move.
We called the emergency vet back. They said, if the Gabapentin wasn’t working, the next move would be to refer him to a neurologist.
We asked for a referral, and so so so amazingly, they were able to fit him in for an appointment that very day.
An hour before the appointment, we started to try to get him to his feet. He was so so so brave for us. My boyfriend and I laid out treats - no effect. Gentle encouragement and commands - nothing. Packing his overnight bag - nothing. But then we tried acting super super excited and happy! Squeaking toys!! Jumping up and down!! Going crazy!! And this sweet, sweet dog - he tried and struggled and thrashed to try and roll himself onto his feet before finally FINALLY managing to pull himself up. Oh, oh love, my god. Jesus Christ. You were so good for us. He walked tentative steps and got halfway to the car before he stopped and we had to pick him up and carry him. He yelped and cried but did not growl.
We took him to the neurologist. They had to take him in on a gurney. He screamed when the techs pried him from the car. I need to stress that… Garrosh is a stoic guy. He never shows his pain. The pain he was in must have been indescribable. Because he’s been through some shit that warrants screaming and he never makes a peep.
So. They load him onto the gurney, and put me at the front of it, walking backwards, facing him, to keep him calm and still. Of course he is. He’s perfect.
They take him in back to perform reflex tests while we wait for the neurologist. I can hear intermittent yelping from him as they test him.
The neurologist comes in. Says that he could be convinced he was seeing a slight delay in reflexes, hinting at a brain issue, but more likely he is thinking a ruptured disc. Okay. Okay. He says that there is a chance it is something like spinal cancer or an infection, but in any case, an MRI would give them a better idea of what’s going on.
Thank fuck for pet insurance. It was amazing to look down the barrel of a 12-13k bill and just say “you have a blank check to do whatever you need to do, just make sure he isn’t in pain”.
I say goodbye to him. They had him in a kennel in the back. He was out of it. A handful of strange dogs in his proximity and he wasn’t reacting to any of it. They had already given him methodone, so hopefully he was feeling a million times better, but he was panting hard. Maybe a side effect. Maybe stress. Maybe pain.
In restrospect - the lethargy, the decreased appetite, the drooling. Yeah. Those can be signs of nausea. They are also pain signals. I hope. I hope it wasn’t too bad for too long. I tried so hard to get you help as soon as I realized. Oh baby.
I said goodbye to him in that hospital and I kissed him on his nose and I promised him I would see him soon and that I loved him so much.
They called us with the MRI results that evening. There were several “lesions” in his spinal nerve, swelling in his brain. There were these… other lesions… in the muscles around his head and neck… and an enlarged lymph node in his abdomen…. There was a lesion in his brain that was bleeding.
They weren’t sure if this was cancer they were seeing, or… some sort of meningitis. If the lesions were the cause of the issues, or an effect of the issues. He had come out of the anesthesia, and we made plans with the neurologist to go to an internist the next day to try and get a cancer diagnosis by aspirating a lymph node, if that is what it was.
He told me that if it was cancer, the treatment plan would likely be more palleative than curative, given the seeming systemic spread of whatever it was they were seeing on the scans. They weren’t sure what it was they were seeing. It’s all the same. I told the doctor that I didn’t think I’d be able to put an animal through chemo anyway.
They started him on antibiotics and steroids to lessen the swelling in the brain and to start to fight off an infection if that is what it was.
Uh. Ar around 8am the next morning I woke up to three missed calls from the vet. They had been screened by my DND because they used the wrong number that I had set to surpass the DND screen.
They left a voicemail but I didn’t listen to it. I just called back. I knew what had happened, but I thought. Maybe. Maybe things were okay.
I heard the vet say “heyyyy…” in a soft, understanding tone, and it was. It was like a heavy horrible blanket of grief fell over me. “Did you listen to the voicemail I left you?” “No” “oh. I am so sorry. We have bad news.”
Garrosh stopped breathing at around 4:30 in the morning. The tech on staff was listening, and his heavy snoring was a nice white noise, and then she thought… “it’s quiet.”
He was gone. He went in his sleep. It was fast.
He died not in pain, and in his sleep. That’s a comfort. I only- I promised myself and him that I would be there. I always assumed I’d be able to give him a. Good death. A planned death. To put him down when he was a senior and it become too much for him. To hold his head in my lap as he passed.
I couldn’t do that. I wish I was there for you love. I wish I was there for you. I am so sorry. I am so so so sorry baby.
I’m having a necropsy done. On Monday they gave me prelim results of what they had found so far. They have collected samples to be cultured and slides to be sent to the pathologist. I’ll get those results in a week or two from now. But the prelim results were. Wild.
His entire body was shutting down at once. There were bleeding lesions in his intestines, his lungs, his heart, his liver, his pancreas. He had fluid around his heart (he has had multiple echocardiograms in his life for unrelated drama, and his heart has previously looked great.) there was fluid in his lungs. Lesions in his brain - maybe a stroke? He was bleeding though. Strange lesions in the actual interior of the muscle around his neck and head. Not masses, lesions. All, ALL of his lymph nodes were enlarged at the time of death.
He must have been in such unimaginable pain before we took him to the vet. How could he mask this? How long had he been masking this? A few days ago he was. Chasing cats and playing fetch and barking at strangers on the other side of the fence. He was playing with his dog friends and helping me renovate the new house (I just bought a new house. Specifically for him. I picked it out because of its hard and the deck for him to sun himself on and the uninstalled dog door is still laying by the patio door. There was a big pit of dirt I knew he’d love to roll in. He saw the house two total times before he died, and he zoomed straight to that patch of dirt and dug himself a nest. I brought in a fencing contractor to extend the fenced portion for him. I have to cancel that.). He kept sticking his nose up to the electric drill to watch me work, like he needed to understand what I was doing. Just in case he needed to take over the job for me. Oh babydoll. Oh love.
I don’t know what to do now. I’m losing my mind. I’m
Broken. He pulled me out of the darkest time of my life. He’s my protector.
The. The day he died. They let me say goodbye to the body before they sent it off for the necropsy/cremation. His nose was so cold. His neck was still a little warm. I kissed his nose and head and face and pet him where he liked between the eyes. I scratched his ears. I put my head down on his and wept.
My parents came down to say goodbye to the body too. They were amazing. My boyfriend has been. The best. He’s been helping me move. He’s been letting me stay at his apartment because. Because it was impossible to go back to my place. Surrounded by his things. His smell. I couldn’t.
No one is sure what happened to him yet. No one understands what was happening to him. He was having some. Weird skin issues earlier this year that magically resolved itself after we had taken several biopsies trying to figure out what was wrong with him. The primary vet and the dermatologist just shrugged and said “yeah we have no idea what this is… maybe a weird allergy symptom? So sorry”
I think it was related. I think this is something that has been building. As much as I would prefer to think this is a lightning strike, something that came on quickly and killed him, I can’t help but think this is the end result of a chain of events. I don’t blame the med staff at all, they’ve all been excellent. My guy was always special. I don’t blame them for seeing hoof prints and thinking Horse and not Zebra.
What was happening to him? What took him from me?!
My mom says she had a dream about Garrosh that night after he died. She said that Garrosh was speaking to her, and he told her to tell me to talk to him.
I will. I am. I miss you so much. Love of my life. I needed more time with you, and I wouldn’t trade the time we got together for anything. You made me who I was. Who I am. You gave me you strength. I keep feeling you next to me and I look over and. You’re not there. It’s a searing horrible pain that I keep forgetting about only to slap me across the face again and again and again and again and again and I can’t take it!!!!!!!!!!! I can’t take it!!!! I miss you so much!!!!!!
The cremation service called me the other day. They told me that- that there was too much of you. You couldn’t fit in the biggest urn they had. And they asked my permission to put the rest of you in another container. I had to laugh. That’s objectively very funny. I’m glad you were able to make me laugh like that again. You were always a comedian.
So I laughed. And then I cried and cried and cried and cried because your big beautiful perfect head didn’t exist anymore. Your giant paws i watched grow and balloon up in size. Your intense amber eyes. Your huge wet tongue and your happy tail and your tiny ears. They don’t exist anymore. They’re ashes in a jar that I’m going to have to pick up from my vet in a week or so. Oh it hurts. It hurts so much I can’t take it.
I don’t know how to do this. I miss you so much. I wish I got more time with you. I need to find out what you were going through. I love you so dearly. I will never stop. We’ll meet again someday, baby. Sleep well.
Sigurd was a GREAT boy last night. Doing good big dog duties. He was laying in the mud room which is nice and cool (favorite place) and we are in the living room. He starts giving the biggest, deepest scariest sounding bark I’ve ever heard. Turns out a bear was on the stoop by the mud room door getting into our trash can (I had literally just put the trash out within like an hour or so?).
Sigurd runs up the stairs so he can go to the deck and get a better look at the bear. Satisfied that he’s scared it off (it left the trash!) he goes back down to the mud room and then like ten minutes later it starts again. Bear has returned for trash, Sigurd starts barking again. They are staring at each other through the front door window. Sigurd abandons mud room to go upstairs and bark at bear from porch again. Bear snatches trash bag and runs away. Sigurd is on alert for the rest of the evening. Patrolling the house. A good boy.
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