#pet mortality

[indigoisaspookyghost]

Patas, who has now well outlived the life expectancy he was given when diagnosed with lymphoma, has a vet appointment tomorrow. I’m stressed and scared. Hoping for good news.

[enigma731]

I think Sunny is getting better but also maybe he’s not getting better, and even if he is, he’s 25 years old which means he’ll die from something sooner rather than later

and idk, that’s just really hard tonight

[vaspider]

Click here to support Chemo for Kusto

Kusto has been my puppy since he was 5 weeks old. His mom was attacking the litter, so we brought him home, hand-weaned him, and he's been my sweet baby since the day that he waddled over to me and flopped on his back when I went to meet the litter. The day I came back from the hospital after...

cw: pet illness, pet mortality.

Kusto has been my puppy since he was 5 weeks old.  His mom was attacking the litter, so we brought him home, hand-weaned him, and he's been my sweet baby since the day that he waddled over to me and flopped on his back when I went to meet the litter. The day I came back from the hospital after getting my spine surgery, he saw me out the window and refused to be tricked into going to the backyard - he had to see me as soon as possible. And he tended me through my recovery, sleeping on the hospital bed we had in our living room. About 2 weeks ago, he started losing weight rapidly.  We took him to the vet, and got an answer we were dreading: Leukemia. At this point we know that it's leukemia and one of two forms of acute leukemia. We have six to nine months at the outside with him. The only way to determine a treatment plan is with more testing. Then we will know what our plan is. To be clear: this is a hospice plan. We aren't going to cure him, and we know that. Our goal is to find the best treatment plan that will give him the best quality of life for the longest time. We are preparing to say goodbye, and we want to do it as gently as possible and let the time he has left with us be as good as it can be. Right now, he’s curled up next to me on the bed with his head against my leg, and that’s really all he wants with the rest of his life.

He's taken good care of me for 14 years and now I need to take care of him, but with everything the last year has thrown at us, I just don't have the money. We just lost Lex seven months ago, we were just living in a hotel eight months ago. What the fuck, 2017. 

The goal is currently set only at the cost of the tests to determine our plan, and an oncology consult. It will go up once a plan is in place, and we know how we will best be able to give him a good life and an easy passing. If you can help, thank you. If you can help by sharing, thank you. I'm totally wrecked by this news. If I don’t answer when people check in on me, it’s because I’m a flat mess.

[sucktacular]

Vet update (not very good)

My sweet boy was so very good at the vet today. Everyone loves him, he was so good and laid down for the echocardiogram so easy ; w ; I heard no cries 💕

Bad news though.. his heart seems to be getting worse. He had to have a chest tap for pericardial fluid build up, that wasn't there a few months ago. Apparently it's rare in cats and more common in dogs, but we're gonna keep an eye on it and retest in a month or two to check up on him. They pulled a full syringe of it :( showed us it and I feel so bad for him. He should feel a lot better now. He's going to start a new heart medication to increase blood flow and pumping function, so hopefully he feels better with that.

I don't really even know how to begin to process having to say goodbye to him one day soon. But I don't think you can ever really be prepared... Ugh I can't think about it right now. Trying not to cry in this Uber cjjsbfbs

[bengesko]

Gino's really scruffy right now and I hope his plumage gets better after his moult. He's kinda worrying me.

I know I need to expect him leaving me eventually, but I would rather he be his happiest during his last years with me.

He's sitting on me singing his little head off though.

[a-polite-melody]

A couple of people have suggested I set up a way to donate to help with Melody’s medical stuff that’s going on.

I’m not exactly comfortable doing that because we’re not sure what’s going to happen moving forward. Basically, I might start trying to get donations for the medical treatment we have planned, but find out that we can’t go forward with that or with very much at all and end up needing to refund most of what people had donated. And on top of that my dad made me aware that he put away money over Melody’s life in the event that she would need medical treatment. While what he had put away may not be enough to cover everything we need for however long she has left, it’s certainly a start and there isn’t as much financial worry as I would have thought.

I didn’t go over what exactly happened at the vet because I was so distressed that night, but I’ll do that now to give you all an idea of why things are a little complicated moving forward. Actually, I’ll give a full account of everything so far under the cut.

I’ll put a tl;dr up here...

tl;dr I’m not going to put up any kind of donations thing for Melody. She’s been through a lot over the week, and she may not have a ton of time left, but even if things go the most hopeful route, we’ll probably scrape by with what we have. I do very much appreciate everyone caring so much for Melody - the best dog I ever could have asked for.

However, if you’re still feeling generous, there is a family and a dog that need your help. I wanted to donate to them, but because of my money going toward school and my own dog, I can’t. Right now @vaspider has a youcaring up for Kusto [x]. If you do have some spare change and want to make a difference, please donate to them. I’ve been made aware that my family can cover what Melody needs, even if it is very tight, but these people need your help to keep their dog as comfortable as possible for the rest of his life (yes, it is a hospice plan).

A quick quote from vaspider’s byf:

“Kusto (SmallDog) is terminally ill. Please don’t send me messages of support that require responses. He’s 14. It’s fucking me up. I don’t have the energy to respond to those messages. I can feel that you are sad about my dog, and I appreciate it. Genuinely. I just can’t talk about it right now.”

So be sure to keep your support to things that don’t require a response.

Now on to Melody.

From August 4th to August 8th my dad, my uncle, and Melody were up at the family cottage (I was at my mom’s). According to my dad, everything seemed fine there. When they got home in the evening of August 8th, Melody didn’t eat, but it isn’t too unusual for her to skip a meal after coming home from the cottage. My dad didn’t worry about it and left the food bowl down for her overnight, expecting the food to be eaten by the time he got up for work the next morning like it usually is in these situations.

When my dad woke up the next morning (August 9th) he checked the food dish and none of it had been eaten. He thought that maybe this was Melody being stressed from travel longer than usual because of her age, but he wanted to get something into her stomach, so he tried giving her one of the hard treats she likes. Melody took it, bit into it, yelped, and spat everything out. He had to get to work, but once he was there he called me about what had happened, and said he’d try to get a vet appointment to look at her teeth. The earliest he could get was August 14th, so that’s what he booked. That night when he got home he gave Melody some cheese, bread, and lunch meat because they were soft and easy for her to chew, and she needed to eat something.

On August 10th my dad picked me up from my mom’s while he was coming home from work because I was going to stay with him for the next while. When we got home and let Melody out I noticed that her right eye looked strange. I took a closer look and realized it was nearly swollen nearly shut. My dad called the vet and asked if there was any way we could get in that night, but there were no openings. Rather than going straight to an emergency clinic (because those are extremely expensive) we called other vets in the area and we found one that could take us about an hour from when we called, though they had to get their vet to come in from their other practice.

We got Melody to the vet, and when the vet came in he asked if there was any way for either my dad or I to open her mouth for him to take a look at her teeth, since over the phone we expressed that she was not very good with being handled by strangers. We both said no. My dad can’t because Melody won’t let him, and while on a good day I can pull back her lips, because she was in pain I said that I wouldn’t be able to. So the only way to see inside her mouth was to sedate her.

They did a medium-low dose of the sedative into Melody’s back while I kept her head busy with cheese. The vet left for about twenty minutes, and when he came back to check on how she was doing, Melody was still wide awake and pacing around the room. He said they’d have to do an IV injection this time to be sure it knocked her out, and to do that they’d need to muzzle her. I asked if I could try muzzling her before we had someone try to force it on her face, they said yes, and I got it on her no problem with the help of some cheese. They took her into the back to do the second injection, and when they brought her back in she was already almost out.

The vet checked her mouth and felt around the eye and said he felt no abscesses or tumours or the like. So the problem was most likely that a couple of her back teeth in the right side of her mouth were infected and since the roots of those teeth go up near the eye that's what caused the swelling. He wanted to do blood work on her to see if the infection had spread to her bloodstream, so he did that, as well as an injection of an antibiotic, a pain killer, and a rabies vaccine since she was pretty much due for the vaccine at this point, so why not do that as well, right?

We were given antibiotic pills, painkiller pills, and anti inflammatory eye drops, they gave Melody the reversal for the sedative, and once she was able to walk we were sent on our way, saying that in a day they’d call about the blood work, and in a couple weeks they would probably be able to put her on anesthetic and remove the infected teeth.

Melody wasn't right for the rest of that night. She was woozy and not all there. She fell a couple of times because her back legs completely slid out from under her. I stayed up and checked on her every hour or so that night to make sure she kept breathing.

The next morning all was well. We soaked her food in water until it was mushy and she wolfed it all down! The vet called about the blood work and said the infection was in her bloodstream, so she needed to take another antibiotic as well. They also discovered she was in the beginning stages of kidney failure, which could likely be treated by simply switching her over to a kidney support food for now.

Things started getting better. Melody was taking pills fine, and while the eye drops were a struggle, her eye was looking back to normal. It was obvious her mouth was still bugging her, but that would only be until we ran the course of antibiotics and could have her mouth be operated on.

Tuesday morning (August 9th) I got up and started gearing up to go to work. I tried giving Melody her pills like normal - shove it in a cube of cheese, give her the cube, she’d grab it and scarf it - but unlike normal she very gently took the end of the cheese in her front teeth and tried to work the cheese further back into her mouth. She tried a couple times then spit the cheese wrapped pill back out. I tried again, and no luck. I tried feeding her other things, and every time she’d only take the very edge and try to get it further back into her mouth from there. I watched her panting and she would only open her mouth a very small amount. I called the vet and they wanted to get her in for X-rays on her jaw.

Once both my dad and I were off work we brought her in. She was doing better than she had been that morning, but she still wasn’t wanting to chew. She was sedated again for the X-rays. My dad and I were eventually brought back to the X-ray room to be shown the images. Her jaw looked pretty much normal, though she did have a touch of arthritis in the right joint. He then said he did full body X-rays, and switched to an image of her chest. He pointed out a mass up near her lungs and said that it was a tumour. At this point it’s small enough that it isn’t pressing against her lungs or heart, but we don’t know when it started or how fast it’s growing.

Knowing there’s a tumour in her chest is terrifying, not just because, you know, there’s a tumour, but because it also complicates putting her on anesthetic to have the teeth pulled. If the tumour grows very much by the next time we have an appointment (August 29th, the day before Melody’s 15th birthday) it will be too dangerous to put her on anesthetic because the tumour may interfere with her breathing or heartbeat.

So right now we don’t know what we can do. If the tumour doesn’t grow or only grows a small bit we’re going to try getting the teeth pulled. Of course there’s the problem that she’s very old, so being on anesthetic is already dangerous, and there’s no guarantee that she will be able to come back out of it, even under the best circumstances. If the tumour does grow enough that getting the teeth pulled would be too dangerous, we’ll likely start giving her a more powerful painkiller and just try to keep her happy and comfortable for however much longer she has or until the pain becomes too much for her.

I’ll probably post semi-regular updates on Melody for as long as I can to keep anyone who wants to know how she’s doing... updated on that I guess.

[my-ocean-is-bluer]

I'm home.

And I have to say, I feel so, so much better. My puppy girl isn't here anymore. That hurts. It really, really hurts. When my dad came home, no one was there to run to the door and greet him with barks and smiles. When my sister danced, no one ran out from under the table barking to dance with her. When my mom made dinner, she wasn't watching from under the table. When I look down the hallway into my parents room, she isn't lying on the floor where she always liked to nap. But this is still our home. This is where we all lived and had happy times together. I cried twice last night after I got picked up from the airport, but this time, my parents were there to hug me and let me cry and try to help me feel better. We looked at photos of her and talked about our memories of her (there are thousands!) and god, it helped so much. I'm grieving. Of course I am. But here, my mind doesn't feel so sick. I'm myself here, in my home and in my city. I still have 4 days here and I already don't want to leave.

[my-ocean-is-bluer]

Grief.

Four days ago, my beloved dog passed away. She was 11 and a half. It feels like it’s been weeks. I can’t put in words how much she means to me. She is my everything. She keeps me going. And I can’t use the past tense.  

I haven’t been able to write yet. I’m still not able to, but today is one of the harder days so far. I woke up feeling unable to get out of bed, and I’ve just been hurting and shaking and crying. A song I love that happens to be about grief describes it best-- “This is a state of electrical shock”. 

Yesterday I could feel the grief pushing inside and I tried to ignore it. Whenever she popped into my mind, the thought of her was gone as quickly as it came because I just couldn’t. I didn’t cry yesterday or the day before because of this but today it hurts so bad. And I feel almost guilty for trying not to think about the loss. 

I have a midterm tomorrow. I haven’t brought myself to study for it. I just feel like I can’t do anything. I want to lay in bed all day long and cry. I’m also supposed to go perform in concert today but I don’t feel like leaving my room. I have never been a particularly religious person, but lately I’ve found myself praying almost every day. One of the songs I’m singing in the concert has made me feel better. I sang it alone in my room when I heard of my baby’s passing, over and over. 

“Lord, I will lift mine eyes to the hills,

Knowing my help is coming from You.

Your peace you give me in times of the storm,

You are the source of my strength.

You are the strength of my life.

I lift my hands in total praise to you.”

I’m not with my family. I am 3,000 miles away. I was not there when we had to put her to sleep. All I could do was facetime in before and after. Last weekend I went home because we thought it would be time then, but instead she had an upswing and I had 4 beautiful days with her. I don’t think I would trade it for the opportunity to watch her die. But now, oh God, I wish I was home. I wish I could have their hugs and I wish we could truly grieve together. 

I do not pass by her places in the house every day and see her absence. I do not see her toys and feel my heart break because she isn’t there to play with them. I do not have the impulses to reach for her and feel her only to find she is not there. Instead, I am alone, at college, knowing that I am having a different experience than my family, and knowing that when I go home in 2 weeks, my grief will change into an unpredictable form and I will have to learn to cope all over again (not that I’ve figured out how to cope yet at all). 

I feel I can’t let my grief spill out fully and I can’t experience it fully until I’m home, where she lived. Instead, it’s suspended here and every day I’m in a twilight zone of knowing she’s gone but not seeing it, of just letting each painful day pass, waiting until I can go home and experience my pain while searching for peace. Until then, I don’t want to move. I don’t want to study. I don’t want to smile, because I will feel guilt. 

This is a state of electrical shock.