Our baby boy is no longer with us. He would have been 10 year's old next month. Instead, he passed away yesterday, April 6th, 2016, at 10:40 in the morning, after a swift decline and short, ugly struggle that began Monday afternoon. It is truly awful and the loss we feel is so great. There is a huge hole i our little family. Our couch will never be the same. Our beautiful, handsome boy is gone. His sweet, steady, patient, strong presence is missing from this house. The pain is great. The absence, sharp.
I can't believe he's gone.
It started when he threw
up just once on Monday afternoon, at about 4:30. It was a small amount,
mostly clear saliva. I'd heard him smacking/licking like they do when
they are nauseated and begin drooling heavily. Airlie does the same
thing every time she gets in the car. It's ingesting the massive amounts
of saliva that makes her puke. Same in this case. And for having had
two full meals, 3 cups of food, total, there was very little actual
food, digested or otherwise (he'd eaten at 2pm). After that, he went and
laid back down. He got up twice more, heaving, but didn't vomit, then
just laid back down, which Kevin witnessed and remarked was very
uncharacteristic. He was lethargic after that. We were in the process of
soaking down the yard, since at 1pm, the lawn care people unexpectedly
(I really hate this about living here, my FIL just schedules them to
come by, and we get no warning...) came and spread fertilizer all over. I
happened to be here when he knocked on the door, but didn't answer
because I couldn't tell who it was and the vehicle was parked on the
other side of the house, out of my line of sight. I managed to see the
front bumper of a truck from the bedroom window, and then went out to
the garage, through the side door and looked over the fence. After that,
I saw him pass the kitchen window. I was pretty pissed, and already
planning not to let anyone outside, and to water it in, because they
didn't. At 2, I fed the dogs, then started wetting down the front yard
and washing off the sidewalks. It took me an hour. I then took the dogs
out through the garage and across the street to potty. When I came back,
I realized the pellets were all over the driveway and that we'd walked
through them. I felt pretty silly at that point, but I got a wet cloth
and wiped everyone's feet. Kevin got home from work and started watering down the back yard.
When
he threw up, we thought it was the fertilizer, at first, though the
other two were fine, and I didn't think any exposure could have been
that much. I was careful.
I went back and hosed the
driveway, and soaked the whole front yard again. Kevin was almost done
with the back, and I had to go to work. When I got back at 8pm, he and
Leo were on the bed, and Leo lifted his head and wagged his tail at me.
We kept Leo in bed with us that night. I mostly lay on the floor,
to give him and Kevin adequate space. His breathing was very heavy and
deep all night long, he didn't get much rest. Kevin took him out to
potty at 10. He perked up at the mention of treats, so we used them to lure him off the bed. He ate them and walked outside on his own. Not long after, I heard Kevin
calling me from the back door, and when I went to see, he was there,
carrying Leo. He said Leo had peed, squatted to poop, and then just
stood there, as if the effort was all just too much for him. I think I
slept from 1am-2:30, and again from 3:30 to 5am, and that was it. Kevin
got up at 6 to get ready for work, and we decided we'd take Leo to
the nearby vet clinic (the one who didn't charge us when he declined
to handle Kansas' eye tumor and Leo's ear) since they opened at 7. I had
a 9:30 appointment at the eye specialists with Kansas for 9:30 and we
debated waiting til then and me taking them both, but I
wasn't comfortable with the delay, and also wasn't sure I could handle
them both, depending on how weak Leo was and whether or not he was in
control of his functions. He'd walked out to pee that morning on his
own, and seemed a little better. He even perked up when I mentioned getting in the car, and came to me when I got out his leash. I got dressed, Kevin went to put Leo in the car and reported he'd jumped in on his own, voluntarily, and without being told, before Kevin could help him.
At
the vet, the support staff was going about their preparations for the
day, cleaning up from the overnight boarders, etc... They told us the
doc wouldn't be in til 8:30, but that we could wait, or come back. I
chose to wait, since I wasn't sure about loading/unloading Leo again. Kevin left for work, and I lifted Leo out of the car on my own just fine. He wanted to pause and sniff at things, but walked into the clinic beside me just fine.
That's when the receptionist said they could go ahead and draw blood and
get started on all of the tests they anticipated the doc would want to
run. That helped a lot. Leo just helped himself into the first open
room he passed, and lay down on the floor. I had brought the blanket
from the car with me, so I had him get up and lay on that instead of
being on the cold tile. He just lay there, observant
but disinterested. Last time we were there, he was pulling me around,
inspecting everything. Not even the clinic cat repeatedly passing by the
doorway got a rise out of him. The only time he resisted at all was
when they wanted to draw blood from his neck, probably due to all of his
recent unpleasant experiences with his aural hematoma and having his
ear handled. I had to hold his head. He did turn and sniff when the cat
finally waltzed right up to him, onto his blanket, but didn't mind at
all when she plopped down in my lap. We just sat there, listening to the
staff chatter, making the occasional remark to the tech running the
tests. The door between the exam room and where they do their work was
open, and she was just working right there. They took his temperature
and a fecal sample, ran the fecal tests for internal parasites-
negative. They got the blood work and she told me her opinion, hedging
that she was only a tech, and the doc could say better, but that it
looked to her like he was anemic, possibly low platelets, though she was
going to do a slide smear since the machine readings tend to be a bit
off... the doc confirmed the anemia but thought the platelets
looked sufficient, though they were smaller, as if they had been
dividing, which happens when the body is not receiving sufficient
oxygen. It makes a bunch of smaller red blood cells out of the usual
ones. Spherocytes, she called them.
They suggested a
heartworm test, since that test also tests for a few of the more common
tickborne diseases. He was due for a HW test next month, anyway, so I
agreed, especially since they already had the blood. That all came back
negative, of course. We'd already discussed that I had never in 9 years
seen a tick on him.
They knew he was dehydrated, and that his gums were pale and tacky. His temp was 100, which was still normal, although most dogs who go to the vet run high just from the excitement/nervousness of being there, so that was something to consider. Still, they said they don't worry until it drops to 98 or 97...
Other
than that, she (she was an interim vet, the couple who owns the
practice was on vacation) prescribed 60mg of prednisone twice a day for
two days and wanted to do a recheck on Thursday morning, at which time
they'd give me more prednisone and a schedule to ease him off of those
meds, in order to avoid harming his kidneys. She didn't want to
prescribe anything else until then, and didn't think his omega 3 and 6
supplements were an issue. The idea was to reduce any inflammation,
suppress the immune response that was causing his body to attack the
RBCs , then just wait and see. I was hesitant to give him the
prednisone, but I came home and started the day's dosage, anyway. He'd
been drinking water willingly, and he lapped up some of the water I'd
added to his kibble in an attempt to soften it to see if he would eat.
He rested for a couple of hours, and I took Kansas to her appointment,
which I had rescheduled for noon. He seemed the same when I returned,
and even got up and came to the kitchen when I set about feeding the
girls at 2, though he didn't want to eat. He seemed to perk up for the
afternoon, drinking water, taking himself out to pee a couple of times,
sitting up and being observant of the other pets moving about the house,
responding to me when I spoke to him. He eventually ate half the
softened food. Kevin kept messaging me with questions, and, though
I thought things seemed good, I started doubting, and also feeling bad
that I'd taken him to the closer vet that opened early, instead of the
one who had been caring for him these past few months. She had seemed
sad when I told her, maybe just because of what she was experiencing
with her own dog, I don't know. She'd said "That's all?" with a frown when I told her what the first vet had prescribed.
But I decided we should make the trip to see her. It seemed to put
Kevin at ease, and he would be able to meet us there and participate,
himself.
At that point, Leo had switched to not
wanting to get up at all- not to potty, or when he saw his leash, or
when I mentioned the car. I did get him up, and he followed me outside,
completely ignoring all of the kids passing by on their way home from
school. I got the car open and before I could help him in, he tried to
jump in and almost missed. That took a lot out of him. He really started
to crash and struggle after that, and the whole way to the vet I was
afraid he was dead in the back already, because I couldn't hear him
moving about like he had that morning. I felt like that second
appointment was a bad idea and the beginning of the end, but seeing how
things went from there, I now think Leo would have done something,
regardless to have caused his body to relapse like that one way or the
other.
The creepy thing is, one of the little girls
walking home from school had stopped when he and I were standing at the
back of the car, and remarked on how cute he was, and said she liked
him. She's not someone I've ever seen before, and Leo, always wary of
children, didn't even react to their presence. She passed our driveway,
then turned around after he'd jumped into the car and said
"I'll miss you!"
I turned and looked at her, and she smiled at me.
That is utterly disturbing, in hindsight. I still hear it, in my head.
Leo
refused to get out of the car at the vet, and I had to wait til
Kevin arrived. He had to climb into the back,and lift him out, and carry
him all the way across the parking lot, into the building and into the
exam room.
Leo just lay there on the floor as the
vet compared the day's blood work (I'd had it faxed over) to the panel
she'd done in December. She talked about how low his red blood cell,
platelet and hemoglobin counts were. She was really upset about the
platelets, even though I explained the machine vs. slide
smear findings. She gave us some suggestions for attempting to increase
his iron levels- baby food, specifically the meat ones, pedialyte to
help with the dehydration, a round of Doxycycline just in case it was
something viral or parasitic, though we decided not to give him that
since the first vet had opted not to give him anything but prednisone
for the time being. He wouldn't have been able to eat/digest it/keep it
down, anyway. She mentioned a transfusion if he got any worse. We
carried him back to the car, paid the receptionist and Leo and I drove
back home while Kevin stopped at the store for the items the vet
suggested.
Leo refused to get out of the car again,
and it was a struggle to get him close enough (he had pushed himself as
far back as he could) to lift him out. I managed to carry him as far as
the garage, and he wobbled from the garage to the kitchen door on his
own, then lay down in the floor for a while before making his way to the
living room. I gave him the recommended dosage of liquitinic (an
iron-builder) that the vet had given us from her own dog's supply, via
syringe. I knew when he clenched his teeth and fought me that it wasn't a
good idea. I also knew, from administering fluids to Tess via syringe
last year, that it was the beginning of the end.
He accepted water,
some of the baby food, and the rest of his softened kibble over the
course of the evening, the second dose of prednisone... and seemed to be
resting comfortably. Just before 9am, he became restless, and, before I
could stop him, he got up from the pillow on the floor, jumped up on
the couch, and promptly relapsed again into the deep, heavy breathing.
His heart was racing so fast. Kevin was berating me for letting Leo get
up, holding him, ordering him to breathe, all sorts of things for more
than an hour as we waited for him to calm back down. I got an earful of
how Leo nearly had a heart attack, that his body can't circulate enough
oxygen to support that kind of physical effort.
The
plan had been for Leo to rest on a pillow in our room that night, after
one last potty break, but once the couch incident happened, we ended up
camped out in the living room, lying awake, listening to him struggle
for hours.
Kansas wandered in and out, periodically,
retreating to her crate now and then. At 3am she came in, unfolded
the dog pillow (I double them over at night to get them out of the
floor so as not to trip on them in the dark and also to keep the cats
from making themselves at home on the dogs' beds. They have their own.)
like she does when she wants to lay down, and settled in with us. And I
knew. I got up and let Airlie out of her crate. She wandered about for a
while, but finally settled onto another dog pillow and we all spent the
night in the living room with Leo, listening to him breathe.
Sometime after that, he vomited,
and we had to move him a little, and do a few loads of laundry. I think
we all slept from about 4:30 to 6:00, and he seemed more rested, calm
and peaceful at that point. He was quiet while Kevin got ready for work, and stayed calm for a while, wagging his tail at me when I finally got up at about 7:30.
Kevin
went to work long enough to get a lesson plan made and get a sub, and
returned at 8am. Leo started actually panting sometime after that, then
suddenly jumped off the couch, not realizing how weak he was. Kevin
barely caught him in time, and even then, his jaw hit the floor. He was
trying to get to the back door, but unable to walk on his own. Kevin
carried him outside and he began to pee, while still in Kevin's arms, as
soon as Kevin's feet hit the grass. I grabbed a towel to use as a
sling while Kevin supported Leo as he peed, and peed, and peed (he
really did do a great job of drinking water, though he never really
rehydrated due to the heavy breathing). He still couldn't stand on his
own. His right front leg knuckled under and kept buckling. We managed to
get him back inside, on a pillow on the floor this time, but he'd once
again pushed himself past the edge, lost any color his gums had
regained, even paler this time than the last two or three
episodes, and the labored breathing returned. He would take water, but eventually vomited again.
He struggled for more than an hour.
At
10am, Kevin had me call the vet. The receptionist said she would
consult with the doc and call back. During that call, I heard Kevin
desperately calling me from the living room. I went in, Kevin was
crying, Leo was still struggling. He tried to get up twice, but we
wouldn't let him. I thought he would vomit again. At 10:30, he started
to poop, and you could see what an effort that took. Kevin was hopeful,
thinking all of the strain and labor was just because he needed to
relieve himself and wanted to go out.
But I
knew... and tried to figure out how to explain that the body
releases those things at the end. In my experience that has always
happened At. The. End. The very end. The vomiting and loss of bodily
functions.
In Leo's case, it happened about 10 minutes
prior, maybe more. He started peeing while still pooping. I cleaned him
up as best I could, and we just sat there with him, through the
throes of his passing. Kevin asked about doing CPR. I told him I would
if he wanted, but that it would be very hard on Leo. Kevin just held him
and sobbed, pleading "Please, don't leave me!", willing him to
breathe, monitoring his heart rate... and occasionally attempting
compressions on his own once the breathing and heartbeat ceased. I just
held them both. I knew I had to let him do what he thought he needed to
do.
Kansas stayed in the room the whole time. So did Airlie, though I had to keep telling her to go lie down and quit hovering.
It
took such a long time for Leo to let go. I know they linger because of
us, and I know he was trying to, for Kevin. I don't recall even saying
anything to Leo, like goodbye or, "Mommy loves you." I spent those past
two nights just praying for peace for his body, relief from his
struggle, knowing what was coming and that we weren't going to be able
to stop it. He and I had grown so much closer during the course of his
ear care and treatment.
I can't believe he's gone. The
couch is empty without him. There is a huge hole in our family. My
husband is so broken. He wasn't supposed to go first. I've spent so much
time preparing myself for Kansas' eventual passing. I did not expect to
feel the lack of Leo's strong, quiet, calm presence. It is so weird
that he isn't here, and it is so wrong that he is gone. I feel really
bad that it's him that is gone and the girls are still here, and I'm
afraid Kevin will, at some point, say something cruel about "his" dog
being gone while "mine" are still here.
I know I've been through this four times, now, but this time seems the worst. I hate that Kevin had to experience all of that ugliness. He has, though, realized that death always violent, never gentle and that he wouldn't want any of them going through this again.
The
vet finally called back at 11:30, wanting to see him that afternoon. I
returned her call around noon, explaining Leo had passed, asking about
cremation services. She informed me of the company they used and the
rates and I said we'd be there shortly. It was after 2:00 before we were
finally ready, after many failed attempts and pauses to cry again. We
had to wait for Kevin's dad to bring us a piece of plywood big enough to
load Leo on to carry him out of the house, load him into the car, and
transport him. The receptionist and a tech came out to the car with a
stretcher and they and Kevin loaded Leo on it. I heard the sound of
fabric tearing and feared it would rip before they got him inside, but
it held. We followed them to the swinging door that accessed their work
area, and held it open while they took him back. Kevin lost it at that
point and headed for the car while I finished the formalities.
It
is truly awful, and his absence is glaring, but I am so glad he is not
struggling like that any longer. I feel horrible for Kevin, and we both
hurt so much. I spent the rest of the day washing bedding and towels,
cleaning the floor and the couch, stopping to hold Kevin when he would
break down again... answering phone calls and texts, making phone calls,
etc... the vet specialist called to check on him, as they have in the
past after his appointments, and we gave them the news. She feels
horrible, especially going through it with her own dog. I know we did
all we could. I just wish it hadn't happened at all. He is just so... gone.
Kevin's been researching things. Last night he thought it was
possibly leukemia. We'd tossed around the possibility that one of Leo's
fatty tumors was actually more than that, as well. He hadn't had any in
about two years, but about 3 new ones had popped up in recent months.
One thing the veterinary eye specialist mentioned was that when we see
those fatty tumors from the outside, we fail to consider how BIG they
also are on the inside, and whether or not they are crowding any organs.
That was an eye opener.
Today he's thinking it was
Immune Mediated Hemolytic Anemia.
Even so, if that was the case, Leo never presented any earlier
indications of being sick with something, so how could we have known or
done anything? He's also beaten himself up about seeking a blood
transfusion sooner, but that would have meant recognizing on Monday that
he needed to see an emergency vet, which probably would have meant an
overnight stay, and he may or may not have lasted as long as he did, and
would have been away from us when he had passed. The specialist said on
Tuesday afternoon that a transfusion would be the next course of
treatment. She also said her own dog of the same age
was experiencing the same thing, and had had 3 transfusions and was
still struggling. She's on 80mg of prednisone a day, the tiny thing...
Even so, the emergency clinic both vets recommended is an after-hours
only clinic. Neither of them like the nearby 24-hour one, so the only
other option would have been on the north side of town during the day,
or waiting til he was in the throes of the nighttime struggles and then
moving/transporting him. As hard as that was on him, as it was, I
wouldn't have recommended it. I wouldn't have stopped it, but... I
just knew that wasn't right.
"I'll miss you."
