bigger, sadder hiccup

I had to put my dog, Hunny, down early yesterday morning. She was 13 years old.

She had a history of joint pain that would come and go, and that's what I thought it was this time. She was fine on Thursday, we went for our usual evening walk. Friday morning, I took her out, and she seemed fine, but almost as soon as I brought her back in, I could tell that something was wrong. One of her back legs seemed to be bothering her, and she was lethargic. She could barely stand, and when she did, her back legs seemed wobbly. I made an appointment to take her to the vet later that day, she needed a check-up and shots anyway, and we hung out at home until then. I gave her half a Rimadyl with some food for the joint pain like I usually do, and she actually became more alert and mobile for awhile. We went to the vet, they did some bloodwork, said her heart and lungs sounded clear, and everything else looked good, and they gave me a refill on the Rimadyl and told me to watch her and keep her quiet for a day or two until the joint pain resolved, which it usually did.

We came home, and she had some trouble getting up the stairs, but that also isn't unusual. I've got five flights of stairs to my condo, no small feat for anyone to climb. She was quiet for the rest of the evening. I tried giving her another half of a Rimadyl, but it was all I could do to get her to even eat a cookie, so the meds wouldn't upset her stomach. This time, the Rimadyl didn't seem to be helping at all. She managed to stand and wobble her way into my bedroom, and when she lay down again, she made it clear that she had no intention of getting back up for awhile. Normally, she follows me all over the place.

I tried to sleep, but I could hear that she couldn't get comfortable. She'd lay on her side, then roll up again, and then lay on her side again. I was torn between leaving her for the night so that she wouldn't have to exert any effort to get up and walk downstairs to the car and seeing how she was the next morning or taking her to the emergency vet right then. I felt guilty either way, but I felt less guilty about taking her to the emergency vet. That was about 10 pm.

She always liked to stick her head out the back car window and catch the breeze while I was driving. Other drivers got a kick out of seeing her resting her chin on the rolled-down window. This time, however, she just lay in the back seat.

The vet and the techs at the emergency hospital were wonderful. After the vet examined Hunny initially, he wanted to do additional bloodwork and x-rays. He said he had some ideas about what was wrong, but he wanted the test results first before saying anything definite, which I thought was reasonable, so he took her into their back area for the tests, and I sat shivering in the waiting room, watching shows on the Food Network on their TV to keep my mind off things. It had cooled down considerably later into the evening, and I was just in a tank top and shorts. It also started raining.

After what seemed like a nervously long time, I was called back into the exam room. The vet had her x-rays up on the light box, and said, "let me explain everything from the beginning, so you can understand how I arrived at the diagnosis, and feel free to ask as many questions as you want." That's rare to get from a vet, let alone a people doctor. Her blood work showed that she was anemic, which would explain her weakness and lethargy. Several other elements in the blood work showed up on the high side of normal, high, or low (and I made a mental note to ask my regular vet if the blood work they had done earlier that day showed the same things). One of her x-rays showed that her heart was smaller than normal, meaning that it wasn't pumping as much blood as it usually would. The other x-ray showed a big cloudy area over most of her lower organs, which is consistent with internal bleeding. He did an abdominocentesis, and what he got out was blood, which confirmed the bleeding. The anemia and smaller heart would also account for internal bleeding. Apparently, she had a tumor on her spleen that had ruptured, and that had caused the bleeding. Usually tumors on the spleen quickly spread to other organs, and given the amount of bleeding, the tumor looked to be large, and had probably been there for awhile, but because she had been asymptomatic up to now, it had gone undetected.

He said he could do immediate surgery to try and stop the bleeding, but at best, she'd have another 3 months or so to live because of the cancer, and even with chemo, she'd not get much more than that. She'd also have a difficult recovery from the surgery due to her age. So I asked about quality of life in the remaining few months. He said the recovery from surgery would be slow and painful, so the first month wouldn't be good, the second month, she'd be okay, and then it would be rapid downhill after that, especially with the possibility of another rupture, which could be worse than this one. He was prepared to do the surgery right then, if I wanted it, but I'd be extending her life another few months more for me than for her, and she'd be the one suffering the most for it, and I've no right to do that to her. I called my sister and told her everything, and then I agreed to have Hunny euthanized. The vet seemed visibly relieved at this, and did I mention that a couple of times while he was explaining everything to me, I thought he was going to cry? He said he thought it was the right decision and that he'd been through this with one of his dogs and had opted for surgery, but if he had to do it again, he wouldn't have put his dog through the surgery and would have put her down instead.

They wheeled Hunny into the exam room, and we waited for my sister. I was a complete mess by this point, but I imagine the vet and the techs are used to it. My dog was her usual calm self, still wagging her tail whenever someone new came into the room and looked like they were going to give her attention. She was making some effort to get up, but anyone could tell it was painful for her to do so, so after awhile, she just stayed down on the blanket. My sister and her husband arrived, and there were more tears. I've had Hunny since she was eight weeks old, and both my sister and my mom were very close to her. I asked the vet to explain the diagnosis to my sister, which he did, and then he gave Hunny the injections, and she very quietly and quickly went to sleep in my arms and never woke up. That was about 1 am.

I somehow made it home, though even that was a trial because this one stoplight refused to turn green, even after five minutes, so I had to drive down the road further in order to turn around. I got home and called my mom, and we cried some more, and I think I got to bed around 2 am.

A tech from my regular vet called me yesterday afternoon to see how Hunny was doing, and I had to tell her that I had taken Hunny to the emergency vet and had to put her down. She was very sympathetic, especially because she remembered my cat, Louise, who died in December. About 10 minutes later, the medical director called me. He had been with Louise when she died (she also had cancer) and had called me in Australia to tell me. He was also sympathetic, and he said that he was comparing the lab results they had with the ones he had just gotten from the emergency vet, and his results didn't show any anemia and only very slight elevations in two other tests, so the rupture must have occurred between leaving the regular vet and going to the emergency vet later that night.

Suddenly losing my cat in December was bad enough. Then I lost my job in May, and now I've lost Hunny, and I'm supposed to start a new job tomorrow. I really don't know how much more stress I can take before I have to give up and crawl into a hole for awhile. I will say this, though - I was supposed to go to a company meeting with my new employers on Friday, but they hadn't finished processing all of my paperwork, so I wasn't allowed in the meeting in case any proprietary information was discussed, and it was just as well since that meant I was home all day on Friday to keep an eye on Hunny. And because I lost my job in May, I was able to be at home with Hunny every day, all day for a month and a half, and our daily walks definitely improved my mood, so a job loss was definitely the best thing that's happened to me all year. I'd feel all the worse if I was still overworked and too exhausted to give her any attention after she'd been by herself for hours on end on weekdays.

I remember how happy and energetic she was when we got her as a puppy. She was absolutely bursting with love for anyone in her path. I remember trying to get a bag of dogfood open, and the bag ripped and spilled dogfood everywhere, and she sat on top of it all and ate around her. I remember the big brown teddy bear we gave her to sleep with. For awhile, the bear was bigger than she was. I remember how her rottie eyebrows gave her face deeper, and funnier, expression. I remember laying down on my side on the floor, and she'd lay down beside me and prop her chin on my hip. I remember walking with her one cold, icy morning, and I started to slip on the ice; I instinctively grabbed hold of her, and she immediately sat down on the ground to steady us both. I remember tripping over the huge rawhide bones she'd diligently and thoroughly go through and leave lying around when she needed a rest from chewing. I remember the vet and the groomer marveling at how well-behaved and happy she was, no matter what was being done to her. I remember the forlorn look she'd give me when I gave her a bath - she'd stand still and hang her head, more or less guaranteeing a cookie afterward. I remember how she mothered my sister's dog, Fiat, and how she kept my mom company when I was away at college and Mom had started her own at-home business.

What makes me cry the most is that she was my one constant in life for the past 13 years. She got me through my parents' divorce, several deaths in the family, moving out on my own, countless one-date wonders and failed relationships, and several job changes, not to mention keeping watch during my panic attacks or monthly cramps or yearly colds. I could have the shittiest of days, but I always had Hunny to come home to, and she would patiently listen to me complain about it all as I mixed up her dinner. Now I don't even have her, and I'm not sure how to cope, especially as I start this new job tomorrow. There had better be a damn good reason why she was taken from me just now, when I'd be relying more than ever on my one constant. If this is some sort of test, I think I've already failed it.