Holly Beans

3 years ago yesterday, I said goodbye to my beautiful Holly.

I’ve been away for so long – most of you probably don’t know me, but I had been thinking of coming back to write this post and then suddenly, today, there were messages in my inbox saying that I had comments to moderate on Tripawds. They were just spam, but still, it was so crazy to me that they appeared today of all days and, I don’t know, I was drawn back here and decided to go ahead and write this.

I cried myself to sleep last night. Even after 3 years, I miss Holly so much. I miss her every day. Many times, thinking of her, looking at pictures or videos, can now make me smile…but there are still days when it just flat out hurts. I keep her with me – I have a ring with her name on it that I always wear. I also have this amazing necklace with her picture on it.

She is just in my heart….always.

There was so many things about Holly that were so special, but one of the things that really made her unique to me was how she always, always knew when something was wrong and always so badly wanted to help me and take care of me. She had an incredibly expressive face and, I swear, I could see concern in her eyes. As long as I live, I will never forget the one and only time that she jumped up on my bed all on her own after her surgery. I was really sick – I had been in the ER overnight – and I was in bed, in pain all day. Holly looked at me, and with a look of absolute pure determination, she launched herself up onto the bed, curled herself in the crook of my legs, and didn’t leave for hours. I was mom, I was in pain, and whatever it took, she was going to take care of me. That was just Holly.

I would miss Holly no matter what, but after she left, my life changed in ways that I never could have imagined, and I have needed her so very much. Much as I adore my two remaining dogs – one of whom, I must admit, is my doggie soul mate – neither of them has that gentle, caring energy that she did, and it is such a loss.

A few months after Holly died, my husband was in a horrible accident that left him in a coma, with a severe traumatic brain injury. Just 11 days after his accident, with him still in ICU, I was forced to let Clyde go too – I had known it was coming, but the timing and having to do it alone, without my husband (who Clyde absolutely ADORED), left me completely crushed, on top of everything else that I was dealing with at the time. My other dogs have gotten me through it all – I wouldn’t have gotten through the last 3 incredibly difficult  years without them, but there have been countless times that I have so desperately wished that Holly was here to lay her head on my lap, look up at me with her soulful eyes, and catch my many, many tears.

My husband has healed a lot, but will never be remotely the same. One of the hardest things is that his memory is severely impaired – not only does he have trouble forming new memories, but also lots and LOTS of his pre-accident memories are missing. That includes the day Holly died, and most of her cancer fight. It breaks my heart that we can’t look back on those times together. He didn’t remember that yesterday was the anniversary of her death, which somehow made it even harder. It hurts even more to carry the burden of the loss (and the loss of our Clyde) alone. He loved them both so much, and he can’t even grieve for them.

I’m so sorry to all of you who have come after us, but so glad that Tripawds is here to guide everyone through this difficult journey. Even years later, I remain incredibly grateful for this wonderful community that helped us through Holly’s and Clyde’s cancer fights. Above all, I am so grateful for the nine years that I had with my beautiful, funny, loving, sweet, gentle, snuggly, brave Holly. I love you, Beans, and I always will.

 

…is something that I have to work at sometimes these days.  It has been, to say the least, a pretty rough few months.  Wednesday was 5 months since Holly left us.  I miss her constantly.  Time has helped – I no longer feel like I’m going to die right along with her, but it still feels like someone reached into my chest and ripped out half of my heart.  There are still days when I want to yell and sob and wallow in the unfairness of the world.  But…every time I get really upset, my husband reminds me of something.  No matter how horrible losing her has been, even though her time with us was too short, we are the luckiest people in the whole world because we got 9 years with Holly.  I am so thankful for every day that we had with her.  One of my big frustrations was that she didn’t really have side effects from chemo and it seemed to be working for the moment, but it didn’t matter in the end.  Really, though, it could have been much worse, and I’m thankful that she didn’t have days where she felt really crappy.  I’m thankful that she recovered well from her surgery and that she was able to have pain-free days, that she was able to enjoy herself again, that she was able to go on walks and play fetch.  I could go on forever – once I start thinking about her, there are an infinite number of things that I am thankful for.

It’s also been 5 months since Clyde was diagnosed with cancer.  I am so angry that we are having to deal with this again.  With the chemo not working, knowing that our time with him will likely be shorter than we originally hoped, I just keep thinking “COME ON!  You’ve got to be kidding me.  Why can’t we catch a %^$#(%* break??”  On the other hand, knowing what it is like to get just 7 weeks after the diagnosis, it’s  a little bit easier to be thankful for even 5 months.  I’m thankful that Clyde has, for the most part, been happy and has felt well…for the most part, you would barely know that he’s sick.  I’m thankful for every day that we have had with him since we found him, and I’m thankful for however many days there are to come.  I’m very thankful that he loves going to the vet!

I am thankful for our phenomenal oncologist, and for the wonderful support staff at the hospital.  They have taken such good care of Holly, Clyde, and us.  I am beyond thankful for this community and the wonderful people here who have been by our sides every step of the way.  Without your support , advice, and understanding, it’s hard to imagine how we would have made it through the last few months.

It is really easy for me to get lost in sadness and anger about our situation.  I know that there are some really tough days ahead.  But I will try, at least sometimes, to remember all of the things that I have to be thankful for.

 

(Y’all know that my posts aren’t known for being short…this one is no exception. Sorry about that! :))

 

Six months ago yesterday, things were pretty good.  I had 4 healthy dogs (so I thought), with the one exception being that Holly had a little limp.  When we had been to the vet a couple of weeks prior to this, we had started her on Rimadyl and rest, thinking that it was likely a strain or sprain or something.  The vet mentioned very briefly that this was the general area where it could possibly be a tumor, but she didn’t really seem to think that was a very high possibility because of the exact location that seemed to be causing the pain.  To be honest, I mostly put this out of my head.  When Holly’s limp didn’t get better, I naively thought that it was likely because, even though she hadn’t been running or hiking and we had drastically shortened her walks, it was hard to make Holly rest because every time we fed her, she did a huge happy food dance.

April 27 – six months ago today.  I remember it like it was 5 minutes ago.  We headed back to the vet to get Holly’s leg re-checked.  Pretty much as soon as we saw the vet and told her that there hadn’t been improvement, she said that it was time to do x-rays.  She was somewhat inclined to sedate Holly because the Beans could occasionally be a little, ahem, feisty at the vet.  We asked her to try the x-rays without sedation – in our experience, if we weren’t in the room, Holly’s was pretty calm and easy to work with, so we waited as she took our girl to the back.  I STILL was completely clueless…it just didn’t occur to me that this could be cancer.  Ironic, since I was constantly obsessed with every lump and bump on her.  I could still tell you exactly where they all were four months ago.  The x-rays seemed to take forever…I remember sitting and reading a People magazine article about Jennie Garth’s divorce.  Then the doctor walked in and very casually said “You were right, she was really well behaved, she did great!”  We both smiled and kind of giggled and were proud of our girl.  Then…”But what I see isn’t so good.  It looks like she has a tumor in the leg.”  The world literally just dropped away from me.  I can’t really think of another way to describe it.  It felt like I was in the process of passing out.  I couldn’t breathe.  I started shaking.  We followed the vet to the back to see the x-rays and our girl.  I will never, ever forget the first moment I saw her.  She was standing next to the vet tech, who was holding her leash, and as soon as she saw us, she broke into her big, beautiful grin, started wagging her tail in her trademark circular wag, and started pulling toward us.  That was when the tears started.  I just leaned over and said hi to her and hugged her – I just wanted to take her and run away.  As the vet showed us the x-rays, and tried to describe what she saw and why it made her think osteosarcoma, I really truly felt like I was having an out of body experience.  There was just NO WAY that this was happening to my girl.  We went back to the exam room and sat briefly while the vet talked to us about prognosis and next steps.  She wanted us to get to an oncologist right away.  She started talking about amputation – as you know, that is almost as shocking as the diagnosis itself when you first hear it.  She encouraged us to strongly consider it – I remember her saying that she would do it if Holly were her dog because she was in good health otherwise and was still so vibrant and full of like – it just made sense to go for it.  Then she started talking about us having maybe 6 months or a year.  It’s amazing how you can hear horrific news and then the conversation just gets worse and worse as it continues.  We really couldn’t ask any questions – we were both just so stunned.  We walked out of the room and I had to go outside with Holly while my husband paid – I was really starting to lose it and I had to get out of there and get to somewhere that I could breathe.  Holly and I walked down the sidewalk…while sobbing like a freak, I just kept telling her that it would be ok, that we would figure it out.  One of Holly’s odder traits back when she had four legs was that she would kind of continue scooting/walking forward while pooing.  She almost always did what we called a “stress poo” after the vet.  We got to a little patch of grass, and she started going…I’m sure it was one of the most absurd sites ever.  I was absolutely bawling at this point, and I was just following her along with a bag in my hand.

I don’t remember a whole lot about the ride home.  I remember having the discussion with my husband that a year was really a lot in the life of a dog – in another year, she would be 10.  A year would be a whole tenth of her life that we still could get.  In reality, I was horrified at the thought of talking in months or even in terms of a year.  I was nowhere near ready to think about losing her.  To be honest, it never really occurred to me that we might be looking at weeks.  It just was never a possibility in my mind.

As soon as we got home, I started googling and trying to learn everything that I could.  The main bright spot that day was finding Tripawds (thank dog!).  I wanted to get started with making her better as soon as I could, so I started looking for an oncologist right away.  We started with a specialty vet in San Francisco where Holly had had major surgery a few years ago – they have a great reputation and we really liked our surgeon, so it seemed to make sense.  My husband called, but they weren’t able to get us in for a few days.  I really didn’t want to wait.  I read the reviews of their sister hospital that is out here in the East Bay, so which made more sense anyway, and saw that people raved about their oncologists and surgeons.  We decided that we should just try them – if we didn’t like them, we weren’t committed.  Our first experience was great – they got us in that very same day.

I remember driving there the first time.  I remember spending most of the time turned around talking to Holly.  I remember what it was like to walk in that very first time.  Holly had a pretty entertaining habit – she liked to sit on couches or chairs like a person.  She would back up to them and put her butt on the chair, with all four of her legs still on the floor, or depending on how high off the ground it was, her back legs would be slightly off the floor.  There was a large-ish, comfy looking chair in the lobby – with someone sitting in it.  Silly Holly made herself right at home – she sat herself down on the chair, which made everyone laugh while she looked around like, “What?  Isn’t this what I’m supposed to do?”  When the man eventually got up and left, she climbed up on the chair and settled in.  She wasn’t much for boundaries.

Again, I remember this vet visit in crazy detail.  I remember walking in and seeing the Tripawds calendar.  I remember which tech took us into the room, I remember her taking Holly to get her vitals, and watching her smile and talk to Holly as Holly walked along cheerily beside her.  While we waited for the vet, I grabbed the Tripawds book that was sitting on a shelf and showed it to my husband, saying “Hey look, this is that website I found earlier.”  You all pretty much know the conversation that we had once the vet came in – we heard the odds, the median lengths of survival, the treatment options…all of the things that all of us have come to know all too well.  Of course, there were tears.  I sat on the floor with Holly and just stroked her over and over and over.  The oncologist was ready to go – she wanted to schedule Holly’s surgery for the next day.  We were still in shock.  She brought our wonderful surgeon in to talk to us.  I think that we always knew what we were going to do, but we really needed a little bit more time to come to peace with it.  Plus, I was about to leave town on a business trip and there was no way in hell I was not going to be there when she came home, so we decided to wait a few days.  That was a Friday and we scheduled her surgery for Wednesday.

That night, I started to read literally everything that I could find.  Neither of the humans really slept that night.  I remember that we kept panicking about every little thing.  Before bed, we sat on the floor with Holly and petted her and talked to her, and then we just sort of watched her.  She went to sleep, so she was breathing slowly, and at one point I was convinced that she had stopped breathing.  It’s so funny how as soon as you have a little information, your perception of everything changes.  We had even decided that her limp was getting constantly worse.  I really don’t think it was – I think it just appeared that way to us.

The next day, we sat around and moped.  Finally, I realized that we needed to stop.  It was a beautiful day so we loaded up Holly and Clyde and took them to the park.  We took her Furminator, some favorite toys, a couple of antlers for them to chew, and lots of treats.  We laid on a blanket with them and just enjoyed being there.  I am so, so glad that we didn’t do the surgery that day.  We weren’t ready and I’m so glad that we took the time before we did it to just try to be a little bit normal and enjoy some time together.  Holly had a great time – we fawned all over her.  It is such a great memory.  You know how some people plan a “perfect day” for their dogs when they feel the end is approaching?  I always planned to do that, and I hate that things went downhill so fast and we didn’t get to do it…but I’m really happy that we had this day.  We all felt better after getting some sun and fresh air.  If you’re just starting on this path, one of my most important suggestions to you is to do that perfect day immediately.  Don’t wait until the end.  Enjoy it now while your pup is still feeling good, while there are no side effects from treatment, when you aren’t exhausted, and when you don’t feel like you’re racing the clock.  Walk away from Tripawds, from all of your googling, from reading all of the cancer books, and make your first priority having a perfect day with your dog.

My initial reaction was devastation and shock, but to be honest with you, once we got going on our plan, I had decided that we were going to kick this thing’s ass.  Holly was going to be one of the dogs who raised the median survival time.  I just KNEW it, because there was no way to function if I didn’t.  My grief is still pretty overwhelming.  I doubt a lot of the choices that we made, and I have lots of regrets and guilt….but I will never regret the fact that we attacked this bastard of a disease head on.

This is going to sound kind of weird, especially since I have just described how awful that first day was, but in a lot of ways I am jealous of the newbies who have just started on this journey.  As scary as it is, as awful as it is to think of what might lie ahead, at this point you still feel like you might have some control.  You have decisions to make, and lots to learn about what you can do to make your dog’s life better and longer.  Every single day that your dog is still alive is a good day.  Every day that your dog is alive, there is hope for more days together.  Learn everything you can.  Make your decisions carefully.  But above all, spend some time forgetting that this is happening.  Take your dog out and sit in the sun and just be together.  Stop reading and worrying and thinking.  Enjoy every second that you have.  Every second that your dog is still alive, still happy, and not in pain is a good second.

I’m not a religious person.  I don’t really believe in an afterlife.  However, the Rainbow Bridge story has always been something that I enjoy and that comforts me a little bit…when thinking about it, I just try to put aside what I normally believe.  Sometimes, no matter what you believe, the universe seems to send you signs.  Again, the logical side of me thinks that these are just coincidences, but sometimes I just ignore what is in my head and try to take the comfort that I can from these signs.

The day that Holly was diagnosed with OSA, my husband and I, while sitting in the oncologist’s office, decided that we would take Holly on a special trip at the end of the summer…we wanted to get some quality time with her away from all of the distractions of daily life, we wanted to show her how special and important she was, and we wanted time to make great memories in preparation for what might be coming.  We even briefly considered leaving Clyde at home – he sometimes got on Holly’s nerves, and we really wanted it to be all about her – until he got diagnosed with melanoma and we decided that it would be a trip for both of them (we probably would have taken him either way – we wouldn’t have been able to leave him behind!).  For several reasons, we couldn’t take this trip until August, which was still about 3 and a half months away.  It was tough to imagine that there was a chance that Holly wouldn’t still be here…right then, she seemed so healthy.  Just a little limp.  I was nervous about the surgery, of course, but once we got past that, I was really confident that she was going to crush this disease and, Zeus-style, laugh at the prognosis someday.  She did so well after her amp, and all of the indicators were as positive as they could be – not a super aggressive form of the disease, no visible mets, no lymph node involvement, and an otherwise happy, healthy, vibrant girl who just wanted to get back to the business of living.

She did well with the chemo – no side effects! – making us even more confident that she would stick around for a while.  Even after the heart abnormality was detected and her chemo shortened, we were scared and frustrated, but still relatively optimistic since she wasn’t showing any signs of heart problems and the doctor didn’t think that taking the doxyrubicin out of her chemo plan would have any significant impact on longevity.  Our trip had originally been planned for shortly after her 6 rounds of chemo were completed, but by cutting it to 4 rounds, we would have had a little bit of time for her to rest and recover before we left, so that was positive.

As you know, our baby girl declined suddenly and quickly, and it is difficult to even describe how shocked we were when we lost her.  Just this one time, I won’t go on a rant about how much we got robbed, how unfair her circumstances were, and how incredibly frustrating it was to feel like she was kicking the cancer’s ass, only to have that not really matter in the end.  As many of you have experienced, the diagnosis and treatment (especially recovery from the amp), strengthen the bond that we have with our dogs – even when it is already very strong – and it makes us more aware that we need to enjoy and value every second…in essence, we need to be more dog.  I really thought that we were doing that, and I think that we probably did the best we could given the constraints of daily life.  On the other hand, if I had known that she would be gone so soon, I would have said screw it – we’re going on vacation now!  I would have taken lots of time off from work and spent many more days sitting outside in the sun with her.  I would have managed to get out of the two business trips that I had to go on – of the 7ish weeks that we had after her diagnosis, I was gone for nearly 2 of them, and just thinking about that is enough to bring tears to my eyes.  In fact, when we decided that we would go ahead with the amp whether or not she had mets, our wonderful vets told us we probably didn’t need to spend the money on chest x-rays since it wouldn’t change our plan.  I wanted to know, though – we always wanted as much info. as we could get – and I remember sitting on the floor of the vet’s office saying “If we’re only going to have two more months (the prognosis if lung mets were already detectable), I’m not going on my trip next week…I won’t waste that time away from her.”  How ironic that we got even less time…We always discuss around here how a prognosis isn’t written on the calendar – we usually discuss that in the positive sense, but for us, it unfortunately went the other way.  With a successful amp and chemo we should have had many more months.

A few weeks ago, we went on Holly’s summer vacation…it became in honor of her and also a trip to spoil Clyde.  It was ridiculously hard to pack up and go without her.  My in-laws had offered us their cabin outside of Santa Fe, which is doggie paradise!  The dogs had tons of room to run and play, they got to go on some fun hikes, and they passed out in the shade on the porch when they needed a break.  It was funny – I know Holly so well that sometimes while I watched the others play, I could picture her – I knew exactly what she would be doing in a given circumstance.  One afternoon, after lots of fetch, we were sitting out on the porch, and based on where my husband and I were and where the dogs were, I could tell you with about 99% certainty where Holly would have been lying.  As we all know, all of our dogs would still be here if we could will it to happen.  I closed my eyes and tried so hard to bring her back to me, to have her lying there where she belonged…alas, it didn’t work.

I haven’t dreamt about Holly very much – a little bit here and there, but it’s never been very realistic.  I have wanted to, of course.  I want to be able to escape into an alternate reality in which she is still with me.  The night that we arrived, I was absolutely exhausted after a long drive, and I just completely passed out.  Sometime during the night, I had an incredibly vivid dream – nothing special was happening…just kind of an odd scenario in which someone knocked on the door in the middle of the night,  but Holly was there in that reality, lying right next to me.  It was SO REAL.  As I woke up in the morning, before I was fully conscious, I was trying to figure out if the dream had been real, and I was fairly convinced that it was, so I decided I would ask my husband if it had really happened.  As I came back into the awake world, it finally occurred to me that it couldn’t possibly be real because Holly couldn’t have been here with me.  That realization was pretty horrific, but at the same time, I was happy to have finally had a dream in which it felt like she was really there.  I almost never have dreams that are so vivid and realistic dreams that I wake up wondering if they were real or not.  Maybe it was just because I had been thinking about her so much that day, but I think about her a lot every day…somewhere, something in me really wondered if she had come to see me.

I don’t know the last time I saw a rainbow…until this trip.  We saw tons of them.  It was downright bizarre.  The day after we got there, we drove into Santa Fe, and while in the car, we spotted a complete rainbow – not a portion of one, but one that really looked like you could tell where it began and ended…it looked like a bridge.  Of course, that brought tears.  Then, a few minutes later, we realized that another rainbow had formed above it – it was a double rainbow!  That was the best of what we saw, but we continued to see them throughout the week, right down to as we were driving away.  I thought that we would be done with them once we got out of the general area, but we ended up seeing one in Arizona, not far before the California border.  It really was incredible to see all of these rainbows on Holly’s trip.  The normal me thinks this just happened to be the weather where we were…a normal scientific phenomenon….but the grieving me wants so badly to believe that it was something more.  Then I wonder if it really matters either way.  I try so hard to feel Holly’s presence, but I rarely do…it is difficult for me; but having that dream and seeing all of these rainbows while I was in a mindset that was so focused on her, and during a time when I was really actively grieving made me feel something, some hope that she wasn’t completely gone.  So, no matter what I believe, if I can have those moments of wonder that bring me some comfort, I will continue to look for them.

 

 

Beanie Baby, if you’re out there somewhere – There aren’t words for how much I miss you.  Not having you here is still nearly unbearable.  I wish that we had been able to take you on your trip…you would have LOVED it!  I know that you knew how loved you were, but I wish that you knew it even more.  I wish that we could have done more to show you how incredibly special you are to us.  I wish that things hadn’t happened so suddenly…I wanted to have a “perfect day” with you before you went.  You should have gotten more flying Dutchmen, more frosty paws, more park trips, more couch snuggles, more everything.  I love you more than I can say.  xo, Mommy

We were here, in this place that we have come to know far too well.  That day, at least for a little while, you were here with us.  As we drove here, I remember thinking that each minute that passed brought me closer to a life without you.  I hoped with everything I had that maybe there was something else that we could do, maybe there was a way to keep you with us for a little bit longer.  Isn’t that a mommy’s job?  To always believe and always hope that our babies will find a way to go on?  On the other hand, as your mommy, I knew you better than anyone, so I could look into your eyes and know that this was it.  That was one of the worst days of my life.

 

Today is a different kind of day, a better day.  Your brother is doing well.  His lungs are clear and your doctor is really happy with how he’s doing.  He’s been chunking up a little bit, but the doctor doesn’t care.  He says we should go ahead and spoil our guy while we can.  Can you believe that?!?  The one thing you waited your whole life to hear from a vet!  I should have been happy, and of course in some ways I am, but mostly I just kept thinking of you.  More than anything, I wanted to have this conversation about you.  I wanted to hear how well you were doing and talk about metronomics and appointments to be scheduled far apart, and even to talk about what we should do 6 months from now.

 

I remember that when we got here that day and your dad went to check you in, I laid down next to you in the back of your car.  I tried to memorize everything about you – the softness of your fur, the way your heart felt beating against me.  I tried to tell you again, through my sobs, what I had told you your whole life: how wonderful and beautiful and special you are and how I love you so much it hurts.  That was the last time we were alone together, just you and me.

 

Life without you is hard to get used to.  The other day I came in the door and out of habit braced myself for your exuberant greeting.  There is nothing better than coming home to your gigantic smile, your huge circular tail wag, and your squeaks of joy. I don’t know why, in that moment, I blocked out the fact that you wouldn’t be here, but when I realized it, I felt like I had been punched in the heart.

 

I know that you wouldn’t want me to be sad, but how can I not be when you aren’t here?  I miss you all of the time.  The thought of never again seeing that smile or cuddling up with you on the couch is unimaginable.  I have tried to be brave, like you, but sometimes it is too much, and today was one of those days.  I just had to break down and sob.

 

I love you, my beautiful beanie girl.

That’s the day that Holly came home with me.  Exactly 9 years ago today.  I was really looking forward to celebrating this special day with her.  17 more days and we would have been able to.  Exactly one week before she died, while we were at the vet discussing what turned out to not be arthritis at all, my husband suggested that maybe we should go ahead and celebrate that coming weekend.  I scoffed at him and reminded him that it was only a few weeks away, and a little pain or arthritis certainly wasn’t going to cause major problems that quickly…turns out, we wouldn’t have really been able to celebrate then anyway.  It’s amazing how quickly things can change.  Actually, once we had settled in a bit from her diagnosis, I set my sights on her 10th adoptaversary as our goal.  I don’t know why I felt the need to set a goal at all, but I thought it would be perfectly reasonable for her to be here in a year.

 

So, 9 years ago.  Holly came into the shelter where I was working at the time on June 30.  As soon as I saw her, I was smitten.  She was an awkward puppy with huge ears and paws, and that beautiful smile.  I immediately looked into her intake info. to find out more about her.  Turns out, a man had taken her from the home of his adult son, who was not taking good care of her.  I don’t know for sure if it was abuse or “just” neglect, but I would suspect some of both, as she definitely had some fear issues throughout her life.

 

I was not in a position to get a new dog at that point, so I just loved her up at the shelter.  She was energetic and lacking in manners – when I walked her, she just jumped all over me.  Of course, she was also a puppy living in a too-small cage 23.5 hours a day and was desperate for human attention.  Then, my dog died very suddenly.  I was, as you would imagine, devastated.  She was a wonderful dog who had helped get me through some seriously tough stuff and who was an incredibly important part of my life.  I still wasn’t in a place to get a new dog, but I put my name down to be contacted before any decisions were made about Holly.  Then, lo and behold, she got sick, which meant euthanasia if she stayed in the shelter.  That did it for me – I took her home.  I remember the day I took her home…I was walking out of the shelter with a couple of people at the end of the day and before I could get her outside, she up and peed on the floor.  She got to come home anyway. 🙂  First things first – her name had been Coco, which is a perfectly fine name, but it wasn’t her name, so she became Holly.  From that day forward, she was incredibly loved and spoiled.  We had a wonderful (almost) 9 years together.

I can’t thank you – the Tripawds community – enough for getting us through these last couple of months, especially the last couple of weeks.  Your comments on forum posts, blogs, your PMs…it  has all helped me so much.  It has definitely been rough – Thursday was two weeks since we lost her, and it definitely was a hard day.  I actually stayed away from here for a bit because, as much as it helps to be a part of this community, these days it is somewhat bittersweet.  I owe some of you PMs!  Yesterday was a good day…we took the monkeybutts to the Russian River to enjoy the warm weather.  Holly would have really enjoyed the day.  Then, we got home and this had arrived in the mail:

with this inside…

I was really excited to see a picture of her that I had never seen before…I didn’t know that there were any left.  Of course, there were tears, and yes, they were sad tears, but it was also such a wonderful thing to see notes from people who knew her.

Today, as I mentioned, was supposed to be a day of celebration with our girl.  In many ways, it was a difficult day.  I so badly wanted her to be here.  In her honor, though, we celebrated her adoptaversary.  The monkeybutts went for a special hike (well, walk, really), had a special tasty treat, and wore some very special attire…pictures to come!  Please give your pup a special treat and ear scratch or belly rub in honor of Holly.

 

To my prettiest girl – what an amazing adventure we had together!  Thank you for choosing me.  I am beyond lucky that you came into my life and stayed for a while.  Happy adoptaversary, beans.  I love you then, now, and forever.

 

 

Today it is two months since Holly’s amputation.  I so badly want to be posting in the forums about our ampuversary celebrations, and about how well she is doing.  If you had told me that, despite treating the cancer as aggressively as we could, she wouldn’t make it two months post-amp, I never would have believed you. We decided to do chest x-rays before her surgery even though the doctors told us that it wasn’t necessary to do them if it wouldn’t change our minds about how we would treat.  Even knowing that we would likely go through with the amp either way, I wanted to do the x-rays for a couple of reasons: one, I wanted all of the information that I could get about what we were up against.  Then, the other reason…we knew that if she had lung mets on x-rays at that point, it was likely that our time was pretty limited.  I was scheduled to be away on a business trip for nearly a week, and I remember thinking that if we were only going to have 2 months, I didn’t want to miss an entire week of it and I would try to stay home.  With the way things were going, I wasn’t worried (ok, I was constantly worried, but worried in a more optimistic, hey things are going well kind of way), and I ended up going away twice.  Out of less than 8 weeks following her amp, I was only home for about 6 of them.  May I have that time back now, please?  I tried to really enjoy our time with her and live life to the fullest once we got the diagnosis.  Knowing that your time is limited will obviously do that…but you of course still have to go on with your daily life.  I truly saw us as having at least a year, which meant that missing a couple of weeks would suck, but it wouldn’t be a huge chunk of the remainder of her life.  In some ways, I wish I had known that our time would be as limited as it was – I would have gone on with my daily life a little less.  I would have taken every single vacation day just to take her out to enjoy the world.  A few times, we left her home while we took the others to the dog park.  I sometimes got upset because she clearly wanted to come, but I didn’t want her to overdo it, especially if she had already had a big day the previous day.  If I had known that wouldn’t have mattered in the end, I would have let her come, or I would have stayed home and just spent time with her.  Luckily, working from home allowed me to maximize the time I physically spent with her, even if I was distracted by work (although now working from home is pretty awful – I can’t even work in my office yet.  I think that it would be better if I had to go somewhere else every day, somewhere that didn’t have quite so many memories.  I would go work at a park or coffee shop or something, but now I want to stay home with Clyde.).  I want back every. single. second.

 

She was such a strong girl, so full of life and love.  I am still happy that we did the surgery.  She recovered so well and relatively quickly – one of the few instances of good luck that we’ve had.  It allowed her to be free from the pain, and to be free of our overwhelming worry that her leg would break.  She was able to enjoy life again, to play and be happy.  It was such a joy to watch her really go back to being her old self.  I keep thinking that there absolutely MUST be a way to press the rewind button so that we can go back and do things differently post-amp.  This living without her thing is too hard.  It wasn’t time for her to go…she had more left to do and more left to give, and we had so much more left to give her.  My heart is just in millions and millions of shattered pieces.  I know it isn’t healthy to keep going through the what ifs in my head, but at this point it is just impossible to stop.  So many things had to line up for us to be where we are today – it’s hard to believe that changing something wouldn’t have changed the outcome.

 

This afternoon, I picked Clyde up after his radiation.  We didn’t have an appointment to meet with a vet, so I was waiting in the lobby for the tech to bring him out to me when our oncologist happened to walk in to get a file from the front desk.  The last time I saw him was the last day I saw Holly (last Monday he was off on vacation so we met with another doc to get Clyde started).  Up to that point, I had been doing really well.  I hadn’t cried at all – I had just gotten a teensy bit teary when one of the front desk guys (who is one of the sweetest, most compassionate people ever) came over to tell me again how sorry he is.  But as soon as I made eye contact with our doctor, I just burst into tears.  He told me that he, too, is having difficulty wrapping his mind around what happened because it was all just so bizarre and not something that anyone would ever see coming.  I asked him a few things that I have been wondering – mostly what ifs.  He assured me that we did exactly what he would have done were he treating his own dog.  That actually helped for a little bit…until a while later when I of course went back into the “what if” and “maybe I should have….” black hole.

 

Two months ago, I thought that I was in absolute hell.  How could it get any worse?  My beautiful baby girl had cancer and was having her leg removed!  Then, a couple of weeks ago, I thought…ok, now it really can’t get any worse.  TWO of my dogs have cancer.  Both times, I was so wrong.  I would LOVE to have two cancer dogs.  All of the pills, the appointments, the treatments, the worry, the watching for side effects, the cost, the reading every single thing you can find, the considering every possible option that has ever helped any dog, figuring out the diet, the exhaustion, the tests, the stress – it’s all worth it.  If you can get an extra five minutes of quality time, it’s all worth it.

I can’t believe that it has been an entire week since Holly left us.  I had a few different ideas about what I should talk about in this post.  A friend of mine suggested that I write down all of the things that I loved about her and that made me laugh or smile or that I just wanted to remember so that I never forget them and so that I can always look at the list, remember our good times, and smile.  I thought maybe I would post the beginning of that list today, but I haven’t started writing it down yet.  It’s been forming in my head over the last week, and I think of something new to add to it practically ever minute. I’m a bit overwhelmed by the idea of sitting down and starting the list.  In general, I couldn’t really come up with a coherent post because I’m just feeling so defeated today.

 

I know that every decision was made out of love and with Holly’s best interests at heart, but I’m really regretting some of the decisions that we made in the final days.  I feel like we were just panicked and made some rash decisions.  Since the day she was diagnosed, there were two things that we wanted to always take into account before making a decision: we wanted to make sure that her quality of life was still good and we wanted to get every possible bit of information that we could before doing anything.  This time, we didn’t do the MRI.  I don’t know if it would have made a difference – if we had confirmed that it was disc disease, I don’t know what the doctors would have said about spinal surgery or if we would have decided to do it in the end.  I just heard that she would have to be anesthetized and sort of shut down without thinking things through.  I was so worried about her heart that I couldn’t see past it to realize that the anesthesia would be very light and over quickly, and really shouldn’t have presented any problems.  I really just don’t know what I was thinking.  It had just sort of been one thing after another for a couple of weeks, and we freaked out and went back on our decision to always step back and think carefully before deciding anything.  It’s something that will haunt me for a long time, I think.  The one pass that I will give us here is that we thought we were waiting for improvement, and it never occurred to anyone that suddenly this leg paralysis would progress into something else; we thought that it might get better, and if it didn’t, it wouldn’t get worse and we would have to decide if we wanted to try to treat more aggressively, if we thought that her quality of life would be acceptable without improvement, or if we thought that euthanasia was the best option at that point.  If we had made it through the weekend and things had just stayed the same with her leg, I might have ended up doing the MRI before making a final decision.  Like with every other part of this journey, I just thought that we had a little bit more time.  Even still….maybe on Thursday morning, instead of letting her go, we should have gotten her sedated and stabilized and discussed our options at that point.  I am still just in such shock.. How did this happen?  How did we have the perfect storm?  Her one remaining front leg was PARALYZED?!?!  Ok, this is a disaster, it can’t get any worse…oh wait, now she’s having trouble breathing?!?!  We don’t even get to wait and see if her leg improves???  Seriously, what on earth happened here?

 

We had plans.  We had plans for years and years.  She was only 9, and I wasn’t in the frame of mind that we needed to think about losing her yet.  Then she got diagnosed, and we still had plans.  We realized that we needed to make the most of each day, and we also decided to attack the cancer head-on and keep her around and healthy for as long as possible.  I’m usually incredibly pessimistic, but honestly, I heard “median survival time of a year” as “ok, maybe you can start to worry after a year”.  Literally, I always, always, always think that the worst outcome will happen, but this time, it didn’t really occur to me that we would be in the 50% that didn’t make it a year.  I don’t think it was even an option in my mind, because living without her wasn’t a possibility.  She was so tough and so strong and she scoffed at that horrible cancer.  She started hopping around after surgery like nothing had happened.  She didn’t even notice the chemo.  Everything was looking good.

 

As well as she was doing, I was so excited to watch her get even stronger.  I wanted to see her be able to play fetch for longer and go on longer walks and roughhouse with other dogs.  I couldn’t wait for her fur to grow back.  I was anticipating a time when the chemo was over and we only had the occasional checkup (plus lots of pills), but otherwise, we just went on about our lives without thinking about cancer.  I wanted more pictures and more videos, more snuggles, more smiles, and more tail wags.  She deserved all of that.  Later this summer was supposed to be “Holly’s summer vacation”.  We scrapped plans for a fancy schmancy vacation for ourselves once we started paying those vet bills…but even more than that, because we knew we didn’t want to leave her – we just wanted to be with her constantly.  We wanted to have a special road trip that was all about her, a time when we could spend quality time with her and a time when we could make wonderful memories that would last throughout her cancer fight and beyond.

 

Today, we picked up Holly’s ashes.  It was horrific.  It was so final.  I STILL keep thinking that she will walk in the door, smiling her big smile and wagging her tail, having enjoyed a nice long walk (hop).  She’ll go drink an entire bowl of water, because that’s how she rolls, and then she’ll hop up on the couch and lie down with a big sigh, ready for her belly rub.  We were supposed to have more time.  Damn it, I want my dog back.

 

Hollybeans, you are my beautiful girl.  Forever with you wouldn’t have been enough.  There is a huge hole in my heart, and without you here, there always will be.  I love and miss you every day and I will love and miss you every day for the rest of my life. Love, Mommy

 

…but I can’t.

As you would imagine, we had better things to do over the last couple of weeks than clean, so we really need to get on it.  Plus, Holly HATED the vacuum  cleaner and I didn’t want to stress her out.  Now there’s fur everywhere…but it’s mostly Holly’s fur.  Sunday is always clean sheet day at our house, but I couldn’t wash our duvet cover – not only is it covered in her fur, but it also has some slobber stains (gross, I know…since she couldn’t move herself in the last few days, she would lie in one position for a while and end up drooling a bunch).  She was eating from her bed, and there are a couple of bright green/yellow spots where she spilled her food.  Her bowl is on the counter, exactly where I left it last Wednesday night when I cleaned it out after dinner.  I started working downstairs at the dining table when we thought she was having arthritis pain so that we could minimize stairs…since she wanted to be touching me, she would lie under the table, even though hopping under there and manipulating herself was kind of difficult, and the last time I worked there, I pushed my chair way out of the way into kind of an odd place so that it would be easier for her to get out.  I’m not ready to move it back yet, even though it’s just kind of sitting there.

Holly was supposed to get her 3rd chemo treatment today.  Last night, I mentioned to my husband that today we should be celebrating the fact that she is 3/4 of the way done with chemo.  A Flying Dutchman-worthy event if there ever was one!  Then he reminded me that, no, we really should have been celebrating that she was half done with her chemo because she wasn’t supposed to have a heart complication – she was supposed to have the originally planned 6 chemo treatments.  Then we realized that we were both wrong…today should have just been a Wednesday.  Right now, I would be in my office rather than sitting on my couch downstairs because I’m not ready to work in my normal environment without her sitting next to me yet.  Tonight, we would snuggle on the couch and watch bad TV.  She would yell at Clyde if he tried to come too near our dinner (he tries to stick his nose up by the food, and would have no qualms about stealing it, so she always guarded it from him…it was very useful!).  I would get her dinner ready while she did her happy food dance and drooled all over the floor.  Maybe this weekend we would go for a big hike.

I can’t believe that it’s been a week since our last full day with our Holly.  After she got diagnosed, I usually sat with her every night before bed and scratched her and talked to her so that, no matter how busy the day was, we had some quality time together so that we could really connect.  Last Wednesday, I didn’t do it.  It was late and I was so tired…I just gave her a quick scratch and got in bed.  Since she was on the bed, I rested my feet up against her so that we would be touching.  We were still trying to figure out what our plan would be if her leg didn’t start to improve, but we had basically decided that we would watch it through the weekend no matter what, so we definitely had a few more days with her.  Plus, she had shown some improvement that night when she peed and pooed before bed without prompting from us and started licking her leg, which made me think that she might be getting some feeling back.  It never occurred to me that that night would be her last.  I want so badly to go back to that night and sit with her so that we could have our nightly chat and so that I could relax her by massaging her back a little bit, then scratching around her ears, under her chin, and on her tummy.

It feels like, if I leave things exactly the way they were when she left, she might come home.  Maybe today she’s just at the vet for her chemo treatment and she will come hopping in the door any minute now.  If it looks like she was just here, it feels more like she was just here.  I know her fur and her drool aren’t real connections to her…but somehow having something, anything that she left makes me feel a little bit better.

I know that sometime soon I will have to vacuum and wash my duvet cover.  I will have to put her bowl away.  As time moves forward, there will be less and less physical evidence that she lived here.  I’m not there yet.  For just a little bit longer, I want it to look like she never left.

I am happy to report that Clyde did great at his first treatment today.  He has not yet had any side effects, except for being a bit drowsy this afternoon after we got him home (duh, he was under anesthesia!).  He’s such a brave guy…and so easygoing and friendly.  He wags his little stump at everyone he meets – vets, techs, random people in the lobby – and demands that they scratch him.  As soon as he is even slightly comfortable with someone, he begs for belly rubs.  He had a Flying Dutchman on the way home – partly to celebrate his first successful treatment and partly to honor his sister.  Holly would be so annoyed by all of this…and who can blame her?  Isn’t is JUST LIKE a monkey butt to suddenly get his own cancer so that he can refocus the attention on himself?!

 

Isn’t he just the most handsome fella?

I’m so glad he’s doing well so far – I feel so guilty that I’m not doing more research and that I feel like I’m not considering each and every possible side effect of treatment or every possible outcome depending on every different possible factor (for one thing, I’ve learned that you can’t possibly come up with every possible scenario – even your doctors can’t – so it will just drive you crazy to try).  But mainly, I’m so physically, financially, and most of all emotionally drained that I just haven’t been able to throw myself into it the way I did for Holly.  Granted, I have already read all of the cancer books, so I at least have a working knowledge of things, and he had already benefited from some of the things that I was doing for Holly, but I was always looking at things from the perspective of OSA, surgery, and chemo, not melanoma, radiation, and vaccination.  I have tons of notes, tons of sites bookmarked, a file of articles that I haven’t even read all the way through yet (a file labeled Holly), and I get the daily digests from the yahoo groups (I should probably stop getting the one from bone cancer dogs – it just makes me upset…but maybe I’ll stick with artemisinin in case it’s useful for Clyde).  The problem is – I did all of this research with Holly in mind.  I agonized over what her treatment plan should be – both now and when the chemo ended.  There were lots of things that I was going to do for her once chemo was done that we never even got a chance to try.  Now, it really hurts to go back and look at all of it, so much so that I’m having difficulty doing it.  It’s such a huge reminder of how short her journey was cut.  If Holly were still here, even though it would be overwhelming, it wouldn’t be quite as devastating.  When we found out that Clyde had cancer, we were completely devastated.  We didn’t think it could get any worse…Holly sat with me on the couch while I looked up the different possible diagnoses and treatments.  Everything was easier as long as I had her here with me…and then it got worse.  In a forum post today, Jerry mentioned that hopefully I will be able to use her strength as I go through this with Clyde.  That was a helpful thought; I had thought about it while she was alive, but felt like I had lost that once she was gone.  Now I will try harder to draw inspiration from her.

 

Here’s the confession part.  I don’t even want to write this.  I don’t want to admit it; it makes me cry to express it out loud and announce to the world that I’m kind of a terrible person.  I’m sitting with Clyde next to me and I’m SO GLAD that he’s here.  He cracks me up with his goofy personality.  I love listening to his absurdly loud snoring.  He is so great with everyone he meets, which Holly sometimes struggled with.  He’s ridiculously adorable.  He loves to snuggle.  I love him.  Very much.  I want him to beat this disease and stay here with me forever, and I will do absolutely everything in my power to help him fight.  When it is his time, I know that I will be out of my mind with grief, exactly the way I am now.

I love all of my dogs equally….but I do think I love them differently.  They all need different things from me and I get different things from all of them.  I would give anything to get Holly back, except another member of my family.  But Holly was an amazingly special dog.  From the day I met her, I knew that we were meant to be.  She was the one who took care of me, who sat quietly with me while I cried, and who always seemed to understand when I needed her.  As an example, a few weeks ago I was pretty sick, and I was in bed all day.  Holly used to come snuggle in bed, but she hadn’t gotten up there since the amp.  That day, she hopped up for the first time and laid down next to me.  She knew I needed her, and she came to take care of me.  She was truly one of the great loves of my life.

Ok, I’m really getting to the confession part now.  I wouldn’t trade a healthy Clyde to get Holly back.  Sometimes, though, I have the thought that if this had to happen, if they both had to get sick and have crappy odds so that it’s likely that neither of them had a huge amount of time left, it might be easier if things had happened in the reverse order.  Holly would somehow know how to help me work through the grief.  Clyde is a comfort because I love him and I’m happy that he is here…but it’s not quite the same…he doesn’t intuitively know when I need him.  I don’t know…maybe it’s just because I am in the deepest, darkest days of grief; maybe it’s because he is older, so in the back of my mind I always thought of everyone going in age order, so it’s just that my expectations are thrown off; maybe I would feel this way either way because I just so desperately want the one who isn’t here to come back.  I feel so evil that I might not even post this.  I LOVE Clyde.  I DON’T love him any less than Holly.  It’s just different.  I know we talk about heart dogs or soul dogs or forever dogs…but somehow I feel like I’m making a comparison or a choice here, or that I’m betraying him in some way while he is still fighting.  If you now think I’m the devil, that’s ok…I understand.

 

On a slightly different note…those of you who have had to deal with multiple diseases close together or who have lost multiple dogs in a short period of time – any advice?  How on earth did you get through it?