…has been one of the most awful times in my life. Here’s a recap: (please forgive the absurd length of this post. It’s mainly for my own benefit – I needed to get it all out. If you want to skip the day by day but are still interested in the conclusion, you can start below the first pic)
Wednesday, June 13 – I woke up in the middle of the night to Holly crying. I sat with her for a while to try to calm her down and gave her some Tramadol. We were able to sleep through the rest of the night.
Thursday, June 14 – She was in some pain during the day, and was holding her head kind of low, just as she had done when she let out that initial cry a few weeks ago. We took her in to the oncologist to see if they could figure out what was causing her pain. She perked up a bit when we got to the vet…we were excited, but also a little frustrated that the vet wouldn’t get to see what we were seeing. They did a thorough exam and couldn’t find any sources of pain. We were so nervous that it was her heart, but her heartbeat sounded good and her bloodwork was normal. Everything seemed ok. The dr. brought her back to the exam room so that he could try a couple of things with us in the room, thinking that she might be more comfortable and therefore more willing to express her pain if we were in the room. Sure enough, he pulled out her back leg and was able to elicit some pain, so it looked like we had found the problem – arthritis in her hip. That wasn’t too surprising, since she has had some problems with her hips in the past. I was worried about bone mets, but the doctor felt that it was very unlikely. We started her on Rimadyl to help with the arthritis. I so badly wanted that to be the problem, but deep down, I was really concerned that it wasn’t.
Friday, June 15 – We went to acupuncture for the first time. Holly loved it. I don’t know if it helped with her pain, but it really relaxed her, which was wonderful to see. She put her head in my lap and went into a deep sleep. My regular/holistic vet also thought it was very unlikely to be bone mets. A few hours later, I was working (I work from home), with Holly lying under me on my feet. She let out a few cries of pain during the day, but nothing major and pain meds helped. My husband took Clyde, one of our monkey butts, to the vet. The vet found a tumor in his mouth. She aspirated the swollen lymph node that had sent us to the vet in the first place, and told us she would get the results by Monday or Tuesday, but that it was cancer – it was just a matter of figuring out the type. We were in complete shock.
Saturday, June 16 – Holly woke up my husband in the morning when he slept in a bit…it was great! She didn’t wake him up because she was in pain – she poked him with her nose to tell him that it was breakfast time. She went down the stairs a bit slowly, but nonetheless, did it on her own without much trouble. We spent most of the morning at home and then decided to take her to the park in the afternoon. We planned to go to the dog park – we took two of the other dogs so that they could play and planned to sit with her and let her wander around if she wanted or just relax. On the way, we stopped for lunch. My husband went in to get our food and I stayed in the car with the dogs. Holly got up and drank a bunch of water and then wouldn’t lie back down. It seemed like it hurt her when she started to try to lie down or that she was afraid to lie down because she thought it would hurt. She finally laid down, and was excited when we got to the park. As she started walking in, she started wobbling and weaving back and forth. I was instantly terrified that she was having a heart problem, since limb weakness or collapse was one of the signs we were supposed to look out for. We helped her over to the shade and she stood, leaning up against me and putting most of her weight on me, and drank some water. My husband carried her part of the way back to the car and then let her walk the rest of the way. She didn’t want to go – she was trying to go back toward the park. We should have taken her to the vet right away…but we didn’t. It was really hot out and we thought she had just overdone it and needed to rest, her heart was starting to show problems, which they wouldn’t be able to do anything about, or her hips were just weakening. When we got home, she was able to walk (hop) in and get on her bed on her own. That was the last time she walked on her own. She didn’t seem to be in pain – she just couldn’t really get up. We discussed taking her to the emergency vet that night, but felt that they wouldn’t be able to do much, and we worried that if we went in, she wouldn’t come home with us.
Sunday, June 17 – Holly could not walk on her own at all, and it was clear that the problem was her front leg – she couldn’t use it. She was eating, but hesitant to go to the bathroom when we took her outside. We took her to the emergency vet, where she promptly peed (yay!) while being checked by the vet techs. The vet came out to talk to us and get info. from us. She said that Holly had low blood pressure and she was waiting on the blood test results. We were so excited – low blood pressure could cause weakness, right?! Plus, we were about 10 days out from her last chemo treatment, so it was about the time that her white blood cells would be low. However, when the vet came back, she said that not only were the blood tests normal (who ever thought we could be disappointed by that?!?) and that Holly’s blood pressure was actually normal – the first time had been wrong. She had tested the remaining front leg and, while it still had feeling, it was paralyzed. The vet told us that it was likely spine mets or disc disease, and that we really had no option, as spine mets would obviously be game over and surgery would be the only way to help with a disc problem that had gotten to the point of paralysis. She suggested that we go ahead and euthanize. We did a spine x-ray and saw nothing to indicate mets; she warned us that they could still be there, but that perked us up a little. We just couldn’t do it. Holly wasn’t in pain, so we felt it wouldn’t be completely selfish to take her home overnight and get a little more time. I wish that that vet hadn’t been so discouraging – I think that put us into that mindset from the outset. We grabbed a Flying Dutchman for the Beans on the way home, which she thoroughly enjoyed.
Monday, June 18 – In the morning, even though she was still eating, we thought we had reached the end. Holly just looked so miserable and we felt like we had no alternatives. We put calls in to our regular/holistic vet and our oncologist. While we waited to hear back, Holly didn’t really want to pee. We knew she could, and she was actually able to sort of walk, using her back legs and with my husband acting as a crutch on the front. That worried us even more. Eventually, we got her to pee and we felt like there was a little more hope. We sat outside in the sun for a while with her in my lap. Our regular vet called and we discussed our options, including acupuncture. Between the pee success and the happier moments outside, we were back in the mindset of trying everything. We took her over to acupuncture a couple of hours later. It wasn’t as relaxing as it had been before, but it definitely did relax her some, and she eventually took a nap. The vet thought there was a good chance that it was a disc problem and not spine mets, and thought that we had a reasonable chance of recovery with conservative treatment (rest, acupuncture, meds). She perked up for a while after that – when my husband carried her out to the car, she got excited when she got close and seemed to want to get in herself, so he put her on the ground and let her use her back legs a little to “help” him get her in the car. Then, when we got home, as he was getting her out of the car, she tried to sit up by herself. We felt much better.
Tuesday, June 19 – Not the best morning. She didn’t really want to pee, and it seemed like her back legs might be showing some weakness. She was still eating, and she also enjoyed some chicken broth, eating ice, and some Frosty Paws. In the afternoon, I took Clyde to his first consultation with the oncologist. The onc was pretty upbeat and also felt like we had a good chance of recovery with conservative treatment. In looking at the x-rays, he was quite convinced that we were dealing with a disc problem and not mets. Yay! We decided to assume it was a disc problem and give it some time. Next, we discussed Clyde’s case, which wasn’t just great, although his chest x-rays were clear, so a small sliver of good news. I scheduled him to come in the next day for biopsies. That night, Holly still didn’t want to pee and we were worried about how long it had been, but finally we went to bed and she went to sleep. Sometime in the middle of the night, she woke up whining, so we took her out, and she promptly peed. We were thrilled.
Wednesday, June 20 – Clyde was dropped off for his biopsies around noon. We arranged to pick him up at a time when the doctor could also see Holly – we were worried about her back legs and wanted to get a sense of if she was losing function or if she was just not trying or her legs were just wobbly from sitting around for so long, etc. The vet was slightly less optimistic when he saw her that afternoon than when he saw her the day before. However, he determined that her back legs were functioning. She was pretty stressed, and was panting pretty hard, which I think concerned him, but after a bit she settled down and was breathing normally, so I think he went back to being a bit more optimistic. Her heart and lungs sounded normal. We discussed the fact that if she didn’t show any signs of improvement by Sunday or Monday, it started to be fairly unlikely that she would get better. We had agreed that we didn’t want to put her through the diagnostics of an MRI (we didn’t want to anesthetize her because of her heart) or through a spinal surgery that wouldn’t necessarily guarantee success and would involve a long recovery period. I started to waiver on that and asked the vet how likely it was that surgery would help. He wasn’t positive and wanted to talk to a surgeon to be able to give a more definitive answer. I just wanted to think about it – I saw hope fading and didn’t want to let her go without knowing that we had exhausted every possible option. We took her home feeling not great about the outlook. We actually had a decent evening – she licked her leg a few times, which made me think that she might be getting more feeling back. We took her out and she immediately peed with no problem at all. She was a little weak in the back, and needed help to stay up, but she was able to get herself into her squat. A few minutes later, she asked to go out, and she immediately pooed (she had been pooing all along, but this was great because we felt like she had really asked). We went to bed feeling as optimistic as we could. She had been panting a lot before going out, but once we got her carried upstairs and settled onto our bed, she stopped and seemed to be pretty comfortable. She was asleep before I was. Just a couple of hours later, she woke my husband up with strange breathing – she was clearly struggling, and every time she breathed/panted, her mouth opened and closed. Her neck/head also started moving involuntarily. He tried everything to get her comfortable – moving her around our bed, putting her on her bed, on the couch, putting her in different positions, gabapentin, tramadol…nothing calmed her down. I don’t know how I slept through this – I was just beyond exhausted, I guess.
Thursday, July 21 – After about 3 or 3.5 hours, he woke me up, a little before 6:00 on Thursday morning. She was clearly in distress – her eyes were huge and she looked scared and didn’t really acknowledge my presence. We knew that it was probably over, but we held out a small shred of hope that something was happening that the vet could help with. We put her in the car…I sat in the back with her, and she seemed a little bit better on the way – her breathing was still bad, but her neck stopped moving around. My husband went into the lobby to check her in while I laid next to her in the back of the car and told her how much I love her and that I would never leave her. Then she got put on a gurney and wheeled in. The vet came to speak to us and said that there was really nothing they could do; it looked like the problems were neurological. Her heart and lungs STILL sounded normal, and her oxygen level was completely fine. We told her that we wanted to wait until our onc got there so he could be the one to do it; she was very understanding and said of course, and that we could sit with her while we waited. However, she was worried that Holly could stop breathing on her own at any moment. They put us in the room…you know the one. Our vet arrived and came in to talk to us and hear what had happened…then they wheeled her in, along with portable oxygen in case she started to crash. We were absolutely destroyed. Our vet asked what our thinking was, but said that he thought it was time; interestingly, he still thought it was a disc problem, but that perhaps the brain stem was now involved (I’m not sure I completely understand all of this, so I’m going to have o ask). We had already essentially reached that decision and we knew it was time to stop holding out hope. We lifted her off the gurney and put her on the ground so that we could lie with her. I put her stuffed pepper, her favorite toy, on her leg. I got behind her and snuggled up as close as I could. The vet went to get the paperwork and the drugs while we loved on her and talked to her and cried. He asked if we wanted to spend time alone with her before he started, but we said no because we knew that she was suffering at that point and we didn’t want to prolong it, even though I could have stayed there all day and I made my husband actually say when, because I knew I couldn’t do it. After he injected the sedative, I very briefly thought about stopping him – once she was sedated, she stopped breathing abnormally and was so peaceful…I thought maybe if she was sedated so that she could be comfortable, they could look further into what was wrong and maybe do something to help…but instead I just talked to her. She was gone very quickly.
We are completely destroyed. I am going over everything in my head constantly, and honestly, I’ve still been researching disc problems to get more information, even though it won’t do any good now…I just can’t stop. My whole life for the last 2 months has been about learning everything I can and helping her as much as possible. I know I’m insane and this is ridiculous, but deep down I keep thinking that if I can figure out what to do right or somehow go back and change the course of events, I can bring her back; that feels like the only alternative, because going on without her doesn’t seem like a viable option. Things just turned so quickly and in such an odd way. The first ER vet, the onc (plus one of the other oncologists at the clinic), and our regular vet were all shocked and confused and talked about what a strange fluke this was. Also, since none of them were able to elicit pain in her spine during exams, they were even more baffled. In addition to being in the denial and heartbreak stages, I am so angry. We got so screwed. It’s all beyond unfair. She was doing so well – not even low WBC count from the chemo! How did this happen? How did she see doctors on Thursday and Friday and then become paralyzed on Saturday?!? (I’m not blaming my vets nor am I angry with them, by the way…I know that they did everything they could; it just doesn’t make sense). I am so lost and confused. I just want her back. I would do anything to get her back. As I know you all understand, everything in the world seems to make it worse. The Dasuquin that I ordered for her the other day arrived yesterday and I threw it across the room.
In the meantime, on Friday, we got the call that Clyde has oral melanoma that has spread to a lymph node in his neck. We are pretty much completely not functional right now – I can barely get out of bed in the morning or eat, but we have to make quick decisions about his treatment. It’s ridiculous. So, despite not having done the careful thinking and research that we did before starting Holly’s treatment, we are starting tomorrow. He will be anesthetized with the plan being to start radiation, as they don’t feel that he is a good candidate for surgery; before they start, a surgeon is going to consult just in case she thinks that she can get a lot of the tumor. Our biggest concern with his treatment is that he has absolutely no symptoms at this time, and we don’t want to compromise his quality of life for treatments. But, not treating gives us that pesky 2 month long median survival time, which we are having trouble even thinking about, so we are going to try treatment. My brain is way too foggy to be making any decisions at all, so I hope we aren’t making a horrible mistake.
We drop him off tomorrow morning at 8:30, almost exactly 96 hours after we said goodbye to Holly. I don’t know how I will walk in the building. All I know is that we have to try – I’m not ready to do this again yet.
