I miss my dog. I miss her desperately. I simply do not like (at all) the fact that she is not here with me. With us. It is so wrong.
I am so sad. My dog died Saturday. Or rather, my husband and I held her in our arms as a very kind and compassionate doctor administered the drugs that would kill her. She was so very sick.
We took her to the vet for an appointment at 3:45pm on Friday and everything went downhill from there.
She hadn't been eating her food - but had still been chowing down on treats and table scraps from our toddler. She was a tank. She would, and could, eat anything. I never worried about her because she was so tough. I honestly considered that she might not be eating her food because she knew better things were to be had, in combination with her teeth hurting or something. I mean, she was still eating treats and scraps! She was still going to the bathroom!
On Wednesday evening I had noticed a lump on her side. She needed to be laying in the right position to feel it, and there were a few times when I couldn't find it that I thought my imagination was playing tricks on me.
That lump ended up being a giant tumor on her spleen (at minimum the tumor was 10cm...the docs weren't able to get the whole thing in one view on either the x-ray or the ultrasound, so they could not be sure it wasn't bigger). The moment I first palpated it with my hand I had known that something was seriously wrong. I tried to deny it under the guise of, "positive thinking," but deep down I knew. My beloved childhood dog had "fatty" tumors on her body, but I just knew this wasn't the case with Kylie. I tried to think positive and convince myself otherwise.
She was still eating anything except her own food (although on Thursday she actually ate ALL of her food!), and running around as usual. I actually told my husband that if I wasn't feeling the lump, I wouldn't even bother with a vet appointment for her. She seemed fine. She wasn't. She was far from fine.
I took this picture about 4 hours before her doctor's appointment. It's hard to believe she was so sick. Thinking of how scary her blood work results were (In addition to the doctor explaining it, one nurse/helper looked at Kylie's results, raised her eyebrows and said, "Whoa! Okay. That's not good."), it just shows how strong she was.
Our vet took x-rays and told us the devastating news about the tumor on her spleen. As I mentioned, her blood work was no less devastating. She was severely anemic and they could not find a single platelet on their slide (I don't even know what that means, but I know it is very, very bad).
We were sent to an emergency vet/surgery clinic with the belief that after a blood transfusion, Kylie would undergo surgery to remove the tumor. So, at this point, we were just praying the tumor was benign. Hoping that she would recover from surgery and be her happy self again. I stay at home with my daughter, so I was thinking about how I would have no trouble helping her to recover.
But she didn't have surgery. She spent Friday night in the hospital and after more testing it was determined that she had a very aggressive cancer that had already spread to other parts of her body. She was in pain. She was in misery. We had to let her go.
I feel a horrible sense of guilt and anger that I didn't just know there was no way to save her. If I had, I could have spared her that last night in the hospital, full of tests and loneliness and misery at being away from her people. I feel so guilty and sad that she was there all alone, only to perish the next day. I worry that she was angry at us, and confused and felt abandoned. We were only trying to keep her alive and hoping to find a way to save her - but there is no way she could have known that, of course.
When they finally brought her to us for our final time together, she was barely wagging her tail. She was walking, and she gave a few sweet kisses, but she was just so sick, and so tired, and so very sad. It was awful.
She lay down on a blanket and I lay next to her. She actually put her head down and cuddled next to me. I hold in my heart the hope that she felt comfort at being near us. We petted her, and talked to her, and praised her, and loved her, and then we pressed that horrible button that would let the nurses know it was time.
The doctor that administered the lethal dose was the most compassionate and respectful person we could have hoped for in that awful moment.
I can't continue, because I don't want to describe the final seconds. It hurts too much.
Oh, sweet doggy friend. We miss you so much.
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