I'm so sad...dog story

LaurenTheMom
Tue, 10 Aug 2010 17:21:08 +0000

This thread breaks my heart. My D2 has been away for the last six weeks and will return on Monday. When she left, our wonderful sweet maltese was having problems standing and his leg would often slip out. We took him to the vet and were told that he had a fractured hip. D2 left for her camp job thinking that was the problem. After two weeks, I received a call that my mother has breast cancer and within the same hour, our dog had a seizure at my feet.

Our boy is only six and has been my constant companion as I work at home. He’s my fifth child and good or bad, I’ve treated him like a baby. After his seizure (which was unexplained at that point) I took him to the emergency animal hospital. I had to leave the next morning to go to a different state and go with my mother to her doctor’s visit, so my dog stayed with the vet. He got an MRI and a spinal tap and they concluded that he has GME Enchephalitis, which is incurable, but can be managable for a period of time. Since D2 was away, I was grateful for the time that he might have so that she could say goodbye.

When I returned from helping my mom, our dog came home. He was with us for a week, and then had five seizures in one evening. I brought him to the animal hospital in the middle of the night after staying up all night with him so he wasn’t alone during a seizure. I expected that we would have to put him down. When I went in to say goodbye, he was sleeping and his seizures had been calmed. He stayed one more night and I brought him home again.

He’s on a lot of medication and is nothing like the dog he used to be, but does not seem to be in pain. Today, for the first time, he vomited a lot and I thought, again, that I was losing him. This came in the same hour that I received a telephone call telling me that I needed to come back in to see a radiologist about my own mammogram.

I held him while he vomited, but then suddenly he calmed. He’s now sleeping and has eaten and drank water. Since he is not in pain, it’s hard to think about putting him down although clearly his quality of life has been dramatically reduced. He takes medications 7x per day and really can’t do any of the things a dog would do. Since D2 is coming home on Monday, I am hopeful that he stays stable until she comes home. I feel like she needs the opportunity (if it presents itself) to say goodbye. She knows that he has been sick and knows that it has been bad at times, but I haven’t decided what to do if our dog passes while she is away. She is at a camp where she works from 7 am to 11pm “inspiring” and motivating high school and middle school students. She is so proud of her job and needs to be at her best to perform well. When I told her that he was sick, she said that it was all she could do to prevent from breaking down. She is a very emotional child (of age 18) and will have ten days between the time she returns from camp and becomes a live-away freshman at a nearby college.

My mother’s surgery is Monday (we are hopeful that her breast cancer was caught early enough) and D2 comes home Monday night. My mammogram recheck is tomorrow afternoon. This has been an incredibly hard couple of weeks and the need to slowly say goodbye to my precious little dog has been heart-wrenching. When I look him in the eyes and tell him how grateful I am to him for all of the years we have had I am unable to hold it together. It’s amazing how everything can change so quickly. I am worried about how D2 will react. We’ve been dealing with this for almost a month, and it is so hard.

"Just"amom - my thoughts and prayers are with you. I never knew how hard the loss of a pet could be until I started the process. I know my little boy will not be with us much longer and it is just so painful. I am hopeful for tomorrow, hopeful for Monday for my mom and dreading telling D2 all of the news. More than that I am dreading what I know is coming. Pugmadkate - your words are inspiring.