Goodbye Sweet Maggie

We lost our dear, sweet Maggie on Saturday.  It still seems like a nightmare that I might wake up from, except that I know I won’t.

For some reason I feel like sharing the sort of medical details of what happened, maybe because so many folks here are familiar with the ins and outs of their pet’s healthcare.  After the first couple of weeks of recovery post-amp, Maggie looked happier and more energetic each day for several weeks – through mid November at least.  Then I started to feel like she “plateaued” and wasn’t really building more stamina as I had expected, we still couldn’t get back on a regular diet that she seemed to enjoy with the same enthusiasm as before, and she seemed to have “up” and “down” days in terms of energy.  Along with the changes in diet she had mild stomach/poop issues that had me puzzled for a week or two.  Some of you may have read about a weird episode 3 weeks ago where she was out for  a short walk and seemed to lose all of her energy and gave me a real scare for the night.  The next day she was checked out and we had clear chest x-rays, which I took to be a good sign, and she seemed to bounce back to her happy self the following day.  We thought she may have pulled or strained something and was exhibiting pain that night.  A week or so ago she had some unusual looking poop – very light colored which a quick Google search seemed to indicate a liver/bile duct blockage, so I made another appointment with her vet for Saturday.  On Saturday morning we went out to potty and she seemed OK, not overly jazzy, but fine.  I had errands to run before her appointment at noon, and got back just before then.  When I got home my husband told me she had been acting unusual, seemed uncomfortable and unsteady walking, and had gotten up and laid right back down several times.  She could barely walk over to the door, and I ended up carrying her to the car to head to the vet.  The techs were concerned with how she looked, and when they tried to get a blood sample they said her blood pressure was very low and called the dr. in right away.  The blood test confirmed a very low red blood cell count and he explained the possible reasons – blood loss, the body destroying the red blood cells, or not generating new red blood cells.  He re-checked the x-rays from 3 weeks ago to see if anything else appeared unusual, and decided to do an x-ray of her abdomen this time.  It clearly showed a large mass which appeared to be the spleen, and fluid in the abdomen, which he confirmed was blood by drawing some of the fluid with a fine needle.  This indicated a ruptured tumor, which would not stop bleeding on its own.  The options of a blood transfusion and abdominal surgery, when cancer had clearly spread and become so invasive so quickly, would have been a very temporary extension of her life with the tradeoff of another major surgery to recover from…with more damn cancer at the end of the line anyway.  We knew this wasn’t what we wanted to put her through.  It was a horrible, horrible realization of this unfolding in front of me, that this was the end.

I called my husband and orchestrated a plan for someone else to bring our son to a birthday party (he’s 8. he’s not the type of personality that would have wanted to come and see her. in retrospect it was a blessing that he had somewhere else to be.) and for him to get to the vet’s office as soon as possible. During this time, I had almost 1/2 hour to lay on the floor with Maggie – and damn right, I didn’t care where I was, I laid down on the floor and curled up with her.  I tried to be strong and stop crying so she wouldn’t worry.  I sang to her.  I didn’t care that there were people in the other room.  I’m sure I’m not the first idiot to sing to their dying dog.  She was in shock and pretty dopey at this point, but I know she felt safe and loved.  I held her head with one arm and had my other arm wrapped around her.  I remember consciously trying to rub and scratch in all of her favorite places, and all of my favorite places, like her soft little ears and kissing the top of her head like I’ve done a billion times.  It felt like a long time, and obviously not nearly enough time.  When my husband got there, she wagged her tail.  I gave him a few minutes alone with her, too, and then the vet came in to talk us through all of the details.  He was fantastic, the staff were all fantastic with us.  Their office closes at 1:00 and we were there until after 2:30 and they couldn’t have been more patient and compassionate.  Oh, I should add that I asked, grasping at straws, if we could take her home even for the day or the weekend (this was before I saw how affected and going into shock she was), if should could rest and bounce back even temporarily, and obviously that would have risked pain and trauma and terribleness at home.  But you know, I had to ask.  Anyway, the procedure itself was extremely quick, she was quiet, and still and peaceful.  Her people were there giving her all the love we had, and she just eased away.  It almost seemed too effortless, in a way.

I’m so grateful that she wasn’t in great pain at the end.  I’m grateful that she had 12 wonderful years with us, and 2 fantastic months without an ouchy leg, and with the utmost of spoiling.  I really feel like she knew that the amputation was a new lease on life, and was really living it up.  Even with the challenges of building her strength on 3 legs, and (as we now know) more cancer attacking inside, I saw a happier puppy in the last 2 months than I had in a long while.  Maybe it came from me remembering to “be more dog” and just enjoy the crap out of everything we got to do together.  Maybe she was happy that she got to teach me that.  Last Tuesday I took her to her favorite park for a walk, and she seemed a little tired but she got fired up every time someone walked by, and she sniffed by some of her favorite trees.  On Friday I skipped an extra hour of work on a long lunch break and took her for a walk down the block and around the alley.  It was farther than we had been walking post-amp (as I said, she never got her stamina completely back so we just rocked the short walks) but when we got to the corner I just wanted to let her keep pulling and sniffing.  It was the direction, down that block and around that corner, that we started off on almost all of our hundreds of walks over the years.  For some reason I didn’t want to make her turn around on Friday, so I let her sniff around that corner and we looped back towards home through the alley.  Late that night, my husband took her out to potty before bed and he said she pulled on her leash and took him for a little walk a few houses down and back.  I’m so glad we both got a chance to take her out on Friday.

I know this was a really long post.  Thank you for indulging me.  It helps to just tell the story.  I miss her like crazy.  My house is TOO quiet.  It’s not that I expect to see her laying in her ‘spots’ – which is weird, because any time she had been out of the house before, I would expect to see her – maybe it’s a defense mechanism in my brain to make it not hurt every time I look into the room.  I miss catching her beautiful eyes a hundred times a day as I was going about my business… I never even realized I did this until now.  I miss her sounds.  And I’m also terrified of hearing sounds that remind me of her.  I packed up her things on Sunday night, and I left her collar for last, and had to pick it up carefully so the tags wouldn’t jingle.  I’m not ready to hear that sound and not see her.  I get a little twitchy when the neighbor dogs bark.  I noticed that the back door is always locked now, not open and closed 50 times a day to let her in and out, I don’t even have to check to see if it’s locked when we leave the house or go to bed.  It’s the quiet door now.  I miss her so much.

I tried to upload a photo but it’s not working right now.  I may post some later, just to do it.  I guess I should sleep though.