forever is the sweetest con (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
delacourtings) wrote2023-01-05 04:43 am
delacourtings) wrote2023-01-05 04:43 am
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[layla's life] where i've been | pt i
As you can tell by looking at my recent activity, or lack thereof, on here, I took an unexpected hiatus. If you're curious, this is why.
On May 18th, my family's beloved 14 year old dog, Marley, unexpectedly and quite traumatically passed away. This was a complete and utter shock, as both Marley and our 15 year old dog, Juliet, had just had their annual check up last June. The owner of the practice, their original vet, was an older gentlemen who sadly passed away due to COVID in August 2021. So, the vet they saw in June was not their usual vet but his protegee, whom I will now refer to as "New Vet". (This will come into play later).
On Wednesday, May, 18th, we noticed Marley was acting strangely. He had been a cantankerous old man ever since he'd wondered into our old neighborhood back in 2010. (He was 2 years old, nothing but skin and bones, clearly abused, and had been shot in the testicles by some sad excuse for a human being with a BB gun.) He had always been an anxious dog, even more so as he got older, getting to where he was restless and constantly panting (which the aforementioned New Vet told us was anxiety and to treat him with melatonin. Again, this will be relevant later.)
As I said, this day he was especially restless and unusually anxious. He was panting excessively, constantly gulping down water, and wanting to go outside and stay outside. As 14 and 15 year old dogs, our dogs hated being outside. If it was cool enough, Marley would enjoy sunbathing on the deck but he lived for brisk nights and cold weather. And this was the middle of May in Georgia - in other words, HOT. Something was clearly wrong. We thought maybe he had an upset stomach as he sometimes did. But he just refused to come back inside which was extremely unlike him. Usually he was whining at the door, demanding to be let back in. Each time my mom got him back inside, he would gulp down a ton of water, and then stand at the back door, excessively panting until he was let back out. My mom is still WFH and had back to back meetings that morning so I was keeping an eye on him. Eventually, I went outside to get him to come back in. Another sign that something was wrong was that when I went out there, I called and called for him, and it was a good few minutes before he came out of some bushes on the far side of the yard from our back porch - somewhere the dogs rarely went. He walked halfway back across the yard to me but stopped and at that point I had to bend down and coax him to come the rest of the way to me. I then had to coax him to go back inside the house. He immediately wanted to go back outside but we decided not to let him. After a lot of panting and walking around restlessly, he finally plopped down on his blanket.
(Side note: I bought my dogs a jumbo orthopedic bed big enough for them to share, which they've never had a problem doing until the past year or so when Marley got too crotchety in his old age (or so we thought) and would immediately get up any time Juliet tried to lay with him. Since Juliet often had the bed, we laid a thick, folded over blanket on the floor for Marley. One night, his blanket was being washed and he refused to lie down. An extremely nice blanket my dad had given me for Christmas that I had been using needed to be washed anyway, so I decided to just let him have it for the night. It wasn't just for the night. Marley LOVED that blanket. He was on it CONSTANTLY. If it was being washed, he would walk around until it was clean and back on the floor for him. One night, he kept barking and my mom couldn't figure out what it was he wanted. Then she realized she had been washing their bedding, so she laid the blanket down for him as soon as it finished drying. That was all he'd wanted. If Juliet ever decided to lay on the blanket, he would bark at us to make her get up off of it so he could lay on it. He ADORED that blanket.)
Back to May 18th.
Marley let out a huge sigh, like he often did, as he plopped down onto His Blanket. I kept a close eye on him and after a bit noticed he kept making these strange movements, almost as if he was dry heaving or as if he was about to have a bowel movement but nothing was happening. We discussed giving him some baby aspirin but we didn't have any (which turned out to be a good thing). Thinking he had a very upset stomach, my mom went to the store to get some baby aspirin and plain chicken she planned to boil for him to try to eat. While she was gone, I fretted over Marley incessantly. When she was almost back to our house, I called her, and before she could even tell me she'd been calling every vet in our area (because our usual vet was not only 40 minutes away but closed on Wednesdays), I told her we had to take him to a vet immediately because he had just started spurting blood from his rectum. It was horrible. My mom would later describe our house as looking "like a crime scene' and it truly did. There was so much blood. But the worst part of it was that he kept doing it every couple of minutes and making a noise like he was in a pain. Not long after, he started vomiting up blood too.
Marley was a big dog, and somewhat overweight at 75 lbs, and there was no way were going to be able to get him into my or mom's small cars. We called my dad, who was working at the time, and he dropped what he was doing to come help us take Marley in his truck. (This may not seem like a big deal, but my dad (technically my stepdad) and mom are (amicably, now) divorced and he doesn't like dogs.)
It was still a Herculean task though. We needed to get Marley onto a blanket so it would be easier to lift him up and into the truck bed but Marley did not want to sit down. Eventually, we got a blanket under him and he sat down in the driveway, but we ended up having to call my stepmother's father, my step-grandfather, I guess?, to help. It took my mom, dad, and step-grandfather to get him in the truck bed. My dad drove the truck while my mom rode in the back with Marley and I followed behind them. One thing that brings me comfort about this whole situation is that my mom said he loved this last car ride. (He used to LOVE car rides but had gotten to where he was too anxious to enjoy even short ones.)
While my mom had been on the phone with local vets earlier, she'd finally gotten hold of someone who would take him. His appointment was at 2:30 but when we got there they said they didn't have a bed for him. We waited outside for God knows how long. My dad backed the truck up into the smallest of parking spaces to give Marley a little bit of shade but again, it was mid-May in the middle of Georgia. It was heartbreaking to watch. Later, I found out a my sister had sent a picture of Marley in the truck to her best friend, who said he already looked dead. He was fading so fast. We stayed there for who knows how long, talking to him and petting him, just trying to offer him any form of comfort, until a vet finally just came outside to the truck. The vet asked us what had happened and did a brief examination. Like I mentioned before, Marley was a big, overweight dog but he had these significant bumps on his stomach, that we took him to the vet for, and New Vet told us they weren't anything to worry about - they were just fatty lumps/bumps.
This vet was brisk and efficient, examining him in less than 10 minutes, feeling the exact same lumps/bumps for just a few seconds, and telling us it was likely some kind of gastrointestinal cancer. And that the reason the blood smelled so awful, and not just like normal blood, was because it was necrotic. She was very matter of fact, didn't bullshit us, and told us that they could run tests and find out exactly what it was but it would cost a lot of money and there was no guarantee it would fix anything. And that basically, the best thing to do for him was put him down. Through our sobs, we agreed that was bed, and they brought us into their X-ray room, because they still didn't have a bed available. We stayed in there with him, crying and telling him goodbye, and this was one very kind man who worked there stayed and loved on our sweet boy with us. After a bit, the vet came back with the syringe to sedate him but he was already so close to leaving us, that if she had waited maybe five more minutes, he would've passed on by himself.
They let us say our goodbyes and asked if we wanted to take him with us or if we wanted to use the petuary across the street. We said the petuary, as what was who we'd used when our 8 year old baby boy Harry unexpectedly passed away from a stroke back in 2019, and they said they'd take care of that for us. My dad is far from perfect but he was a blessing that day. He has never liked dogs, always vehemently dislike them, and was in the middle of a pretty important work task that day, but he still dropped everything to help us take Marley and ended up paying for the cremation services because he knew how much Marley meant to us.
Naturally, we were all a mess but at least we were able to be with him and tell him goodbye in person. My youngest sister goes to college 3 hours away and had to say goodbye via FaceTime. We all grieved so heavily. I have been on Effexor XR since 2012 for both chronic illness and depression reasons, and as a result I almost never cry. But I sobbed multiple times a day from Wednesday until Sunday. But it was our other dog, Juliet, who had grieved the hardest. Just 9 days later, on May 27th, Juliet passed away from what the vet told us was, essentially, heartbreak.
On May 18th, my family's beloved 14 year old dog, Marley, unexpectedly and quite traumatically passed away. This was a complete and utter shock, as both Marley and our 15 year old dog, Juliet, had just had their annual check up last June. The owner of the practice, their original vet, was an older gentlemen who sadly passed away due to COVID in August 2021. So, the vet they saw in June was not their usual vet but his protegee, whom I will now refer to as "New Vet". (This will come into play later).
On Wednesday, May, 18th, we noticed Marley was acting strangely. He had been a cantankerous old man ever since he'd wondered into our old neighborhood back in 2010. (He was 2 years old, nothing but skin and bones, clearly abused, and had been shot in the testicles by some sad excuse for a human being with a BB gun.) He had always been an anxious dog, even more so as he got older, getting to where he was restless and constantly panting (which the aforementioned New Vet told us was anxiety and to treat him with melatonin. Again, this will be relevant later.)
As I said, this day he was especially restless and unusually anxious. He was panting excessively, constantly gulping down water, and wanting to go outside and stay outside. As 14 and 15 year old dogs, our dogs hated being outside. If it was cool enough, Marley would enjoy sunbathing on the deck but he lived for brisk nights and cold weather. And this was the middle of May in Georgia - in other words, HOT. Something was clearly wrong. We thought maybe he had an upset stomach as he sometimes did. But he just refused to come back inside which was extremely unlike him. Usually he was whining at the door, demanding to be let back in. Each time my mom got him back inside, he would gulp down a ton of water, and then stand at the back door, excessively panting until he was let back out. My mom is still WFH and had back to back meetings that morning so I was keeping an eye on him. Eventually, I went outside to get him to come back in. Another sign that something was wrong was that when I went out there, I called and called for him, and it was a good few minutes before he came out of some bushes on the far side of the yard from our back porch - somewhere the dogs rarely went. He walked halfway back across the yard to me but stopped and at that point I had to bend down and coax him to come the rest of the way to me. I then had to coax him to go back inside the house. He immediately wanted to go back outside but we decided not to let him. After a lot of panting and walking around restlessly, he finally plopped down on his blanket.
(Side note: I bought my dogs a jumbo orthopedic bed big enough for them to share, which they've never had a problem doing until the past year or so when Marley got too crotchety in his old age (or so we thought) and would immediately get up any time Juliet tried to lay with him. Since Juliet often had the bed, we laid a thick, folded over blanket on the floor for Marley. One night, his blanket was being washed and he refused to lie down. An extremely nice blanket my dad had given me for Christmas that I had been using needed to be washed anyway, so I decided to just let him have it for the night. It wasn't just for the night. Marley LOVED that blanket. He was on it CONSTANTLY. If it was being washed, he would walk around until it was clean and back on the floor for him. One night, he kept barking and my mom couldn't figure out what it was he wanted. Then she realized she had been washing their bedding, so she laid the blanket down for him as soon as it finished drying. That was all he'd wanted. If Juliet ever decided to lay on the blanket, he would bark at us to make her get up off of it so he could lay on it. He ADORED that blanket.)
Back to May 18th.
Marley let out a huge sigh, like he often did, as he plopped down onto His Blanket. I kept a close eye on him and after a bit noticed he kept making these strange movements, almost as if he was dry heaving or as if he was about to have a bowel movement but nothing was happening. We discussed giving him some baby aspirin but we didn't have any (which turned out to be a good thing). Thinking he had a very upset stomach, my mom went to the store to get some baby aspirin and plain chicken she planned to boil for him to try to eat. While she was gone, I fretted over Marley incessantly. When she was almost back to our house, I called her, and before she could even tell me she'd been calling every vet in our area (because our usual vet was not only 40 minutes away but closed on Wednesdays), I told her we had to take him to a vet immediately because he had just started spurting blood from his rectum. It was horrible. My mom would later describe our house as looking "like a crime scene' and it truly did. There was so much blood. But the worst part of it was that he kept doing it every couple of minutes and making a noise like he was in a pain. Not long after, he started vomiting up blood too.
Marley was a big dog, and somewhat overweight at 75 lbs, and there was no way were going to be able to get him into my or mom's small cars. We called my dad, who was working at the time, and he dropped what he was doing to come help us take Marley in his truck. (This may not seem like a big deal, but my dad (technically my stepdad) and mom are (amicably, now) divorced and he doesn't like dogs.)
It was still a Herculean task though. We needed to get Marley onto a blanket so it would be easier to lift him up and into the truck bed but Marley did not want to sit down. Eventually, we got a blanket under him and he sat down in the driveway, but we ended up having to call my stepmother's father, my step-grandfather, I guess?, to help. It took my mom, dad, and step-grandfather to get him in the truck bed. My dad drove the truck while my mom rode in the back with Marley and I followed behind them. One thing that brings me comfort about this whole situation is that my mom said he loved this last car ride. (He used to LOVE car rides but had gotten to where he was too anxious to enjoy even short ones.)
While my mom had been on the phone with local vets earlier, she'd finally gotten hold of someone who would take him. His appointment was at 2:30 but when we got there they said they didn't have a bed for him. We waited outside for God knows how long. My dad backed the truck up into the smallest of parking spaces to give Marley a little bit of shade but again, it was mid-May in the middle of Georgia. It was heartbreaking to watch. Later, I found out a my sister had sent a picture of Marley in the truck to her best friend, who said he already looked dead. He was fading so fast. We stayed there for who knows how long, talking to him and petting him, just trying to offer him any form of comfort, until a vet finally just came outside to the truck. The vet asked us what had happened and did a brief examination. Like I mentioned before, Marley was a big, overweight dog but he had these significant bumps on his stomach, that we took him to the vet for, and New Vet told us they weren't anything to worry about - they were just fatty lumps/bumps.
This vet was brisk and efficient, examining him in less than 10 minutes, feeling the exact same lumps/bumps for just a few seconds, and telling us it was likely some kind of gastrointestinal cancer. And that the reason the blood smelled so awful, and not just like normal blood, was because it was necrotic. She was very matter of fact, didn't bullshit us, and told us that they could run tests and find out exactly what it was but it would cost a lot of money and there was no guarantee it would fix anything. And that basically, the best thing to do for him was put him down. Through our sobs, we agreed that was bed, and they brought us into their X-ray room, because they still didn't have a bed available. We stayed in there with him, crying and telling him goodbye, and this was one very kind man who worked there stayed and loved on our sweet boy with us. After a bit, the vet came back with the syringe to sedate him but he was already so close to leaving us, that if she had waited maybe five more minutes, he would've passed on by himself.
They let us say our goodbyes and asked if we wanted to take him with us or if we wanted to use the petuary across the street. We said the petuary, as what was who we'd used when our 8 year old baby boy Harry unexpectedly passed away from a stroke back in 2019, and they said they'd take care of that for us. My dad is far from perfect but he was a blessing that day. He has never liked dogs, always vehemently dislike them, and was in the middle of a pretty important work task that day, but he still dropped everything to help us take Marley and ended up paying for the cremation services because he knew how much Marley meant to us.
Naturally, we were all a mess but at least we were able to be with him and tell him goodbye in person. My youngest sister goes to college 3 hours away and had to say goodbye via FaceTime. We all grieved so heavily. I have been on Effexor XR since 2012 for both chronic illness and depression reasons, and as a result I almost never cry. But I sobbed multiple times a day from Wednesday until Sunday. But it was our other dog, Juliet, who had grieved the hardest. Just 9 days later, on May 27th, Juliet passed away from what the vet told us was, essentially, heartbreak.