Day 24 - Something that makes you cry, in great detail (lemming)
Samara, originally uploaded by ihvpave.
Good night, my sweet, goofy, klutzy girl. I love you always.
What fucking timing, eh? We had to put Sam down this morning, and I haven't stopped crying very much since I found out.
Basically, Wednesday, she wasn't... Right. But she wasn't in distress, really, and after talking to a friend who's a vet, we held off to see if she felt better Thursday.
She didn't.
When we woke up yesterday, she hadn't moved and didn't really seem to...
Well.
Work actually. My baby was broken. So I put on the first thing I could find, a hat on my head, and went to work to crank out some stuff so I could stave off panic until I could get to the doc's office. I was leaving the office around the time everyone was getting in, and heading back to the house to fetch my girl.
Her legs weren't really doing anything useful, so I picked her up and carried her to the car like the baby she is to me - this is when I realised I am glad I never got the mastiff I wanted.
When I got to the vet's, she was immediately started on an IV and antibiotics, since she had a fever of about 105, and we ran through all the options and initial runs of steps to diagnose, and so forth. And then we began the tests. And the waiting.
At some point in this, Will called to check on her and brought himself to the vet's to wait with me, since HotRod was at work.
And we sat. And we waited.
And I kept telling myself that no news is good news, right? 'Cos that means she's not deteriorating.
Except, no, actually, she was stable, but there wasn't any coming back.
After 24 hours on IV antibiotics, the next step was to run an ultrasound - which MIGHT tell me what was wrong with my baby girl, but if it did, none of it was going to be good news, and all of it would be long and drawn out to heal her from, without a solid idea that it was going to make her feel better or actually help her all that much in the long run. Which was a lovely call to get this morning at work.
By the time I got off the phone with the vet, I was pretty much sobbing, which... if you're familiar with me: crying isn't something I do very often. Like, I actually don't remember the last time I actually cried from sorrow or sadness or pain. It may well have been 2006. I seriously don't know. Sometimes, I'll get a tear when I watch a movie (Up, for example, will make me have a drip), but not crying. I just don't do it. I can't - even when I want to, usually, I just sit there feeling like my face is constipated.
But here I was, in the middle of my office, hitching and snorting and streaming.
We had to make the decision to put her down.
I don't know when I will stop crying, just yet.
I keep expecting her to be inching her way across the couch at me, or hear her tail thumping on the sliding door, or see her doing her special squirmy dance of excitement when I walk into a room. And every time any of those things - or a hundred others - don't, I break down again.
This is so much worse than people. I didn't feel this gutted when Costa Rica happened - maybe because I always had hope he was coming back? - or when Grandmuzzer or Grandaddy or Daddy died, maybe because they weren't in the daily fabric of my life? I don't know.
But Sam makes me cry, and I think she will for the forseeable future.