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Jackandgrey

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    Quality Of Life...*original Post Is From 2008*

    in Health and Medical discussion

    Posted

    What I struggle with most is that Isabella hasn't given me any indication that SHE'S ready to go. People keep saying "You'll know - they'll tell you". What I know is that my 15 year old, incontinent, shuffling old bag of bones is fiercely hanging onto life for some reason. Her mind is sharp, her organs are all working okay and she still regards me with a calculating eye. How can I take life away from her? How can I just have her killed? Who would I be doing it for, exactly? So yes, I know what you're talking about. I just don't know the guilt because I haven't yet had to courage to take it on. Just as I don't know if euthanizing her would be for my benefit or hers, I also don't know if NOT euthanizing her is for my benefit or hers. :(

     

    Oh Elizabeth and Heather, I so wish I could hug you. This may be the hardest decision you will ever make, and I know it too well:

     

    Five weeks ago today I held my beloved Dune as his heart took its final beat. I'm sorry to those who think the language is harsh, but I cannot get over the fact that I chose to kill my soulmate.

     

    He was not in pain. His health was as good as any five-year-old greyhound's. But his spine required thrice-daily meds or it hurt, badly enough that if he missed even one dose he'd stop eating and drinking, and at 14 and down to 62 pounds (from a racing weight of 82), that meant hospitalization within a day.

     

    Like Isabella, Dune was still walking, eating, smiling, begging for pets and treats. He'd even managed to jump onto our bed four times in the last week that I'd been home, medicating and feeding him well so that he was pain-free, happy and was gaining weight -- six pounds in a week!

     

    I had the horror of scheduling it six days out, like someone else did. Was I sparing him pain and humiliation? No. As long as I was home and medicating him on time, he was doing well, following me around and eating ice cream (at 14 you can eat whatever you want, I say).

     

    But I was leaving town for three weeks, to visit my SO's father/family and help my SO plan his 92-year-old father's funeral; his father hinted that it might well be the last time we'd see him alive (his heart and spine are giving out, though not his spirit, either). And on my previous three unavoidable work trips this summer, NO ONE could get meds into Dune. No one. Not the vet tech we hired, not the SO, not the animal-first-aid licensed dogsitters, not Dune's beloved "doggie godparents" who tried everything. He was a master pill-spitter-outer (and liquid spitter-outer). I'd tried everything to help the dogsitters: special compounded liquids, showing them my technique, hiring other "med" specialists. Yet they'd failed, and he'd lost 12 pounds in those three trips, pounds I hadn't been able to recover in my in-between stays.

     

    My choice: Kill the dog I love more than almost any human alive, or fail that one human who ranks above Dune. The vet told me that, with meds on schedule, he might live another six months or a year -- everything else was healthy. Then again, the pain meds may have stopped working the next week. She supported either decision.

     

    Anyone who says you will "know" hasn't been in a rock and a hard place with an old dog whose body is failing but whose mind and spirit are as happy to see you as they've ever been, an old smiling hound who relishes smells on his one-block shuffles and snuggles up with a contented sigh on the bed with you, who is pain-free more than 80% of the time but who faces a possible pain-filled near-death or death due to the failings of humans.

     

    My neighbors, dogsitters, friends and SO all think I made the "right" decision, that Dune would likely have ended up in pain and starving when I was gone, just as he'd been in pain the last time I'd left and the dogsitters failed him in medicating.

     

    But as far as I'm concerned, I killed the greatest dog that ever lived just so I could do the "right thing" in the human world and see an old man who called to tell me he wouldn't be around by Christmas, and turned out to be doing just as well as he'd been for the past five years other than his hearing.

     

    There is no limit to the grief and guilt I feel. There are few friends who even vaguely understand; some of the ones I'd believed to be the biggest dog-lovers have actually said, "he was a dog, you'll get over it." The only comfort is in knowing that he didn't suffer, and that he died happily in my arms in his favorite bed, doing his favorite thing -- sunbathing on our front porch -- while the anesthesia took effect.

     

    I would rather have had a disease help me with this decision. It is, and was and I think will forever be, the worst thing I have ever done.

     

     

    My heart is breaking for you. Dune would hate for you to be feeling this badly. He loved you far to much for that. :grouphug

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