cvkelz | Entries tagged with pappy

I started writing this the day after we put Pappy down, but couldn’t finish it until now. His passing was actually on October 25th.

Monday night we changed Pappy’s bandages and found that his tumor had ruptured. It was dripping blood and his leg was completely swollen. His paw was turning to the side, almost like it was numb. It rattled us to the core. We decided to bring him in to the vet the next morning when they opened with no appointment.
This morning we called at 7:30 and they said to bring him in at 8:45 as an emergency visit. A few minutes later the doc called back and asked if we could wait until 9:00 because someone had just cancelled and therefore it wouldn’t be an emergency visit, saving us a hundred bucks. Whatever, we said yes.
At that point the dogs were already loaded in the back of the car and Pappy didn’t want to come out. He hadn’t been very mobile lately, so I went out to him and spent about a half an hour talking to him and making my peace. Rob and I pretty much knew where the day was heading. We were hoping for the best but prepared for the worst. Pappy and I had a good long talk about how I knew he was tired and in pain and I was just being selfish and it wasn’t fair.
Finally the time came and we headed to the vet. They got us in right away and the doc was in agreement with everything we were telling him. The tumor was huge and it wasn’t going to go back down. He said the leg was swollen due to the tumor cutting off the circulation and that wasn’t going to get better. The bleeding from the tumor was not going to stop because the skin was torn and would not grow back. When we told him the blood had started to stink that morning, it was as if the doc felt that was a key fact. And when I told him Pappy seemed to have no real joy any longer other than the false hunger from the steroid, we all knew what we had to do.
We asked if the shot could take place in the back of the van, much like we did Romie’s all those years ago. They said no problem and we all went outside.
I gave him a kiss and told him I loved him several times and then I turned my back. Rob held him while they gave him the shot and he passed away. I couldn’t watch. I couldn’t with Romie and I couldn’t with Pappy. I have been told that sometimes the dogs will have seizures or other types of things and I know that I couldn’t handle that.
Rob and I said our goodbyes and then took Pappy to Rob’s parents house to bury him next to his brother Romie.
It was a quiet ride to Salinas, punctuated with my sniffles and outright sobs.
When we got there Rob told me to take Shilo in to see his mom while he and his dad did the digging.
I did so, and while Shilo proved an interesting distraction, I was still a wreck.
Finally, Rob poked his head in and said: “Let’s boogie.”
We headed outside and he got Pappy from where he was wrapped in a blanket in the back of the van and we headed out to the gravesite. Rob placed him down in the grave and we both shoveled some dirt onto him. Rob finished as I commented on how Romie was probably rolling in his grave about how he thought he was finally rid of the little brat and now had to spend eternity next to him. Heh.
We said our goodbyes and headed home. I went from numb to wracking sobs to numb again. It was a very rough day.
Wednesday I was still pretty much a wreck but I went in to work. It was very hard to face all the hugs and people telling me they were sorry. I know that they only meant the best, but it just made me cry harder every time. I left early that day.
Thursday I managed to go most of the day without bursting into tears.
Now three weeks later I can say that I still miss him terribly and I tear up every time I think of him and what we had to do, but I feel a sort of peace. There had been over two years of fear and impending death since his cancer diagnosis. So much anxiety over surgeries and treatment options. As horrible as it is to say, I feel that a weight was lifted. The two years of dread had finally come to an end and he was no longer in pain.
It isn’t that easy of course. I think about him daily and miss him with every fiber in my being, but I feel that we made the right decision.
According to the vet and the interwebs, Pappy should have never lived as long as he did with the type of cancer he had. The web says something like 6 months, and our vet said she would have predicted him gone over a year ago. That was very reassuring. I don’t regret a single thing. I am glad we chose no chemo or radiation as I have heard from many personal sources since, that it just makes the dogs miserable no matter what the “experts” say to the contrary.
Pappy was my love and my light and I am so glad he came into my life almost ten years ago.

Current Mood: numb

The last few days, Pappy’s tumor has increased in size. I’m not sure if he hit it on something or not, but it had definitely gotten large, discolored and very hard. I noticed just how large it was last night. I made a mental note to mention it to Rob the next day.
Rob has been deep in rehearsals for the play he is doing the last couple of weeks so we haven’t really seen each other much. The play opened last night so I knew I would get to see him a little bit this afternoon after his nap.
This morning, Rob was crawling back into bed for his nap, just as I was waking up around eleven. He mentioned that Pappy’s tumor was really big. I told him I realized it as well. He said we need to keep an eye on it and make another appointment with the vet to see how to proceed.
Just for reference sake, his tumor started the size of a small grape. It is now the size of a medium sized apple.
So rubbed the sleep out of my eyes, thanking the universe for 12 plus hours of much needed sleep and headed out to see Pappy who was chilling in a sunbeam on the living room carpet. He didn’t look comfortable and upon closer inspection, his tumor was bleeding. It was sort of weeping blood in a few spots on the seam of the scar where they last took the tumor off. Almost like it was just stretched to it’s limit and had no more give.
I grabbed the phone and called my vet. They were only open for another hour, but they said to bring him in as soon as possible. Thankfully, they are only a mile from my house, so I threw on yesterdays clothes, mangled my hair into a sad looking ponytail and put Paps in the car.
They took him in right away, and at this point I am a hot mess. Not just because I literally had just gotten out of bed, but because now that they had him and I could relax for a second I started my meltdown.
Long story short, they attempted to drain the tumor but the only thing coming out was more blood. So they wrapped it in soft cotton and wrapped that up very tightly with a double sticky ace type bandage.
The vet then gave me some antibiotics to prevent the skin from being infected, told me to keep it wrapped and check it on Monday to see if it had gone down or stopped bleeding.
Here comes the reality:
I asked the options going forward. She said that there were two issues. One, that we do nothing and the skin around the tumor possibly becomes ulcerated and starts to slough off, knowing it won’t grow back and then she used the U word.
The second is that we have the tumor removed for a third time, knowing that it will not stop it from coming back. Knowing that at this stage in the game and at his age, there are risks undergoing that surgery.
I asked her to bottom line it for me and she said that in all honesty, she never thought that Pappy would be here right now. Given the type of cancer that he has, she said that she never expected him to last this long and it is VERY rare for a dog TO live this long with an active grade 3 mast cell tumor. Also taking into consideration that he’s still relatively happy and eating and not throwing up or showing other signs of sickness, other than old age – she basically said that we were doing all the right things. He is still on his steroid, benadryl and pepcid. We added the Turkey Tail Mushroom about a month ago and I added some canine hepatic support from my work for his liver when his labs came back high.
While her words should be and kind of is reassuring, it doesn’t change the fact that my little man probably doesn’t have much time left. I’ve been really avoiding thinking about this. Like A LOT. The reason behind that should be obvious, but now it’s time to try and get myself prepared. I don’t want to because just typing this out has left me in wracking sobs for the last ten minutes, but I need to start mentally preparing.
It sucks out loud.
So there is the update on my baby boy. For better or for worse.

Current Mood: distressed

Pappy’s tumor has gotten quite large. What started as a little bump, slowly grew to the size of a plum and then rather rapidly to the size of a lemon. Even faster it reached the size of an avocado.

We decided to have him checked out again at that vets. We haven’t changed our minds as far as treatments go, but we wanted to get their opinion since it had gotten so large and he had been wanting to lick it lately.

They ran some blood work and the results weren’t great. His liver levels were off the charts. They were supposed to be in the 100 something range and they were at a shocking 4000 reading. I don’t understand medical mumbo jumbo, but the vet was pretty sure it has spread throughout his body.

The good news was that his heart and lungs look good. He’s still in good shape other than his arthritic butt and hind quarters – but that is just age. He still doesn’t act sick and thanks to the Prednisone, there is NO decrease in appetite. The end result is that either old age or cancer is going to get him. They don’t know which one will do it first. They told us to watch for lack of wanting to eat and rapid weight loss. They also said that we can leave the tumor alone, but if it gets bigger or starts bother him and he wants to itch it, they can do a drain on it and see if they can remove most of it. I’m not really interested in having him go under anesthesia again at his advanced age, but we’ll see. The other possibility is that it could rupture and we would need to have them do that anyway.

They also told us as a natural alternative we could look into something called Turkey Tail Mushroom. It’s supposed to help boost immune systems and has been showed to help fight cancer. We got some on Monday and started him on it. We will see how that goes.

So we are keeping him on the steroid, anti histamine and stomach pills. I have also added an all natural liver support supplement I got from work and now the Turkey Tail Mushroom.

While Pappy is doing relatively okay other than the whole cancer thing, I am not.

I have never had to deal with this sort of thing. Yes, we had to put Romie down at 16 years of age and that was the hardest decision I have EVER had to make in all of my life, but it came on suddenly. It all happened over the course of a couple of days. He just lost control of his back legs and eventually refused food and water until we had to bring him in and it was the only humane thing to do. I still hurt from that, but at least it was sudden.

The only other experience I have at losing a close loved one was when my grandparents died, and to deal with that I became bulimic. I don’t function well with grief.

I’m not good at knowing my dog is going to die soon but not knowing when. He could go on for a year and that would make me very happy, but the very real possibility is that it could happen much sooner. I am not handling the situation very well. I wake up in the middle of the night and put my hand on him just to make sure he’s still breathing.

I literally can’t even talk about this with my husband or friends because I can’t stop bawling long enough to get words out. Typing seems okay. I can cry and type at the same time. That is why I am blogging this. I need to get this out of my head.

I am not doing well. When I am not on the verge of tears, my mood can be described as salty at best. I’m lashing out at friends that don’t deserve it and inwardly seething all the time about things that shouldn’t be a big deal. Like traffic, or the fact that I can’t find a certain shirt. We’re talking FULL ON RAGE here people. I want to punch and kick and hurt things. This morning I realized I wanted to cut again. I haven’t cut in at least twenty years but this morning the urge was there just as plain as day. Cut the skin, let the blood flow, release the pain.

I didn’t and I won’t because I’ve come way to far to resort to that shit, nor will I stick my finger down my throat and throw up the feelings, but it’s a little unnerving to me that it came on like that. I just don’t know how to deal with this.

And you can tell me it’s just a fucking dog until you are blue in the face, (black and blue, because I will probably punch you if you said that to my face.) but it’s so much more than that. If you knew just one fraction of love that this dog has given me in the last ten years, you would be openly weeping right now. I know that every dog owner goes into the adoption process knowing it is only temporary. They are only with us for a little while, but the quality of that time is so amazing. If you are not an animal lover, you will never understand. This is my child.

So yeah…not doing well with this. I’m tempted to click on one of those online therapy ads I see pop up on facebook. I did a great deal of therapy in my early adult years and it did me a world of good. Maybe talking to a stranger about this would help. I don’t know.

I guess I should just be glad I realize that this is the reason I’ve been feeling so shitty, but no, that doesn’t really help.

There is no real point to this post. It’s not a cry for help. I will not cut. I will not start binging and purging. It is just a means to try and hash out these emotions and get them out of my head. I will probably write more of them as the weeks go on. Please feel free to skip over them. Life isn’t all sunshine and roses right now.

Current Mood: sad

So a while back I wrote about Pappy’s cancer. It’s not something that I like to think about, let alone write about, but it is still there.

His tumor came back for a third time quite a few months ago. I didn’t publicize it, because…well, we aren’t going to do anything about it. I didn’t want to hear from all the people that think they know better than me, that we should do chemo or radiation or at least get this third tumor removed.

I recently had a lengthy conversation with our seasonal neighbors that came back into town. They had a very similar situation with their old dog Maggie. They opted for the chemo and they regretted it. They said it made her so sick and in the end, for the minimal life it can extend for an already old dog, it’s just not worth it. I was so glad to have had that talk, because it reaffirmed all our decisions on keeping Pappy comfortable in the time he has left.

This morning I had to bring Pappy in for his annual check up. I was dreading it, because I was sure they were going to tell me what a horrible dog mother I was for letting this cancer just fester in his body instead of taking some sort of action, other than the meds he is currently on. I was wrong.

I was very pleasantly surprised when the Dr. told me that she thought we were doing the right thing. She said that at almost 14 years old, he had lived a good life span and that the other vet they had there just put his dog on chemo and he doesn’t think he would do it again. She told me his dog was sick for days after every treatment and wouldn’t eat. I *knew* those doggie cancer specialist fuckers were lying to me when they said chemo doesn’t effect dogs at all like it does humans. Bastards.

The doc said that Pappy is doing AMAZING for having had this cancer as long as he has. She was shocked when I told her that he still doesn’t exhibit any signs of being sick. Just standard old slowdown. He can’t jump up into the car anymore because of his back legs so we lift him. She agreed that was a good idea, especially since his tumor gets aggravated if he bumps it. I told her he’s kind of gotten used to us babying him. She said: “He’s got the right idea! Hell, he’s gonna be 14. He needs a butler!” Heh.

So the vet visit I was dreading turned out to make me feel very good about what we are doing. He’s not hurting. He’s not suffering. He doesn’t even know he is sick! He just has a INSATIABLE hunger from the steroid and constantly things he is starving…which is good since a decline in appetite is a bad sign in this case.

She did say that she probably won’t update his rabies and the other 3 years shot that is due in January, because they don’t want to compromise his immune system with the cancer. I said that I was fine with that. If he is still with us at that point I will be so happy I won’t care about anything else.

As I write this with tears in my eyes, he is asleep in his bed on the other side of the couch. He is my love. My sweet, sweet baby boy. I am not ready to let him go, I never will be. But I’m happy that right now, he isn’t hurting and will be with us for a bit longer.