Category: grief journal

just more of the same

My dog is suffering.

I am suffering.

I know that there are people who think I’m exaggerating.  I’m not immune to the natural human tendency to wax hyperbolic, so I get it.  I haven’t written extensively about what’s going on with Kennedy.  Kennedy has a condition called Geriatric Onset Laryngeal Paralysis Polyneuropathy [GOLPP] which means that he has some degenerative laryngeal and esophageal changes and is experiencing neurological deficits in his hind limbs.  So, basically…he coughs and hacks and sounds like he’s dying if he pants too much (or sometimes for no apparent reason at all) and he’s gone all wibbly-wobbly in the back end over time.  This isn’t the worst thing he’s dealing with, but you need to know about this to understand some of the next part.

Kennedy has always been a fairly anxious dog.  If the Embark test is to be believed, he’s got Siberian Husky and Australian Shepherd in him, so…that makes sense.  As he got older, he became more sensitive to aural stimuli — thunderstorms, fireworks, whistles, etc.  For the past few years, though, he’s been suffering from a steadily worsening case of Canine Cognitive Dysfunction.  He’ll be sleeping soundly and then startle awake without any apparent trigger.  He occasionally thinks the floor is made of lava and starts walking very gingerly like he’s afraid to put his feet down.  He will randomly (like now) have dog panic attacks where he pants and trembles inconsolably for an indeterminate length of time.  I brought him into work the other night to have his nails trimmed under sedation and someone dear to me remarked that I must be exaggerating about how nutty he is at home because he was pretty much dead asleep before we gave him the sleepytime drugs. The person was making a harmless joke and did not mean it in a bad way. I just… [gestures vaguely]

I have taken videos of the behaviors he exhibits to prepare for a consultation with a behaviorist, but I never keep them on my phone for long because it genuinely upsets me to scroll through and see them.  Today he got all his drugs on time.  Matthew and I were home all day.  Nothing happened to set him off.  At midnight, he woke me up panting and tap dancing around the bedroom, so I gave him his, “Okay, I guess it’s going to be this kind of day,” sedative, strapped his Thundershirt on, turned on the fan for him, and tried in vain to fall asleep. Sometimes my going through the, “Nighttime is sleeping time,” motions will convince him to settle down.

He has kept me awake for the past seven hours.

Somewhere around 2:00 or 3:00 a.m., I caught him standing in the corner of the bathroom next to the sink, staring at the wall, panting and freaking himself out. This is a new behavior. The standing in corners or up next to walls has become gradually more common, but the bathroom is a new, weird place for him to be doing it.

The thing is, if he gets too many drugs, he can’t walk because of the mobility issues due to GOLPP, and he’ll slip or stumble going down the stairs or have trouble standing or walking.  If he doesn’t get enough drugs — and sometimes even if he does get enough drugs, like today — he does this, which, also because of the issues with GOLPP, makes me worried that he’s going to pant-cough-hack-choke himself to death.  I tried to lock him out of the computer room so I could try to calm down and sleep in here because I know my own anxiety affects him negatively and I just, I haven’t slept for the past three days, and I was in the hospital last week, and I start a new job tomorrow, and I don’t have the spoons to deal with basically anything.  I know.  Excuses, excuses.  But if I lock him out, he wants to be in.  If he’s in, he wants to be out.  If I leave the door open, he just drifts in and out of the room and marches up and down the stairs panting.  If I let him out in the yard, he wants to be back inside.  Sometimes on special occasions, he will try to eat the house, like…we had a magnetic screen door for a while that he ripped off because he wasn’t let in fast enough. And, I mean, this is an indoor only dog who is only ever out in the yard to relieve himself or dig holes.  There are tooth marks in the glass sliding door, in the door to the computer room, and in the front door and surrounding windows.

Tonight, while he was freaking out, I told him, “You can’t live like this.  You can’t possibly want to live like this.”  My husband and I have been discussing his quality of life for the past few years, but it’s just hard.  When he comes back to himself and remembers who he is and where he is and that we love him and will always protect him, I think, “Okay, there’s still time.  I still have time.  I can maybe still fix this.”  And then there are nights like this, when I’m like, “Okay, maybe this is the time he isn’t ever coming back,” and I feel like I have failed in a way that can never be forgiven or vindicated.  What was the point of working so hard at learning how to heal the sick and wounded if I can’t help him?  What was the point of the past fifteen years in the veterinary field?  Every time he has a really bad night like this one, I wonder what I’m doing wrong.  I know logically that this is a degenerative process that I can’t stop or beat.  I have no control over this. I know. I just…I’m grieving, I guess.

dear kennedy

Venting. My dog’s neuroses make me sad.

I know some of your demons:
the trill of a pea-whistle,
the shriek of the fire alarm,
the gnawing growl of thunder and cymbal crash of lightning —

I know that you love your ears rubbed
hate your paws touched
only think toys are worth having if they make noise.

You rub your face all over the carpet after you eat,
prance like an Olympic gymnast during a floor routine,
love the beach but hate the ocean.
You’ve met a giraffe up close and sea lions from afar.

You love me best.

You are breaking my heart.

Don’t you know?

If I could, I would rid the world of whistles
I would swallow every stormcloud
I would strip from you every encroaching sign of weakness
so that you never had to feel afraid —

because I can’t see these demons
I don’t know what they look like
what they sound like
what they’re made of —

(am I one of them?)

I don’t know how to fight them or how to fix this.

I can’t look at you when you’re like this.
I can’t let you see me when I’m like this.

I know when you dig at the wall or the floor or my bed or my body
what you’re saying is

— hidemeholdmehelpme! —

I know the worries get too big for your body
and you tremble beneath their weight —

I know everything about you except how to help you.

little julep

“She’s so widdle!” I used to squeal, cradling your huddled body in my cupped hands, bowing my head to breathe you in.  You slept so deeply I had to double check to make sure you were still breathing.  Sometimes I’d slide my hands under you while you slumbered, taking my time; I’d lift you without waking you and shove you in Matty’s face, forcing him to marvel at how fragile and precious and perfect and absolutely tiny you were.  I always called you tiny, even when you grew so plump you got stuck on the lip of your kennel when you tried to clamber out of it.  Your stomach grew before your legs did.  I’d offer you my hands, palms up, and you’d step into them and climb up my arm to shove yourself in the crook of my neck.

When I couldn’t find you, I panicked.  If you weren’t in your kennel at work, it was safe for me to assume that someone was holding you — you brought joy to everyone around you, and nobody could resist holding you or taking pictures of you — but I searched for you anyway, trying to be subtle.  I worried constantly about losing you — in the living room, under the chair, in the couch, tucked behind the trash can or bookcase; in the bedsheets, in your kennel, between the pillows — because you were so small and your world was so big.

I broke all of my rules for you.  “Don’t give the kitten a name you’d want to use for your own pet someday; don’t post pictures of the kitten online until she makes it past the bottle-feeding stage; don’t call her yours because she isn’t, not really, and it’ll make it harder on you later when you have to give her up.”  I was reckless and willful.  I couldn’t bear to think about adopting you out to someone who I didn’t know personally.  I couldn’t bear to think about adopting you out, period.  I knew I was ready to go to war for you.  I prepared arguments and retorts in my head before they ever needed to be spoken; at the top of the list was, “She’s too little!”  Too little for vaccinations or flea medication; too little to be spayed; too little to eat solid food adeptly.

And when I held you for the last time, I remember thinking, “God, she’s so little.”  You were featherlight and infinitesimal, and when I placed you finally in the tender embrace of people I love and trust, I remember feeling the weight of my own hands as they fell empty to my sides and realizing that this emptiness is a blooming exit wound that goes on forever and the ache is wider than my outstretched arms.