Saying Good-Bye

When I got up this morning, I found that Lexie's mammary wounds had bled through her doggy bed during the night.  I can't believe she even found the strength to get up, go down the front steps, and walk into the yard to pee, but she did.  She did it for me.  She fought so hard for me for so long, but she collapsed on the sidewalk before she could make it back into the house, and I knew at that moment that I wasn't going to make Lexie fight any longer. 

Justin sat with her and said his good-byes while I got ready to take her to Dr. Ellis.  Then, before I left, we held each other and cried as I thanked Justin for taking such good care of my Lou.  I told him how much she loved him.  It broke my heart to see him crying so hard for her, and for me, but it also made me realize just how lucky I and my girls are to have him in our lives. 

Unfortunately, Dr. Ellis wasn't at Animal Care Clinic today, so they sent us to Dr. Mark Ayers' office.  All of the staff and Dr. Ayers were so kind to me and Lou.  I'm glad that she was surrounded by so many kind, happy voices in her final hour.  I'm also so glad that I decided to stay and be with her while she was euthanized.  I put my forehead against hers and held her face in my hands as I thanked her for loving me and told her what a good girl she was.  She was peaceful, and I also felt at peace as I finally let her go.  I made her promise to find me again someday, though.  I have a feeling she will. 

Oh, Moomie.  I'm going to miss you so very, very much.  You'll always be my little turd, and I'll love you until my last breath.  Thank you for making me so happy for so many years. 

What I Haven't Told You...

I wanted to take a moment to address something that I’ve been hearing a lot during the last month or so.  While I have greatly appreciated all the kind comments and praises that I’ve received for going to such great lengths to save Lexie’s vision, and eventually her life, I feel that if everyone knew exactly what Lexie, Jocie, Sam and I have been through together, they wouldn’t think that I was just being a good pet owner, they’d understand that there simply was no other option when it came to saving my Lou.  Therefore, for the sake of painting a more complete picture, I have decided to share an important part of our past.  (I haven’t shared this story before now because, well, it’s kind of a downer, and I also didn’t want people to think that I was just pulling out all the stops to gain sympathy, especially when I had to ask for donations a few weeks ago). 

My girls and I experienced a horrible tragedy in August of 2009, when my husband of 7 years, Chris (whom I had been with for 14 years), chose to take his own life.   He made this decision after a long struggle with alcoholism and failing physical and mental health (pancreatitis and possibly early schizophrenia, although he was never officially diagnosed).  Chris and I had always planned to have children someday, but until we felt the time was right, Jocie, Sam, and Lexie were our children. (It was actually Chris who insisted that we adopt Lexie, despite my reservations about owning three dogs at the time, because he wanted to have a least one dog he was confident would protect me whenever he was away.)  

It’s impossible for me to give a Cliff’s Notes version about everything that happened leading up to Chris’ suicide because it was (to put it very mildly) a giant, complicated, five-year-long mess.   The bottom line is that his gradual, almost unnoticeable at first, downward spiral of mental illness took a sudden plunge in the last few months before his death.  At one point, after we had eventually separated, he had uncharacteristically threatened to shoot me, shoot the dogs, and then shoot himself.  For this reason, when he showed up at my house on that warm, summer night almost three years ago, I initially struggled when he tried to push his way through the front door because my first instinct was to protect the girls.  However, when the towel he was carrying fell to the ground and revealed that he was holding a gun, I knew I just had to get away from him as quickly as possible.  To this day, I still wonder if he had actually come to the house that night with the intention of shooting me and the girls, as well as himself.  I guess I’ll never know, but I will be forever thankful that he let me go and allowed all three of our girls run out of the house before he took his own life in the living room.

Needless to say, it was an extremely traumatic experience for all of us.  Jocie became reclusive, Sam lost almost all the fur off her back, and Lexie wouldn’t let me out of her sight for the month or so that we stayed at my Dad’s afterwards.  Finally, after I was unable to find a new place to live that would allow me to keep all three dogs, I made the very difficult decision to move back into my house.  I wasn’t sure if I would be able to survive in that house, which was so full of wonderful, horrible, and now tragic memories, but the night we moved back in I knew I had made the right decision for my girls, as I hadn’t seen them so relaxed or happy in a very long time.   

Jocie, Sam, and Lexie all comforted me with their unconditional love during that very difficult grieving period, but it was Lexie who actually motivated me to keep moving forward.   It was hard for me to stay sad or depressed for too long when inevitably Lou would bring me one of her stuffed animals and try to entice me off the couch for a game of chase.  It was also hard to feel lonely when Lexie would always insist on laying her head in my lap every time I watched TV, talked on the phone, worked on my laptop, etc.  She even helped me run the household, so to speak, by making sure that I and her sisters stuck to a strict feeding and bathroom schedule (her internal clock is pretty impressive).   In fact, watching all three of my girls fall so easily back into their daily routines and carry on with their lives, thanks to Miss Lexie always cracking the proverbial whip, greatly inspired me to pick up the pieces of my own life and move on.

The bottom line is that Lexie is the one who deserves all the praise for saving me.  She helped me survive when I needed her most, and so I will never do anything less than the same for her.

The Morning of Surgery

I just dropped Lexie off at the vet for her bilateral enucleation surgery.  I’m such a bundle of mixed emotions right now.  I’m crying, of course, because my Lou is never going to be able to look at me again.  She’ll never greet me at the door with one of her stuffed animals in her mouth, enticing me to chase her around the living room and dining room ever again.   (My favorite part of that game, by the way, was when I’d be chasing her around through the dining room, kitchen, and living room, but then I’d stop and quietly reverse directions.  She’d sense that I stopped chasing her, so she’d get really quiet and sneaky, too, and try to find me.  Then, it became a game of “who can sneak up on whom first” before resuming the game of chase.)  I’m going to miss watching her look out our living room window and getting that “stranger danger” face if a passer-by happened to linger in front of our house a little too long.  I’m going to miss the way she’d always be the first of my girls to come back inside after being let out, just so she could sit in the doorway with me and watchfully wait for Sam and Jocie to come back inside.  If they took too long, she’d go back out into the yard and bark until they came in.

These are the things I am grieving, which I don’t think people think about when they tell me (repeatedly) that, “She’s going to be fine.  Dogs adjust SO well to being blind.”  While I understand that Lexie is going to be okay and adjust to being blind, there’s a part of her that is now gone forever, and I’m heartbroken over that.  I do appreciate it when people try to cheer me up and help me look on the bright side of this situation, but I need to be allowed to be sad and upset about it for a while, too.  Trust me, I can find the bright side to just about anything because I don’t see the point in wallowing in sadness or self-pity for very long.  However, it takes a good dose of crying and, yes, even a little bit of the aforementioned wallowing for me to get it all out of my system and get to that place where I simply don’t WANT to be sad anymore.  I’m not there yet, but I'm getting there.

I took a couple photos of Lou this morning to always remind me that I made the right decision in regard to her bilateral enucleation.  Just look at the side-by-side comparison above.   I took the photo on the left the day I decided I didn’t want to have her left eye removed because it looked practically normal compared to her right eye.  The photo on the right was taken this morning, just four days later.

On a more upbeat note, I will say that I wasn’t AS emotional as I thought I’d be when I left her at the Animal Care Clinic this morning.  I did give each of her eyes a little kiss good-bye, but because I know her eyes are causing her pain, in a small, weird way I’m actually kind of happy for Lou this morning.  I am just so anxious for her feel better.  I’m also looking forward to watching her adjust and learn new things, including new games that we can play together once she’s all healed.   Yeah, I’d say that I’m to the point right now where I just want all of this pain to end (hers AND mine) so we can start moving on.  In the meantime, this is going to be a looooooong day...