In Memory Of...

On Saturday, my dog Abigail threw up in the morning.  Jax seemed fine, but Abby didn't want her food and then vomited.  We cleaned it up, fed them both, and Corky took them to work.  Three more times on Saturday, Corky had to clean up vomit from the back room where the dogs were.  We figured Abby had just eaten something that didn't agree with her.  Neither dog was acting particularly sick.

Saturday night when they returned home about 7:45pm, both the dogs rushed right to the water dish.  A few minutes later, we heard a gag and a splash.  Both dogs were sitting there, a huge puddle of water and bile between them.  We figured it was Abby since she had apparently been vomiting all day.  After cleaning up the vomit, we fed them dinner.  Abby scarfed hers right down but Jax didn't touch his.  He just stood there, shaking and looking at it.

Over the course of the next hour, Jax began shaking and still refused to eat.  He was laying on Corky on the couch and suddenly started vomiting violently.  We then realized it may have actually been him vomiting all day.  The first one, in the morning before work was Abby, but that was the only one either of us actually saw happen.  It could have been a coincidence.  

At 9:00pm, Corky loaded Jax up and took him to the emergency vet.  As they left, Abigail and I stood at the window, watching them go.  We did not know it was the last time we would see him alive.

At around midnight, Corky came home.  He said that the vet had done an X-Ray on Jax and had seen a blockage.  They were going to give him IV fluids and if he didn't pass it on his own by 3:00am (which wasn't likely), they would do surgery to remove it.  We went to sleep, expecting the phone to ring at around 3:00am and to be told they were doing surgery.  We groused about the potential cost of the surgery.  Corky had signed the DNR form, thinking it was just going to be a routine surgery.  Which it would have been.  They do surgery on dogs for this reason all the time.  "Garbage Gut" is what they call it.

At 3:45am Corky's phone buzzed to life on the bedside table.  He groggily answered it.  I drifted in and out of sleep, not really able to hear what the vet was saying.  Suddenly, Corky leaped out of bed and ran downstairs.  As he went, I clearly heard the vet's voice say the words, "I'm so sorry."

Abigail, who was sleeping in the bed with us, came and crawled under my blanket and nestled behind my knees.  I hugged my pillow to my chest, my heart pounding, waiting for Corky to come back.  I knew what he was going to say.

After a tense 10 minutes, Corky came back.  He was crying.

"What's wrong?" I asked, even though I already knew.

"Come downstairs," he said.

I sat up.  "You can just tell me."

His head in his hands he whispered, "Jaxxie died."

I was quiet.  I felt nothing.

"Was he alone?" I finally asked. 

"No."

As it turned out, Jax had eaten a small plastic part of a dog toy.  It had caused his intestine or bowel (I can't remember which) to twist up and cut off blood supply to the tissue.  The tissue then became necrotic.  When they gave him the IV fluids, it kind of blasted everything loose and he went into septic shock and had a seizure.  They gave him anti-seizure meds and it stopped, but then he had another.  His heart stopped and despite their efforts (going in the face of the DNR Corky signed) they could not bring him back. 

Yesterday was a blur.  We didn't sleep after that wake-up call.  We were both up all night crying.  Was it our fault?  Should we have noticed earlier that he was sick?  Was there any way we could have changed the outcome if we had noticed earlier?  Where had he gotten that piece from?  We thought we had thrown all the little pieces of it away when he got it apart.  Corky went for a run in the morning while I tended to Mara.  Then I went to a 4 hour spin/cycle training, which I largely don't remember.  We both kept randomly crying throughout the day.

Last night, we took Abigail to see Jax's body, to try and help her figure out that he isn't coming home.  Corky waited in the waiting room with Mara while Abby and I went back.

I sat in the exam room, clutching Abby's leash, my heart racing.  Could I really do this?  Could I really see my baby Jax all cold and stiff like that with a huge incision running down his middle?  Would it be like in the TV shows where they LOOK dead or would he look like he was just asleep?  Abby ran around, pulling on the leash, shaking and panting, sniffing everything.  

I stared at the crack under the door where the light from the hall was coming in.  When I saw the shadow of the vet-tech's feet, I squeezed my eyes closed.  She opened the door and saw me, and said, "He's wrapped in a blanket, it's okay.  You can open your eyes."  She was cradling a strange shaped thing wrapped up in a white, fuzzy blanket.  She carried it gently, like a baby.  This was a baby... MY baby.  (Yes, I know, Mara is my baby, but Jax was my baby too.  Different kind of baby.  Anyway.)  Gently, she laid the blanket down on the floor.

"Abigail," she called softly.  "Abigail, come and see."

Abigail wanted NOTHING to do with the strange lady carrying the strange blanket with the strange-shaped thing inside it.  She sniffed the perimeter of the room, the chairs, the table legs, the door, everything except for Jax.

The vet-tech moved the blanket just a little, and there was Jax.  He looked just as if he was sleeping.  His eyes were slightly rolled back so the whites were showing, just like they did when he slept.  I almost expected him to start snoring!  She handed me his collar and a plaster cast of his paw print.

I asked, "Can I touch him?"

"Sure," the vet-tech answered.  "He's cold, though.  And stiff."

And he was!  He didn't feel like himself.  He felt like plastic.  Like a cold plastic wall.

"Oh buddy," I said as I stroked his big blocky head.  "I'm so sorry."

I held the collar out for Abby to sniff.  After a few minutes she finally approached Jax.  She gave his face a quick sniff and then shot to the other side of the room.

"He does smell funny," I remarked.

"Well, yes... he was in the freezer."  The vet tech stroked Jax's face.

"So he has freezer burn?" I asked.

"No.  We took him out about an hour ago because we knew you were coming.  So he's ah.. well.. ah... decaying just a little."

I recoiled and immediately wished to douse myself in hand sanitizer.  Seeing the look on my face, the vet-tech said, "Don't worry!  He's not full of maggots or anything like that.  See?"  She uncovered him the rest of the way and I saw a neat incision down his middle that had been stitched up nicely.

"He does look very presentable," I conceded, staring at Jax's legs sticking straight out.

"Here is what the vet pulled out of his system," She handed me a small zip-lock bag.  In it was a small piece of plastic, like a big plastic washer about an inch and a half in diameter, and a weird blackish ball with hair sticking out of it.

"What is that?" I asked, pointing to the black thing.  "It looks like a hairball." 

"I'm not sure," she said.  "Maybe a hairball with pieces of carpet and stuff in it.  It was really the plastic thing that caused the most damage.  He might have been able to pass this other thing, but the plastic had caused the twist-up and nothing could get through."

My poor, precious dog.  How had this happened?  He went from fine to dead in the span of 7 hours!  

"Thank you," I said numbly, getting to my feet.  "These are for you," I handed her a small ceramic frenchie salt shaker sitting inside a ceramic bowl and a thank-you note.  "We know you all did everything you could.  We really appreciate it and I know it must have been hard for all of you too."

Thanking me, the vet-tech gathered up Jax in her arms and we solemnly marched out, Abby and me to the waiting room, her to the back room with Jax's body.

"How'd it go?"  Corky asked once we were in the car heading home.

"Okay...." I said.  I told him about how Abby reacted to Jax's body and how I'd seen the plastic piece and recognized it from a toy.  We both cried all the way home, feeling like it was our fault that Jax had died.  After all, we had given him the toy.  

I got home and took a scalding hot shower.  I could still smell him on me, in my hair, on my clothes.  It made me feel like I was going to throw up.  I hadn't eaten all day but I had no appetite.

Today, we are sad.  We are so, so, so sad.  Usually when we would scoop the dog's food, Jax would whine and cry, unable to wait just a second longer for his food.  This morning, when I fed Abby, the house was silent.  Jax's untouched bowl of food from Saturday night still sits on the countertop - I can't bring myself to touch it or throw it out or feed it to Abby.  His toys still lay around where he left them.  His bed is untouched.  His leash is by the door.  His paw prints are still on the sliding glass door where he would jump up and paw at the glass, begging to be let in.  His collar and tag are on the table.  His skin allergy medicines are in the cupboard.  Everything is just as it was, except he is gone.  I just cut up an apple and heard no little tap-tap-tap of his nails on the floor as he came running to beg for a bite.  I would do anything to have him whine at me, fart in my face or trip me up on the stairs just one more time.

The moral of this story is this:  You never know when it someone's last day with you.  When the sun sets, you don't know if their final day is now over, or if YOURS is.  If you love someone, human or animal, make sure they know it.  I don't mean you have to tell them constantly, but just make sure you show it to them regularly enough that they know it indefinitely.  Take some mental snapshots because you never know when it'll be the last time you see someone.  I'll never forget the sight of Corky putting Jax into the car on Saturday night.  It was the last time I saw him alive.  I was lucky because I did get to tell him, "I love you buddy," before he left.  But what if I hadn't?  What would have been the last thing I said to him?  Probably something like, "JAX! Stop! You're driving me crazy!" because oh, did he ever drive me crazy sometimes!

Love your pets.  Love your family.  Love your friends.  All the time.  Because you never know when they're going to need to know that.