Beginnings and Endings and Lifetimes in between

Today I had to go and have my Mum's little dog put to sleep. Mum is still away and I collected Isabella from the kennels on Saturday. She'd been there since the 26th of December.

When we collected her, she was quiet and seemed miserable and the kennels-man said she hadn't eaten that day and was emotionally flat.

She sure was, and by Sunday afternoon she still hadn't eaten and she'd started throwing up water if she drank.

We took her to the Animal Emergency Centre and they put her on a drip and ran some bloods and urine to see what was going on. On Monday, they said she'd had an attack of pancreatitis and would probably get better. The pancreatitis came on due to the diet change - home to kennels. At home she had been on a low fat diet kibble and had lost the required amount of weight (Christmas '07 she was overweight). So Mum and I thought it would be ok for her to eat regular food while at the kennels. Instead all the extra fat caused her pancreas to go into meltdown.

Then when I called for an update late on Monday night, the vet said that Isabella had developed a heart arrhythmia and they were doing an ECG. The arrhythmia wasn't causing any clinical symptoms (fainting, shortness of breath) so they weren't too worried. But when I called this morning the vet said they had found a large firm mass in her lower abdomen. They didn't think it was a blockage, nor related to the pancreatitis but rather a cancer that Isabella had kept hidden by having a very tense abdomen. Since Sunday she had been on heavy duty pain medication and this had allowed her to relax her abdomen and for the vets to feel the lump. At that point we decided that Isabella should be euthanized.

Arrgghhhhhhhhhh.

How awful it is to lose this beautiful doggit.

My Mum is presently in Kempsey (halfway between Brisbane and Sydney). She's there because she didn't want to go too far from Brisbane in case my grandfather took a turn for the worse.

Because, as the fates would have it, my beloved Gramps, the father of my heart, has terminal renal cancer and is in palliative care at the moment. Usually my Granny and Gramps live in Sydney and spend a month in Brisbane over Christmas with family. Last October Mum and I had decided to go up the Brisbane and spend some time with them over/after Christmas and then a week before Christmas my Gramps was diagnosed.

So my Gramps is very ill, in quite a lot of pain and they have stayed in Brisbane to stabilise him. Granny wants to go back home to Sydney with him and Mum left Brisbane a couple of days ago and is staying with her oldest and dearest friend while life plays out.

It is so terribly unfair for the dog to have died in this time. My Mum and I have suffered so much loss through our lives, I want to scream at the heavens for it all to stop. Now we have the grief of Isabella's loss to contend with while we try to deal with Gramps's illness.

I'm delighted with Beginnings, I love Lifetimes but Endings suck.

RIP Isabella Rockafeller - you were the best dog a person could wish to share life with. I love you and I will miss you terribly.