I'm in exactly the same boat with my golden retriever. She'll be 14 in January, and a few months ago she was so sick, that we took her to the vet with the understanding that "today might be the day", but we were advised to "give her the weekend" and she got better.
She has mobility issues, and acts somewhat strangely (compared to how she used to).
It's tricky, because I don't want to hold onto her for my own sake, but I also don't want to put her down for my sake, either. She still seems pretty happy, but then, she's a golden retriever. They're generally happy by nature!
I guess that might be the point where we pull the plug. If she ever truly struggles to get up, or if she doesn't seem happy anymore. It's my best guess, anyway.
Something with an old cat I had was that we kept him around for far too long. His last few months/weeks were just a painful life for him.
Sometimes it is better to let them have a peaceful death by putting them to sleep then to let them suffer for your sake.
They die happier than they do when they are in constant pain.
If there is no hope in the pet getting better and only a downward spiral, I'd say brace oneself for the day and time it so that they don't have to suffer, but let them go gracefully into the night for their sake, even if you will feel the pain all the more.
We had to put our 14 year old dog to sleep yesterday, we decided this last Friday after having some serious doubts a week earlier, things got worse, not better. This was not shocking news, our dog was old, he had many ailments that started to seriously stack. I'm not the main caregiver for the dog, that's my mother, who's 78. I couldn't step in because he would get seriously distressed when he lost sight of her for more then a minute or two, and sight was these days maybe 60cm (2 feet). I was getting seriously worried about my mothers health due to the extended care needed for the family dog (lack of sleep + stress + depression).
The three days before it actually happens, but when you've actually decided on a course, it's hard, very hard! There are always doubts, especially at first. Did you do the right thing? What was really worrying was that the dog was getting worse quickly in those three days. I even worried that he might not make the weekend...
After it's done, there's a certain level of relief that IT has happened. There is a strong feeling of loss and sadness, as a part of the family is gone. And at certain times when your guard is low and you're tired you forget he's gone and you think "Need to cuddle the dog." or "We're doing this, how are we handling the dog.".
The past five decades we've had dogs, cats, rabbits, hamsters, etc. This was the first time that it was this unclear for us, in previous cases it was either sudden serious illnesses, or complications from those where it was obvious what decision to make. Here it was very long not that clear cut, but I think that if we didn't make the decision last Friday we would have certainly have made it yesterday.
Gone, but not forgotten.
@Umbran The not knowing is probably the worst, I hope you can get some earlier results/consult then in two weeks.
I lost Jax back in August, Im at the point now that I dont think about him constantly until I open the photos on my phone. Then, it all comes rushing back.
We have a telehealth consult with an oncologist later this week, which might move us forward more quickly.
Also, prednisone is magic. The cat had been hiding in a comfy warm cubby upstairs since we'd gotten back from the clinic on Saturday.
An hour and a half after her first dose of prednisone, she was back snuggling with us on the couch purring her little head off.
She had shown some improvement in eating with anti-nausea and appetite stimulant meds. Hopefully with those and the steroid, she might get up to normal intake levels.
On a related topic, one thing I will always remember that came from a vet. When the time comes to say goodbye, a lot of people won't go to the back room because they can't or won't handle seeing their pet put to sleep. But that last moment, alone with the vet, is scary for the pet. The vet said often the pets will look around looking for their family (cuz in most cases, the vet is stressful already for the animal). So if you can, stay with your pet so the last thing they see and feel is your comfort, even if it's hard for you.
Good luck with the steroid. My wife's and my first cat developed a tumor and that was preventing him from eating well so he was losing weight. But it only helped for a couple of months. He was 18+ (originally a stray) and would have had a lot of trouble surviving anything more aggressive so we took Moxie to the vet and let him go. I hope your cat's younger age helps her resilience as long as she can manage.
Pets and their health can be so challenging because getting and interpreting feedback from them about what's ailing them, how they feel, and how treatments are working is hard.
Back in May Jax was getting shots for his bad hip. It really gave him some quality of life for his last several months.
Several years ago he tore an acl in his hind leg. He was less mobile despite recovering well. After he started getting the shots he was jumping up on the couch again! He even sat while begging for bbq ribs (which who can blame him?) He hadn’t sat in years before this last summer.
Thanks, all, for your thoughts. Several of you have shared your own stories, and be sure, at this moment, I can sympathize and empathize with all of you.
I'll likely to use this thread to jot down some bits over this time. Nobody's obligated to check in - I'll be doing it mostly for myself.
Nothing morbid about it. Grief is complicated.
My wife has to handle folks asking that question every day. If the owner waits until is is blatantly clear that it is time, that means maybe they waited too long. But if it isn't blatantly clear, they're left with the question if they did it too early. There's no way to know if you hit perfection.
But it is part of the responsibility we take on when we get pets. They can't manage their discomfort on their own, and they need us to help. All we can do is the best we can for them. The hard part is doing what it best for them, and not what feels best for us.
Psychologically, they can take on places in our emotions just like family members. And part of the problem of love is that it means you can, and occasionally will, feel loss as well.
Yeah. We are trying our best to make sure she gets some more of those. Today, one of my jobs is to hunt down a few things for the house that should help her enjoy her favorite things and places a bit more - like a set of stairs to make it easy for her to get to to one of her favorite snoozing spots.
Yep. To quote Spider Robinson's book, Callahan's Crosstime Saloon: "Shared pain is lessened, shared joy increased." The act of laying things out can help one process.
The biopsy came back, and she doesn't have "the good kind" of cancer. To summarize: with basic palliative measures, she's probably got one to three months. With chemotherapy, it is like one to ten months.
The first step, though, are basic palliative meds - anti-nausea and appetite stimulants. This all will be over quickly if we can't get her to eat. I've been tracking food intake over the past few days, and yesterday, there was a slight uptick, but still not enough to sustain quality of life.
Next will be steroids. The compounding pharmacy that can make what we need was closed for the weekend, but I should hopefully be able to pick them up today. We are going with transdermal formulations of everything we can. Cats typically hate oral meds, because they all taste sooo bad. And poking her with that many needles would be traumatic. But transdermal meds are absorbed through the skin - so you can just wipe them like, inside her ear. She actually seems to like the contact, so that's a win. Steroids can slow the advance of cancer a bit, and help her feel better in many ways - while they may interfere with some forms of chemotherapy, without them, she may not make it until we can get her into the next possible step.
Then, as soon as we can finagle a consult with an oncologist, we will discuss chemotherapy. Chemo for animals isn't like it is for humans, because the goals are typically different. In humans the goal is generally to blow the cancer back into remission, and we are terribly aggressive in pursuit of it, and poison the patient to just short of dying, hoping that they are tougher than the cancer. In animals, the goal is improving quality of life, and we don't count misery of chemo as much different from misery of cancer. So, we won't poison her until her hair falls out, or the like.
But chemo may force us into some hard choices. Many of those are chemicals you can't administer at home, even if you are my wife. So, we may have to weigh how often she has to go to clinics (which is a miserable experience) against how much time we can buy her.
Let's talk support structures.
I have the great benefit that my workplace allows us to take sick days not just when we are sick, but to support others - if someone has to spend a day running around getting meds and going to doctors, that's okay.
The people around us have been wonderful. We were at some hazard of basically sitting at home staring at the walls wallowing in the situation. But one pair of friends came by Saturday night to have pizza and watch Babylon 5 ("Sic Transit Vir" and "Late Delivery from Avalon", two great episodes, just happened to be up next). Another couple came by Sunday for a cooperative board game (Legends of Sleepy Hollow). So, in both cases, we got a chance to not over-focus, which is actually better for processing the whole thing.
Our next door neighbor, as part of her weekly grocery shopping, also put together supper plates for us, so last night we didn't have to cook.
We have plans to have people over for various RPGs on Tuesday and Thursday. Grief has a tendency to make folks fold in, but we're doing what we can to stay engaged with the world.
And then a bit on grief.
I find I am a mixture of very sad and kind of angry, which isn't surprising. The sadness just kind of sits there whenever I'm not really engaged with something else - which is also not surprising. Sadness and grief has physiological elements to them, much like depression, so they kind of carry with you all day, regardless of what you are doing. Some forms of distraction can help alleviate that for a while, which is why social contact while processing such things is important.
Normally, I'm pretty solid in equanimity. If someone in my family needs something, I get it done. There are moments that are really hard, though, when nobody really needs anything. Like yesterday, I went grocery shopping, and I stopped in the pet aisle to pick up some cat treats, because, well anything that will get some calories into her is probably a good thing right now. And I'm standing there, holding these stupid bags of treats, feeling hopeless, and trying like heck to not cry in public. Not that I actually care what random people in the market think - if they want to think weird stuff about a big middle-aged Viking looking dude crying over cat food, that's their issue. But having folks I don't know try to engage in that moment would have not helped me in the slightest.
