Just One Week 1.3
Hi my friends! It’s been 4 weeks since we started this and I, unfortunately, have very little good news. I can say, all around, that September was most likely the most awful month of my life. I know sometimes a day or week or period can seem particularly rough, but I’m honestly surprised I made it out alive.
So what’s been going on?
After the passing of my senior dog, Daisy, on September 6, Steeler and I had a rough patch for a little while that seemed to be getting better as of my last post. Fast forward to today, and I’m honestly even more surprised he’s still alive. Following Daisy’s death, I took him in to see his vet to get a full workup. His blood tests came back in perfect order and the lump on his side turned out to be a lipoma, a fatty tissue build up that poses no threat. Yay!! We talked about his mental health and she called in a prescription for Prozac. As I’ve never been on antidepressants myself, I made the mistake of trusting her and did absolutely no research on my own. She said it would take three weeks to start working and so I believed his temperament would coast along until then. I SHOULD HAVE ASKED, but I didn’t. What are the side effects to a drug like this? Reduced appetite. Lack of energy. Tremors.
Two weeks later, my dog can’t even get out of bed. He went from such severe separation anxiety where he would stand by the door and howl for hours to being so comatose that he doesn’t even realize I’ve left the house. I try to wake him up and he looks at me, eyes so heavy he’s physically straining to respond. He refuses to eat. Bacon, peanut butter, sausage. He looks obviously thinner and as of last night, his ribs were visible. Of course I try to force feed him, and push his pills down his throat, but this is doing nothing for the trust I’ve been working so hard to secure with him. And then there’s the shaking, this uncontrollable trembling that overcomes his whole body to the point that he can’t stand up. He’s wasting away before my very eyes.
Up to this point, I was sure it was just depression. That he was succumbing to the loss and giving up. But now I know that it was, in fact, the pills I’ve been giving him that are actually killing him slowly. So, maybe he would have weathered her death and bounced back had I not medicated him. Perhaps he would have adjusted if I’d only given him time. Instead I made the situation astronomically worse and now I don’t know if he’s going to make it out the other side, if the side effects don’t kill him before the heartache does. If they’d told me to choose between a visibly grieving dog or this dog that is just lying there wasting away, I would have happily left him drug free.
I’ve been reflecting on loss a lot lately. The times, the missed opportunities, the chances never taken, the lives we could have had but didn’t out of laziness, fear, self loathing, doubt, guilt. In the midst of ending a decade long friendship and losing a beloved pet, another friend recently lost her husband. Tragically, out of the blue, her entire life was changed. Everything she’d know for over twenty years was snatched away from her, and now she has to find a way to salvage what she has left and move on. Broken, alone, with the weight of the world and her family on her shoulders, it’s a daunting prospect. I watched her in her most vulnerable time of grief and the image has been with me the last week, and may stay with me for the rest of my life.
This time we have is short. The relationships we have are precious. Those times have to be treasured. In the wake of all these feelings and emotions, I’ve decided to step down from my corporate job, my salary, benefits, and the only stability I know. Was that smart? I doubt it. Will I regret it? Probably so. But if I didn’t, I’d always wonder if there wasn’t another path I should’ve taken, more late walks with my old dog, more laughs with dear friends, more hugs from someone who might be gone in the blink of an eye.
We are currently working on a fundraising opportunity for my friend and her three children. If you’d like to help or donate, please contact me directly here.