She's Gone

Yesterday we made the decision that it was time to bring Bella's suffering to an end.  I called Dr. Wonders and described how her condition had deteriorated...not eating, difficulty getting on her feet, complete shutdown of her energy, periodic whining/yelping.  Dr. Wonders thought it was time and said he'd do whatever we needed.  We agreed to keep her one more night and barring a miracle, bring her to the Clarkesville office at 8:40 in the morning.

At 3:00AM I woke and began thinking about her.  I imagined the cancer roaring ahead on its deadly path throughout her perfectly beautiful body.  I wondered about the hellish pain she was feeling in spite of the pain meds we'd been giving her. Powerless to do anything but end her life, to give her, as the Greeks called it euthanatos or "a good death".  As I tossed and turned, drowning in the grief I felt for poor Bella, I calculated the waning number of hours she had left.  We went out to check on her and found she'd moved to my office, probably to drink from my toilet.  I knelt and kissed her head.

At 6:30 we got up and found that she'd moved again within my office.  We slid a towel under her chest to help her up and headed her towards the front door.  She refused to go down the steps, so I slid the towel under her and guided her down.  She peed and then turned for the front door.  Once inside she refused to eat and laid down in our master bedroom hallway.  I dressed for the morning and knelt beside her, stroking her and talking to her quietly.  I decided against giving her more pain med since she has less than two hours left.

The car is ready to take her to the vet.  Sherry is getting dressed now and in less than an hour Bella will take her last ride, something that she loved to do.

We are home from the vet and Bella's last visit.  The vet agreed to euthanize her in the back of my SUV to save her the stress and discomfort of having to go into the office...never one of her favorite things.  We dropped the tailgate and Bella sat up.  The morning sun was shining in her face and we spent 15 minutes with her, stroking her and saying our goodbyes. She was calm and seemed at peace.

Christy, who's doggy sat with Bella over the years came out and joined us. Dr. Wonders came out to my SUV at 8:40 AM.  He laid his hand on Sherry's shoulder and and assured us that we'd given her lots of extra time and were now doing the right thing for her.  He administered a sedative which was intended to relax her before the lethal injection was administered.  Within a few minutes I could feel her muscles relax, her head lowered, she slowly melted through my hands and eased onto her side.  It felt, for all the world, like her life force was draining away.

Once she was fully relaxed, they clipped the fur on her hind leg near an vein.  Dr. Wonders thrust the needle into her vein, backed out a small amount of blood and then gave her a deadly dose of phenobarbital.  She had no outward reaction to it.  After a minute he checked her heartbeat and told me there was a faint beat.  Shortly after that he gently touched her eyeball and there was no response.  He then rechecked her heartbeat and at 9:00AM softly said, "She's gone."  We spent another few minutes with her, I stroked her head and ears, smelled her.  I whispered my final message to her and as I fought back the tears, I told Christy that they could take her.

We'd done the last, right thing for Bella and had put an end to her suffering, snuffing out that fucking cancer in the process.  I then fell headlong into a dark and bottomless pit of grief.