I had my best friend put to sleep yesterday. Before hand, I felt sure that it was right. Now I am reeling with regret.
My 12 year old min pin got sick in May with what we thought was pancreatitis via ultrasound. She recovered for a few weeks, and then began vomiting daily on June 10. Her appetite was pickier but overall she was normal. I had another ultrasound performed which revealed an abnormal area in the stomach. The radiologist wasn’t sure what to make of it at the time, so I treated her symptomatically for 2 more weeks. Her symptoms weren’t improving and appetite was even worse, so she had yet another ultrasound where we found that her entire stomach was abnormal. They suspected gastric cancer. My options were endoscopy with biopsies (50% chance of getting a diagnosis) or exploratory surgery. The specialist did not highly recommend exploratory due to how abnormal her stomach looked - she felt that it wouldn’t heal well and she could have major complications. So we did endoscopy on Wednesday, but Rhyley just keep getting worse every day.
She hadn’t eaten much on her own over the past three weeks. At first she would eat kibble about once a day, then not at all. This is a dog that never missed a meal! I was syringe feeding her most of the time and medicating her with everything we could for her stomach. Over the last weekend, she became very lethargic. She would still have bursts of adrenaline when there was something she wanted to bark at, but the remainder of the time she was asleep. She woke up a few nights in a row unable to get comfortable. Most mornings this week she woke up nauseous (lip licking, swallowing). She was on anti nausea medications so no actual vomiting but could still tell she was nauseous. She instantly turned and tried to get away from food yesterday morning.
We were able to get her to eat a little rotisserie chicken yesterday and she drank water once. When I would pick her up, she seemed “limp” if that makes sense...like weak I guess? The past few days when I would let her out in the yard, she would just stand there for a while before going to the bathroom. And as soon as she was done out there, she would just go right back into the bedroom wanting to go to sleep.
I’m a veterinarian, so I feel terrible that I couldn’t fix her. I tried medications for 3-4 weeks and saw her progressively declining. Like I said, all the specialists I talked to highly suspected a cancerous process, and stomach cancers do not tend to respond to chemo. I wanted to wait until we got the endoscopic biopsy results back, but that wouldn’t be until Tuesday and I was so scared of how bad she would’ve been at that point. She was already dehydrated so I was trying to do IV fluids at home for her in addition to her medications and syringe feeding.
I didn’t want to wait too long, but I also worry that I did it too soon. And now I cannot take it back. If the endoscopic biopsy does not confirm cancer, I just don’t know what I’m going to do...I’m going to hate myself.
