Her Majesty, Condolences, and Dorgis(?)

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A few days after Tony died, I received a lovely card from Dr. Kroll.  It brought a few tears to my eyes, but then almost anything did.  I'm past that stage now, but I am still being reminded of him constantly.  In fact, this morning when I checked AOL, they had an item about a 93-year-old man, Stan Lee (no, not the Marvel Comics guy) whose 13-year-old Japanese Chin died of shock after falling off a bed.  I'm all sympathy in this case, not just because of Tony dying so recently, but rather because I know that if that had happened to me, I'd be wallowing in guilt over it.  However, what made the case AOL-worthy was not Lee's age; it was a condolence letter he received, from the queen (although it was penned by a lady in waiting -- it's good to be the queen). 

The Daily Mail reported (the story is at http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1239244/Queen-offers-written-condolence-pensioner-death-13-year-old-pet-dog.html#ixzz0bDNONFP9) that Lee has been in the habit of writing the queen to ask after her Corgis from time to time, which is something I would not have imagined.  And I find that I am charmed by this story.  I'm not terribly interested in the Royals, as a rule (people I meet are often surprised by this when it comes up in conversation, since I am a Brit lit scholar), but I am fascinated, in an anthropological sense, by the functions they serve in their culture.  I wouldn't have guessed that people write to them about mundane things, but I can see how they might, now that I've thought about it.  The queen's well-known fondness for her dogs humanizes her, making her more approachable and less of an icon.  There is a UK government website about the royal dogs at http://www.royal.gov.uk/TheRoyalHousehold/RoyalAnimals/Familypets.aspx

I was also surprised to learn that she has bred her corgis to dachshunds, resulting in "Dorgis." I tried to find a photo, but no luck.  However, I did learn that my assumption that she would rely on staff to care for the dogs is not quite accurate.  According to the website, "At present, The Queen owns four Corgis: Linnet, Monty, Willow and Holly and four Dorgis: Cider, Berry, Candy and Vulcan.The Queen’s corgis travel with her to the various residences, with Her Majesty looking after them herself as much as possible given her busy schedule."  I find myself consumed by curiosity about the dorgis, and I'll report on them later.

 If you're interested, there is a YouTube video of the Queen and her dogs available at http://lisawallerrogers.wordpress.com/2009/04/07/queen-elizabeths-corgis-and-dorgis/

No Miracle for Tony

I wrote most of the following on December 10, 2009, but I haven’t posted it until now because I was trying to come up with something that would cover all that I was feeling. I’m not sure that’s possible now, after trying again and again to do it.  Grief is not just an emotion; it's a process.



I’m sorry to report that Tony died on Wednesday, December 2. I haven’t been able to write about it until now, but I’m hoping that doing so will help me sort out how I feel. Despite everything that was going on with him, it was sudden, almost unexpected. On Tuesday, I took him to the vet for the follow up on his abscess. He had refused his breakfast, but other than that, he seemed perfectly normal. Dr. Kroll was amazed by how well the abscess had healed, which I was pleased to hear. I had them trim his nails, and I picked up a fresh bottle of insulin. When we got home, he still didn’t want to eat, but he took his usual late afternoon nap, waking briefly to bark with the other dogs every time one of them heard something outside.

He didn’t want his dinner, but he’d done that before from time to time, so I wasn’t too worried. When we went to bed, I couldn’t sleep until I heard his tags clink against his water bowl as he drank. He got me up about an hour later. I took him out, he did what he had to do, and then we came in. But he didn’t want to go back to bed. He went up his steps to his favorite spot on a loveseat. I sat next to him and rubbed his back. After about half an hour of that, he was willing for me to carry him back to the bedroom. I remember being surprised at how light he felt. Before he developed diabetes, he had weighed as much as 15 pounds (my brother Alex was prone to call him “Pomzilla” at the time), and he had lost 5 pounds before he went on insulin. His weight stabilized at 10.5 pounds for over two years, but he had been losing weight steadily since his bladder infection developed. He was down to 8 pounds.



The big change came in the morning. I got up to get ready for my 8AM class, but he didn’t follow me out of the room as he usually did. At 7:15, I took him outside, carrying him to the edge of the patio, since he seemed kind of out of it. Instead of taking a couple of steps off the patio and whizzing, however, he walked a few steps out and made a sharp left turn. He just kept walking, and he was headed toward the pool. The pool is covered, but it hadn’t been drained down for the winter yet, so the water was almost to the top. I went around on the concrete toward the pool, but I’ve been having a truly horrendous year arthritis-wise, and I couldn’t move very fast. I heard a splash just as I rounded a bush. Tony had walked right onto the pool cover, and the water was up to his knees. He was just standing there when I reached him. I managed to grab his collar and pulled him toward me enough to be able to pick him up. He was not reacting to anything; his eyes were open, but he just didn’t seem aware. I took him in and dried him off, setting him on the floor in the den. He lay down and appeared to go to sleep. By this time, I was pretty worried, but my mother assured me that she could watch him for the hour or so that I would be gone.



I have never prepped a class for their final exam as quickly as I did that morning, but as I was driving back home, I found myself slowing down a couple of times. I was dreading what I was going to find there. Tony had never acted that way before, not even close to that. As I came through the door (no Tony barking to greet me), my mother told me that he hadn’t moved but had vomited a bit. I checked and found only a small spot, about the size of a quarter, on the carpet. I went to call the vet.


We’ve been going to the Animal Medical Clinic of St. Charles for so long that everyone there knows Tony. When I identified myself to Nada, the receptionist, she immediately asked about Tony. I said the first thing that came to mind: “I think he’s dying.” She told me to bring him right in, they’d be waiting for me. And they were. I had had to cram Tony into his travel kennel (this normally involves a lot of activity on his part, but this time he just let me put him in), and one of the techs took it from me as soon as I got there. They left me in an examining room for a couple of minutes while they looked at him in the back area. Dr. Kroll came in from the back, and I knew from the look on her face that this was it.




In the weeks since this happened, I’ve been thinking about how different it is when a beloved pet dies as opposed to a human being. It seems that only people who have had pets accept that this is a significant loss, which is difficult to deal with, for me, at least. I just lost my best friend.

False Alarms and other stuff

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The every-other-day dose of Prednisone turned out to be a bust.  Tony immediately became constipated (probably from the combination of his low-residue diet and drinking less water), which is a problem he's had off and on for years, so I gave him a stool softener.  I didn't worry much about that, but it seemed to me that the swellings on his face were coming back up.  I called Dr. Kroll and asked if we could go back to a daily dose.  As she pointed out, normally extending that drug would be a bad idea because of the side effects of long-term use.  However, in Tony's case, long term is not an issue.  She agreed that he should go back to one a day for a couple of weeks, and then we'll switch to half a pill every day rather than skipping every other day.

An aside:  I am getting the most hilarious photos from my Zemanta feed, all apparently based on my use of the words "constipation" and "stool," including one that is of the "Bristol Stool Chart."  It is a series of photos of . . . you guessed it, with comments.  The description reads "Kyle Thompson, self made.  Stool images and text made into document in OpenOffice."  It's the "self made" that cracked me up.  No, I am not going to include the picture here.  Ick.

 So, on Thursday, he had his Prednisone and other pills, which he took eagerly (crushed and mixed into peanut butter), but he didn't want his breakfast.  I took him outside in case he just wanted to "empty his tanks" before he ate, and when he came back in I noticed there was a leaf caught in his tail.  I lifted the tail to pick off the leaf, and -- I am not exaggerating here -- I leapt back in horror.  There was an enormous (about the size of a medium-grade chicken egg; on an 8 pound dog, that's enormous) swelling just to the right of his rectum.

Well, you can imagine what I thought.  This was the end:  the swelling/mass was big enough to cause serious problems for him when he needed to empty that particular tank (it's funny that I considered using 5 other words before settling on that euphemism).  It was tender, too:  he wouldn't let me touch it, not even to clean him up.  As far as I could tell, it looked like his quality of life was about to be destroyed.  Or so it seemed to me.  I called the vet; she was scrubbing for surgery, so I made an appointment for 2PM.  I had conferences with students scheduled from 11AM to 12:15, and I decided not to cancel.  As it turned out, that was a good idea.  I had some trouble concentrating on their issues with syntax and punctuation, but it mostly kept my mind off of the possible outcome --the only one I could imagine, probably because it was the worst.  However, when we went into the examining room, she suggested that it might be a problem with his anal gland.  Apparently infections there can erupt in a hurry, which would explain how he could have such a huge swelling appear overnight.  She took him off into the mysterious depths of the clinic, for which I was grateful.  I had been steeling myself for being with him at the end, but this particular "end" was not something I needed to see.  I used the time to try to adjust to this unexpected turn of events. 

After a few minutes, I heard Tony shriek; less than 30 seconds later, Dr. Kroll appeared.  She was even more certain that it was the anal gland, but Tony was in pain and so upset that they would need to sedate him a bit before they could treat him.  I went off and left them to it.  As I was driving around, my emotions in the spin cycle, I realized that this kind of thing will probably be happening from now on.  In all my efforts to boost his immune system, I was fighting not only his cancer but also his medication:  Prednisone has a negative effect on the immune system, as do antibiotics, and Tony was now going on Clavamox again.  His system has to handle all of that plus the raging infection in his butt.  And that may not be all -- the swelling was so bad that even after it ruptured, which gave Tony a bit of relief, she couldn't tell if there was a mass that might be the lymphoma spreading.  There are nodes right there, too. 

So we have a temporary reprieve, and I'll just be thankful for however long it lasts as I apply warm compresses to his rear end 3 times a day. I am surprised daily by what I am willing to do for him.