End of Life Stuff...

What a depressing heading so early in this blog... But today I travel to Burley to have a get-together with my 5 siblings. My sister Elaine is dying of lung cancer. We haven't all been together since our mom died in October of 2004. So I think it possible that we won't be together again before this disease takes her...

I also had a very long night nursing the family pet. We've been careful not to let Spiche run around too much. She's confined to the house and the back yard. As Kryn observed, she's the "only animal on the planet that doesn't learn 'cause and effect.'" According to X-rays taken earlier this year, her hip sockets are no more - just bone on bone. In spite of costly medications, she is too lame some days to make it up just a step or two. I've started lifting her hind quarters to help her get her legs under her, but it's still hard for her to maneuver stairs, and even on level ground, she often drags herself to move even short distances. At other times of the day, she moves pretty normally.

Last night I told her it was time to go to bed. She seemed especially stiff and I couldn't bear to watch her struggle, so I got myself ready for bed and then came back to the family room to see what progress she'd made. Not much. I lifted her back end and finally she hobbled to the top of the stairs. She looked at me so mournfully...but I can't lift Spiche's whole body. So again I left her for a few minutes so she could figure things out the best she could. I knew from the thud, that the last 2-3 steps had not been pretty. I sat on the bottom step and had a conversation with her.

She's been having a LOT of accidents in the house. I told her we needed to go out to go potty. Let's go out the front door. I opened the door, and she just looked at me... I asked her if she could make it to the basement. I lifted her back end again... but she just flopped back down. We both had tears, I believe.

I brought her pillow up to the landing and told her it was okay to sleep there...really it was! When I've tried this before (in the upstairs family room), she heads to the basement as soon as I turn out the lights. So last night I left the light on in the basement hallway. And I barricaded the steps going UP with two folding chairs (again so we wouldn't have more accidents on the carpet upstairs during the night). By now it was nearly 1:00 a.m. I went to bed and heard her whimper. About 10 minutes later, the folding chairs crashed... I finally coaxed her outside to do "her business." And then she hobbled back inside. I took her pillow back down to "her room."

She finally made it downstairs and even got on her pillow. (A couple of weeks ago, after a pretty vigorous day, she took another agonizingly long time to get down the stairs. The next morning, I found that only her head had made it to her pillow. She was still there when I went down to open the door).

For all my tough talk about "The Dog," I can't imagine making the decision that "this is the day" that she'll be helped to go to sleep for the last time. But I really feel that that day is coming sooner than we might have guessed. And I hope we ALL can accept it and to let it happen without making this faithful friend hurt too much and too long...

Well, I'm going to go blow my nose and "fix" my face...

I need to pack and get ready to go to Dal and Jane's. They live in American Fork now. I'll ride with them to Burley.

Maybe I'll come back and leave a cheerier note before I leave.