personal political

anniversary

Today's the one-year anniversary of Harry's death. It's a relatively easy date to keep tabs on, the day after Valentine's Day (which we completely ignore, except that you can't completely ignore it as it's all over the media.)

Just before Christmas, which was the anniversary of Harry's diagnosis with lymphoma, memories came flooding back, painful memories of that time. But now, thinking of his actual death, it seems a very long time ago and I can think about it with almost-equanimity.

I didn't write the death story here at the time, so perhaps I will give a brief outline now, as I think about it again.

The evening before, he'd managed to walk to a nearby park, though he seemed shaky on his feet, having hardly been able to keep anything down for the past few days.

That morning, he hardly stirred when we got up. I was busy getting Olle ready for school and was supposed to go to university later.

When I arrived home from the school, I found Harry lying on the big armchair. He looked at me but didn't raise his head or even wag his tail. I went upstairs and found a trail of diarrhoea. I instantly knew that he was deathly ill - that he'd got to the point of expelling everything from his bowels. I called co-parent and then the vet. He said he could come at 4pm - a good time as it would mean Olle would be home from school.

I decided not to go to university - I wouldn't have been able to. I spent the day at home, pottering. I carried Harry in to lie in his basket near my desk. He was very still, though his eyes would follow me. At one point I took him into our front garden - strangely, he began scratching in the dirt and pushing it with his muzzle.

Co-parent dropped in, taking a break from work. We discussed what to do about Olle and the euthanasia. We weren't sure what would be best. Ken, a close friend and Olle's godfather, rang. Unusually, he was not working that day. He said he'd be able to come by and that afterwards we could bury Harry in his large grassy garden (our own patio garden is too small).

At 3pm I went to collect Olle from school. As we started the walk home, I told him that the vet would soon be coming to put Harry to sleep as he was very sick. Olle immediately stopped in his tracks and wanted to go back to find his best friend to share that news - not in a childishly excited way, but in an 'I need to talk to my friend' way. His friend had already left, so I said he could ring him later. As we walked, Olle asked if Harry was going to die. I told him that yes, Harry wouldn't be able to breathe any more - his heart would stop and he would be dead.

When we got home, I began to feel very upset about the impending event. Co-parent and Ken arrived and took photos of me with Harry. That was a strange thing to do, in one way, though I'm glad we have them. I find looking at them now difficult, not because of Harry (he just looks like he's lying on my lap, as usual) but because my face is so anguished.

I had the impulse to do some of the things I did with Harry on a daily basis, like walk down the street to the nearest tree. So I took him there - but he was very weak. I saw the vet's car and felt bad that I was making Harry do something to satisfy an emotional impulse of mine just minutes before his death. So I carried him inside again.

When the vet (and the nurse) came in, we immediately asked him what would be best for Olle. He has children of the same age and  not long beforehand had had to euthanise his own dog who had cancer. He was unhesitating in recommending that Olle not be in the same room - the animal often takes a loud gasping breath a minute or so after the injection, which could be scary. We had already discussed what to do with Olle and he'd been unsure what he wanted, but when we announced that he was to go into the kitchen with Ken, he was glad to go, after saying goodbye to Harry.

I described how Harry had been that day - hardly moving, scratching in the dirt. "He's in pain", said the vet. Pain?! For some bizarre reason that hadn't crossed my mind, maybe because staffies (originally bred as fighting dogs) have a very high pain threshold. The realisation hit that for bright irrepressible Harry to be so completely unresponsive to attention indicated that he was in terrible pain. I felt really terrible about that (and still do, a year later).

The procedure takes only a few seconds - some fur shaved off his front leg, then the injection. He was instantly dead. Then came the snoring breath, which made me jump - even though we'd been warned earlier, it came as a surprise. There were some jumpy movements too - and a quivering tongue.

The vet left and Olle and Ken came in from the kitchen. We left Harry's body on the armchair and sat on the sofa opposite. We stayed there for over an hour, having cups of tea, occasionally stroking the body. Olle stroked him too and looked at him closely. He rang his friend to tell the news.

Finally the mood lightened and it felt time to bury him. Olle became visibly nervous and said he didn't want to come. Luckily, his grandparents, visiting from England, were staying nearby and we could drop him off there.

We wrapped Harry in an old sheet and drove him to Ken's place. Ken's entire family was home. He and one teenage son started digging the grave as we lay Harry on a table in the garden, uncovered him and took a final look. It was about 6pm by now and his body was stiffening and cooling. We carried him and placed him in the grave. The three teenagers and four adults stood in a circle around him in silence, as we threw some fallen frangipani flowers in. We said goodbye to poor Harry, that he'd been an anxious fellow but we loved him and wished he hadn't got sick. Then we began filling in the dirt.

when she was old

Here's a photo taken two weeks ago in Melbourne.

when she was young

This is my favourite picture of Lot. (She's been a hard dog to take photos of, because of her dark fur and dark eyes, she often turns out looking like a dark expressionless blob.)

This would have been taken in early 1995, when she was between one and two years old. You can see all the energy and strength and quizzicalness of a young dog, but also something of her self-contained intelligence. And her trust for the person taking the photo (me). You can see her strong staffy chest but also the big ears that don't fit breed specifications! (Even though she is fairly deaf now, she still sleeps  with one ear up to catch breaking events.) You can see that she knew how to make herself comfortable, but I can assure you that she was always neat and well behaved, so although she's always been a couch dog, that hasn't caused any domestic problems for us.

 

the next 24 hours

I might not get to post much here in the next 24 hours and then tomorrow afternoon we're off to the beach house for two weeks. I'll be taking my laptop and my modem but I'm not hopeful of catching any Unwired waves where we'll be, though you never know, and I suppose there's a chance we'll visit friends in a slightly different location and I can go online there.

Things are very up in the air with the Lotster. She spent Wednesday on a drip at the vet and some friends came round in the evening to farewell her - we thought we'd got them here under false pretences as she was so perky. She ate a lot of food that night. Yesterday she was less perky but still ate some raw chicken last night, though less enthusiastically. Today she had a small vomit at 9am. She's still moving around the house on her own legs though looks very thin and frail. We were hoping she'd stabilise enough for us to take her with us and spend the two weeks quietly relaxing. On another level, we know it's a bit crazy to take her away if she's not eating and vomiting and I've talked to the vet about the logistics of having her put to sleep tomorrow morning.

Euthanasia, even for animals, is a hard thing to carry out, though of course when they reach a very bad state, you're glad to have that as an option. Both of my very old cats were euthanased a few years ago - they probably would have died within hours anyway, but were spared those hours of misery.

We're going through a very similar process to the one we went through during Harry's last days last year. We'd clutch at any straw, buy any type of new food, get any sort of drug from the vet, to see if it would control his symptoms (vomiting due to lymphoma in his stomach). Only on his final day when he barely moved did the unavoidability of death hit home.

Even though I can write here that I think Lottie is in her final decline, part of me wants her to go on ... just for a couple more weeks. Another part of me wishes she would die in her sleep or just die naturally, not in pain, to relieve us of the responsibility of arranging her time of death. A final part of me thinks we should have her put to sleep tomorrow but I can hardly bear to think about that.

Meanwhile, we've just heard that an aged friend of ours who has lymphoma is in hospital and not well, so we have to turn our minds to that as well.

meridian dog

Lot is making a miracle recovery (touching wood). Since being 'injected' with fluids yesterday, she's been drinking a lot and issuing large volumes of completely clear urine - no more blood! (Her 'urine' had become like black mucous.) She's perked up. Yesterday morning she barely raised her head. Today, when the acupuncturist arrived, she got out of her basket and went to greet him and wagged her tail. The site of that was incredible to us, so convinced were we yesterday that she was on her last legs. I'm sure all of this is essentially because we've stopped the antibiotics. Undoubtedly she has kidney problems and just could not properly process the drugs. From now on, we have to keep her body as 'pure' as we can. She might not last a long time, but we do want some more time with her. Her spirit and her body are very resilient and tough, so hopefully we'll get that time.

So here, hot off the press, are the photos of our darling girl having acupuncture this evening.

That red light is a heat lamp held by the acupuncturist to shine on the needles.            

She had two rows of three needles on each side, for kidney, liver and I-can't-remember-what points. They were left in for 20 minutes, with the heat lamp on occasionally. After they'd been taken out, he gave the same area of her backbone a very vigorous massage, which she liked. That's my arm at the front, tickling her chest while needles go in. She cast a wary eye on the needles before he put them in, as she learnt to dislike needles at the vet when she had a knee operation when she was young. However, she had no reaction to them actually going in or being in. And since then, she has eaten a small bowl of chicken and rice soup. Crossing fingers that it stays down this time (it's only the second meal she's eaten in six days.)                            

                           

up and down

Things are still touch and go with our gorgeous girl Lot. Friday was very bad, she wouldn't drink or eat and brought up several small lots of bile. Yesterday she seemed to rally and began drinking water but vomited up the anitbiotic pill. Co-parent took her to our vet who gave her an antibiotic injection. At 4pm she managed to eat some home-made chicken and rice soup but brought it up three hours later. This morning she produced only a tiny amount of bloody urine and I was worried that she was in kidney failure. Co-p and I talked about the real possibility that her days are numbered and each had a good cry. Then we took her to the emergency vet. We arrived and she immediately drank some water and produced some clear urine! That's our girl.

We were very clear to the vet that we didn't want any major medical intervention. He did another ultrasound without sedation and told us that both her ureters are now very enlarged. He had a list of things that could be causing that, from tumours to stones to blood clots. He then did blood tests and all her kidney levels are elevated. He said she is in kidney failure and it could be a matter of hours or days.

In a way, having had a dog die a year ago is both painful (because this feels so deja vu) and useful, because we've learnt what near-death looks like and she doesn't look like that yet. We've also learnt how to filter and interpret what the vets say. They are of the medical model, after all, and I don't entirely subscribe to that when it comes to people, so why should we subscribe to it for dogs. We kept our nerve and turned down all the options which involved leaving her there in hospital. Instead we had her injected with nutrient-fluids under the skin (she looks like she's instantly gained a lot of fat). They also gave her an anti-nausea injection. She immediately did some clear urine, which tells me that her ureters are not blocked.

We've brought her home and haven't given her the antibiotic. I spoke to our other vet, who said she thought it was a real possibility that antibiotics are stressing her kidneys. Undoubtedly she has underlying kidney disease, but I'm hoping it's possible to manage that condition for awhile longer. An animal acupuncturist is coming to see her tomorrow night. Hopefully she'll still be here by then.

not good

Well, the sheen of the 'not-cancer' diagnosis has worn off quickly. The Lotster is still quite sick, in fact she is worse. In herself she was quite jaunty before going for yesterday's specialist ultrasound. Since coming home last night, she's been very subdued and has vomited three times today/this evening, bringing up last night's food (she hasn't eaten today). Given that the investigations themselves couldn't have made her ill, we're wondering if it's A) coincidental and she's declining due to the underlying kidney disease or B) caused by the doubled dose of strong antibiotics she's been on since Tuesday, which is the only thing that's different in her life. If that's the case, she should show signs of improvement tomorrow if we don't give her the antibiotics (or only give half a dose). We've talked to the vets by phone and they don't sound overly alarmed and we're trying not to be. Her urine is still a bit bloody but not clotty, more rusty-looking. She's not leaking urine like she was. She's probably a bit anaemic but not extremely so.

It's depressing to see her so low and given that staffies are extremely stoic, we wonder if she's in pain to be so quiet and inactive.

The other depressing factor is that they're not sure it is an infection. The vet made noises about "idiopathic haemanuria", which is blood in urine for unknown reasons. Great.

This is a bit nightmarish, as we went through Harry's terminal vomiting illness exactly a year ago, which feels all too recent.

waiting

We had a reprieve yesterday when our vet found nothing wrong on ultrasound and x-ray and blood tests on our elderly bleeding dog. However, we decided to take her to a specialist animal sonographer today, as the vet had explained it was highly possible she could have a bladder tumour that he couldn't pick up on his crude ultrasound machine.

So she's there now and we'll find out later today what's going on. I'm still keeping my fingers crossed that the bleeding's from an antibiotic-resistant bladder infection (which is the only non-malignant possibility our vet could come up with). I'm trying not to fret unnecessarily - there'll be plenty of time for feeling upset if the news is bad. Still, I can feel my tension rising...

Update: It's not cancer, hurray! ... Well, to be somewhat medical about it, there's no cancer seen in the bladder, there is a section of kidney which is enlarged but that's probably "idiopathic" (all of this is second hand via co-parent). They suggested keeping her there and inserting a needle to draw out some fluid to see what it's composed of [I know that sounds like a biopsy but it doesn't seem to be a biopsy, more a testing of an infected area], so we said yes to that, so she won't be home till later tonight - poor doggy going through two procedures like this at her age. She'll probably need to be on antibiotics and oestrogen (to increase muscle tone in her bladder) for three months at least. Given that it was exactly this time last year we were dealing with a death sentence for Harry, I'm so relieved that we don't have to plunge back into that horrible feeling ... for the time being.

steamy sydney

We're back home in steamy Sydney - I'm always surprised to notice how tropical Sydney is when I've been away ... the foliage, the air. I love many things about Melbourne, but it looks like a big country town. Not that Sydney is city-like on the European scale - it's too ramshackle for that. Still, we live in one of the densest inner urban areas and after growing up in the suburbs, I still crave the kind of closeness with the surrounding community that we have.

En route back to Sydney, we stayed right out in the countryside, though we don't really call it the countryside, though it's not quite the outback either. [Double 'though' in that last sentence - sorry.] I'll post some photos when I finish unpacking. The crops on my cousins' property failed this year, though the most barren land we saw was between Gundagai and Goulbourn - a moonscape in parts.

We had the dogs with us and they had a good holiday. Lottie went swimming in a three-quarters empty dam next to the homestead - found her own way out there and waded in. She's such a wonderful dog. But today we're holding our breaths, as she's at the vet having ultrasounds and x-rays. She's been pissing blood, on and off for the past two months. At first we thought it was a reaction to an anti-inflammatory drug she was on for arthritis. But the bleeding started up again on the drive home (her urine looks like red wine), she's no longer on the drug, so we took her straight to the vet this morning. He's warned us that it could be a bladder cancer. It could also be a kidney stone. I think he thinks it's cancer. She is 13 and a half, so I guess we had to expect something eventually, though we wanted her to go of a very ripe old age. Still, there's no point getting ahead of the results, which we should know this evening.

Damien Leith's on the stereo - Olle was given his CD for Christmas and it's very listenable (I don't know what all that says about us.)

longevity

The Lotster turned 13 about a month ago. Last week she had a bad case of diarrhoea ie, an ongoing case of about 10 episodes of liquid shit every 24 hours. When this showed no signs of slowing down or disappearing, I took her to the vet. As we cleared up all these stinky puddles inside the house (thank goodness we have no carpets downstairs), we'd begun to have unsettling memories of Harry's lymphoma. [They weren't all done inside - only overnight or when we were all out during the daytime. We don't have a dog door. Eventually we began to leave newspaper down.]]

Even though she'd lost a kilo in three days, Lot was still sparky enough to struggle against being on the vet's examination table and once the exam was over, she barked forcefully to demand a liver treat from the vet. But she couldn't have one - the vet thought she had a bacterial infection in her gut. The best thing to do was starve her for 24 hours (we'd hardly given her any food but hadn't enforced total starvation, which we realised in retrospect we should have) and give her antibiotics.

Within a few hours of the first two tablets, she began to look brighter. That evening she demanded food. Now that she is almost deaf, she has a piercing bark which goes on and on until she gets what she wants. She can't hear herself so it's no skin off her nose to bark for an hour. We gave in.

By the next day she was fully recovered and back to her jaunty old self - and she is pretty jaunty. She still goes out for an hour's walk every morning and can get up to a gambolling run for a minute or so - not bad for, as Olle likes to tell people, a 91-year-old (in human terms).

When she began to act up in the vet's room, I smiled to myself and felt sure that she was basically okay. She has such a strong constitution. She has that strong will to life (and joi de vivre) that will hopefully carry her through to an even older old age. She is the human equivalent of someone who gets to 100 or beyond. A friend's grandmother lived to 102 and she used to joke that it was because she was basically an incredibly selfish and self-sufficient woman who didn't much like other people. I'm half prepared to believe that. Everyone I've known who's lived well into their 90s was similar. Of course, they had other attributes as well - they did a lot of physical work/movement all their lives (I had one great-aunt who lived to 96, living on her own in the country growing all her own vegtables), consequently they were never overweight. (So that rules me out!) They've usually had very strong passions or hobbies to sustain them.

I've often thought, in the past few years of child-raising, that we need to have an eye to the long long term. What kind of person is going to enter old age, even middle age, physically and mentally healthy, still enjoying life? [This is assuming, of course, that there's a half-decent world to be enjoyed by then.] It's going to be someone who has moved all their life, whether through swimming, yoga, surfing, cycling, running, maybe tennis or dance. Team sports are really an activity for the young. How to make the transition from school-imposed sports and PE to exercising for oneself is a big issue. A majority of people don't make that transition nowadays (it wasn't an issue in the past, say pre-1950).

There are a lot of criticisms we could level at the current generation of over-80s, but one admirable trait they have (I know a lot of them, as this is my parent's and my friends' parents generation) is domestic resourcefulness. Not only do they darn clothes and sew buttons back on, but they are domestically industrious - they set the table for dinner. They wash up after every meal. My father-out-of-law, who spent time in a WW2 concentration camp, sweeps the floor every day and dusts. We, their children, don't do these kinds of things. We've been surrounded by 'time-saving' appliances and distracted by electronic 'entertainment'. Our children are even worse off, in these terms. So many domestic accoutrements are disposable these days - disposable and replaceable. I've lost count of the number of children's parties I've gone to where all the plates and cutlery were disposable plastic that were thrown into garbage bags at the end. No mess, no work.

I'm rambling here, I know. I guess my point is that if children don't learn how to  do the essential work that transforms their immediate environment - through cooking, through play that isn't electronically mediated, then there's not much hope for them to turn into the kinds of people who can be self-sustaining in the broadest sense - self-sustaining for decades.

[This is one of my most incoherent posts ever, but I'll post it anyway.]