Tough Times

Tough Times...That's exactly how this last month has felt. As you know from a previous post, I had a miscarriage back on December 13th, exactly 1 month later we had to put our dog son to sleep.

I also wrote a previous post about how he had been getting sick a lot and we weren't sure why. We thought maybe he wasn't liking his food anymore, so we added some cooked peas to it. He loved the peas! He was actually picking the peas out of the dog food and just eating those. Then we decided to try a new brand of food. At first he loved the new brand, but then slowly stopped eating it as well. While this was going on he was also having diarrhea...not just any diarrhea, watery diarrhea. I came home one night from work and as soon as he jumped off the couch to greet me he threw up a watery liquid. I cleaned it up and made sure he was ok, but as soon as I walked into the kitchen I stepped in another pile. Yes, I actually stepped in it. I asked Justin if he knew anything about it and he said he had no idea he had gotten sick. When we went to bed he was laying with us and just got up and walked to the bathroom and got sick again. And it happened one last time next to the bed. He had thrown up 3 times in a 3 hour span, and also had gotten sick in the kitchen earlier. I woke Justin up to tell him I was really concerned so he told me to take him to the vet in the morning. When I took him to the vet they were very concerned as well because he had lost 5 lbs. They did an x-ray and thought it looked like he had eaten something that was causing a blockage (I thought this was extremely weird because Maximo wasn't the kind of dog who ate random things he wasn't supposed to). They told me that this blockage could have caused his intestines to "telescope". Meaning his intestines we trying to pass whatever was stuck there and they were kind of folding in on themselves. They wanted to do surgery, get out whatever was causing the blockage and pull his intestines back out so they worked properly again. They said 1 of 3 things could happen: 1. they could remove the object, pull his intestines back out and he'd be fine 2. they'd do everything in option 1 but if his intestines were not-viable they'd have to do a bowel resection and remove the portion of damaged intestine or 3. he might not make it through surgery. I told them to go ahead and do it and call me with any information. I informed Justin of what was going on because he was at work all day and we decided we'd just pray and we knew Maximo was a warrior (he had been attacked by a pit bull when he was a puppy and had his throat ripped open and he survived that and he had also eaten bird poop and go West Nile and survived that)! As soon as I drove back across town I got a call from the vet with the worst news ever. When they opened Maximo's stomach they found a huge cancerous tumor. That might have been the worst feeling in the world. Possibly even worse than finding out that I was having a miscarriage because he is our son, our best friend, our protector and we couldn't protect him and he didn't know what was going on. They said the tumor was causing a 100% blockage which is why he wasn't eating and when he did eat, he was getting sick. The tumor had grown into the abdominal aortic blood vessel and all of the surrounding blood vessels which made in impossible to removed and was giving it the blood supply it needed to continue to grow. They said we could wake him up, try some steroids to shrink the tumor and go from there or we could let him go on the table. Maximo was Justin's dog before I came into the picture and I couldn't let them put him to sleep without Justin seeing him and deciding what to do, so I told them to wake him up. Telling Justin while he was at work was the worst thing I've ever had to do. When I picked Max up that evening he was still groggy from the anesthesia and slept all night. They gave me anti-nausea meds and steroids to help shrink the tumor in hopes it would allow food to pass and give him some nutrients. But, the vet told me this was a short-term solution and depending on how the first night went, we were looking at maybe weeks. Justin and I sat at home weighing our options, cuddling with Max, crying and explaining to him what was going on (yes, I know he's a dog, but I believe he understood us). We decided the next morning that no matter how well the steroid worked, it was not a long-term solution and Max was never going to be the dog we know and love. He was going to be sick and weak and sleepy. Instead of keeping him around for our own selfish reasons, we decided to let him go and help him not to be in pain anymore. We sat with him while they put him to sleep and let him know how much we loved him, what a great dog he was, and that he wasn't going to be in pain any longer. I have more pictures of Max on my cell phone than of anything else and one of my favorites is of him laying on the Steelers Terrible Towel watching a game with us. I think Max is the one that helped the Steelers win last Saturday and we're hoping he helps them out this weekend also.

We love you and miss you more than you'll ever know, Maximo. We hope you're no longer in pain and we know you're watching over us (our little 4 legged angel Bo-Bo). No other pet we have will ever replace you or compare to you!