- Joined
- Apr 2, 2018
- Messages
- 2
- Purraise
- 9
Hello All,
I'm new here, though I have been reading through the forums since our girl started having seizures and was diagnosed as diabetic in early March. In fact, it was a post in the health forum here that talked about stress-dumping of glucose and linked over to Felinediabetes. I clicked the link and read there that I should check her blood sugar before giving her the vet-prescribed insulin. I did and found her blood sugar was completely normal every time I took it. She was mis-diagnosed as diabetic after one random blood glucose test (do NOT let a vet do this, btw). She had just had a grand mal seizure before the blood draw and indeed had a HUGE glucose stress-dump in response to the seizure, which the vet did not consider. We probably would have lost her had we given her the 2 u's of insulin that day. So, first, thank you so, so much for helping her live another good month with us.
Now, for the unfortunate reason I registered.
This is our sweet girl Haley.
She was our 9 year old, 23 pound, absolutely beautiful calico who adored being pet and purring up a storm, going berserk over her red ribbon, giving the hardest love bites we've ever gotten, and rolling over onto her back to meow at us happily when greeting us or just because she was so comfortable and relaxed.
(Here she is on her back with her adopted brother Percy!)
My boyfriend and I had to help Haley cross the Rainbow Bridge quite suddenly this afternoon. She had had two seizures since February and her pupils became different sizes and never recovered (though they would constrict and dilate at the same rate), so everyone figured something malignant was going on and we should probably prepare, but...
We just thought Haley might pass in way with more peaceful preceding circumstances, that we had a little more time with her. We thought a seizure might take her months or years from now, that our vet (who very negligently mis-diagnosed her with diabetes in the completely wrong way) was wrong about her "probably" having a brain tumor. I thought I was going to have more time to push back for a heart work-up and ultrasound because I was growing increasingly worried that she actually had been having hypertension-induced seizures as well as the beginning stages of heart disease or heart failure.
And now I feel so, so angry and sad and regretful and GUILTY that I didn't push back sooner. I'm so unbelievably mad that our vet was convinced early on-without doing a full work up-that Haley had a brain tumor and hence didn't pursue other explanations nor treatments. I know she may still be gone right now even if he had, I understand that the prognosis for her wasn't very good now that we know what took her, but we could have known this was a risk sooner, we could have tried to put her on blood thinners, we could have tried something else to give her a chance. I feel so utterly awful. I feel like I failed her. I failed to advocate for her. I failed to be a good mom and a good friend.
FATE suddenly happened and given the prognosis for FATE and how much pain she was in and the trouble breathing she had, the most humane option was to put our sweet girl down. Some of you are very sadly acquainted with the acronym. It's cruelly apropos, isn't it...? I woke up to Haley having just suffered an episode of Saddle Thrombosis, only the clot was lodged more so into the right iliac artery than in the saddle. She was yowling and writhing around in pain, panting heavily, and her right leg was completely lame... she was so scared. I'm just at a loss, particularly that she suffered through the majority of her last two hours alive.
God, it was horrible. She didn't deserve this. She was such a good girl, a wonderful friend.
My boyfriend and I decided that if the vet suggested the best thing for her was to be euthanized, he should okay it. But I asked him not to call me to let me know or confirm. I wanted him to focus on Haley exclusively, to give her all of his attention and love in her last moments so she wouldn't be alone and would know how much we loved her. I couldn't go with him because we had his niece and nephew... he was babysitting for the day. He didn't want to let me go because I would have been there alone; he knew it would devastate me. So before he took her off in the carrier I hugged her, kissed her head so many times, pet her, and told her how much of a good girl she was and that I loved her so much, and thanked her for being part of our family. She nuzzled my hand one last time through the carrier door before they went out of the door.
If there's any solace in this, it's that she didn't go alone. We didn't come home or wake up to her having passed alone and in pain. She was given a pain killer and sedative and she fell asleep next to my boyfriend, her head on his hand as she often did, free from pain. He pet her and told her we loved her and that she was always going to be our sweet, good girl the entire time before she went. I asked him to make sure to do this for me, for her.
We adopted her together almost nine years ago from the old SPCA facility in North Tonawanda. I still remember being in a room with a litter of eight or nine kittens... and out of all of them, she was the one that ran up to us. Her markings and personality struck us and our hearts, and we decided she was the one. She grew up to be a beautiful, wonderfully stubborn and gentle cat, and I'm so glad we could give her love, a good home, and food in her belly just as I am that she gave us her companionship and love.
I hope to God that she knew somehow, someway how much we loved her, and I hope that we gave enough back to her for all the love she gave and showed us. But... it takes a lot of love to let them go when all you want is to be with them forever, doesn't it?
We buried her in the garden with her favorite red ribbon. Come the next few weeks, we'll be planting an annual flower on top of her and come fall, we'll be planting perennial bulbs (all white flowers) in memorial. Among the flowers, we're placing a statue of a fat and lazy cat on its back, relaxed and smiling happily. We feel it's only fitting.
Heaven got a very good, sweet girl today.
We love you so much, Haley. Hopefully we'll meet again <3
I'm new here, though I have been reading through the forums since our girl started having seizures and was diagnosed as diabetic in early March. In fact, it was a post in the health forum here that talked about stress-dumping of glucose and linked over to Felinediabetes. I clicked the link and read there that I should check her blood sugar before giving her the vet-prescribed insulin. I did and found her blood sugar was completely normal every time I took it. She was mis-diagnosed as diabetic after one random blood glucose test (do NOT let a vet do this, btw). She had just had a grand mal seizure before the blood draw and indeed had a HUGE glucose stress-dump in response to the seizure, which the vet did not consider. We probably would have lost her had we given her the 2 u's of insulin that day. So, first, thank you so, so much for helping her live another good month with us.
Now, for the unfortunate reason I registered.
This is our sweet girl Haley.
She was our 9 year old, 23 pound, absolutely beautiful calico who adored being pet and purring up a storm, going berserk over her red ribbon, giving the hardest love bites we've ever gotten, and rolling over onto her back to meow at us happily when greeting us or just because she was so comfortable and relaxed.
(Here she is on her back with her adopted brother Percy!)
My boyfriend and I had to help Haley cross the Rainbow Bridge quite suddenly this afternoon. She had had two seizures since February and her pupils became different sizes and never recovered (though they would constrict and dilate at the same rate), so everyone figured something malignant was going on and we should probably prepare, but...
We just thought Haley might pass in way with more peaceful preceding circumstances, that we had a little more time with her. We thought a seizure might take her months or years from now, that our vet (who very negligently mis-diagnosed her with diabetes in the completely wrong way) was wrong about her "probably" having a brain tumor. I thought I was going to have more time to push back for a heart work-up and ultrasound because I was growing increasingly worried that she actually had been having hypertension-induced seizures as well as the beginning stages of heart disease or heart failure.
And now I feel so, so angry and sad and regretful and GUILTY that I didn't push back sooner. I'm so unbelievably mad that our vet was convinced early on-without doing a full work up-that Haley had a brain tumor and hence didn't pursue other explanations nor treatments. I know she may still be gone right now even if he had, I understand that the prognosis for her wasn't very good now that we know what took her, but we could have known this was a risk sooner, we could have tried to put her on blood thinners, we could have tried something else to give her a chance. I feel so utterly awful. I feel like I failed her. I failed to advocate for her. I failed to be a good mom and a good friend.
FATE suddenly happened and given the prognosis for FATE and how much pain she was in and the trouble breathing she had, the most humane option was to put our sweet girl down. Some of you are very sadly acquainted with the acronym. It's cruelly apropos, isn't it...? I woke up to Haley having just suffered an episode of Saddle Thrombosis, only the clot was lodged more so into the right iliac artery than in the saddle. She was yowling and writhing around in pain, panting heavily, and her right leg was completely lame... she was so scared. I'm just at a loss, particularly that she suffered through the majority of her last two hours alive.
God, it was horrible. She didn't deserve this. She was such a good girl, a wonderful friend.
My boyfriend and I decided that if the vet suggested the best thing for her was to be euthanized, he should okay it. But I asked him not to call me to let me know or confirm. I wanted him to focus on Haley exclusively, to give her all of his attention and love in her last moments so she wouldn't be alone and would know how much we loved her. I couldn't go with him because we had his niece and nephew... he was babysitting for the day. He didn't want to let me go because I would have been there alone; he knew it would devastate me. So before he took her off in the carrier I hugged her, kissed her head so many times, pet her, and told her how much of a good girl she was and that I loved her so much, and thanked her for being part of our family. She nuzzled my hand one last time through the carrier door before they went out of the door.
If there's any solace in this, it's that she didn't go alone. We didn't come home or wake up to her having passed alone and in pain. She was given a pain killer and sedative and she fell asleep next to my boyfriend, her head on his hand as she often did, free from pain. He pet her and told her we loved her and that she was always going to be our sweet, good girl the entire time before she went. I asked him to make sure to do this for me, for her.
We adopted her together almost nine years ago from the old SPCA facility in North Tonawanda. I still remember being in a room with a litter of eight or nine kittens... and out of all of them, she was the one that ran up to us. Her markings and personality struck us and our hearts, and we decided she was the one. She grew up to be a beautiful, wonderfully stubborn and gentle cat, and I'm so glad we could give her love, a good home, and food in her belly just as I am that she gave us her companionship and love.
I hope to God that she knew somehow, someway how much we loved her, and I hope that we gave enough back to her for all the love she gave and showed us. But... it takes a lot of love to let them go when all you want is to be with them forever, doesn't it?
We buried her in the garden with her favorite red ribbon. Come the next few weeks, we'll be planting an annual flower on top of her and come fall, we'll be planting perennial bulbs (all white flowers) in memorial. Among the flowers, we're placing a statue of a fat and lazy cat on its back, relaxed and smiling happily. We feel it's only fitting.
Heaven got a very good, sweet girl today.
We love you so much, Haley. Hopefully we'll meet again <3
