VirtualExile

Dax was the best of all of us,

the anniversary effect will be strong for this one,

because I'm welcoming it

this is the most important grief of my life

Second day waking up in a house with no Dax was not as bad as the first day, but we've still had some tears.  We've slowly started to put away or throw away or give away some of the items that are only in the house because of Dax, but we're not in any rush to make Dax disappear from our sightlines or memories, no way.  I made pictures of Dax the background photos on my laptop and phone.  We'll probably keep all the dog beds and blankets for now because the cats use them as much as he did.  T has kept mementos of Lucy and Edwina, of course we'll keep mementos of Dax.

T and I had cookies for breakfast again, and then B showed up, a bit later than I'd expected -- we drove to collect him from Metro and then went to go see his new home -- only from the outside, because the previous owners are still moving out, they were moving out their plants when we arrived.  Then we went to pick up sandwiches for lunch, then had lunch together at the house, then caught up B on some of the details regarding Dax since B's last visit to the house two weeks ago.  By the time all this had passed, I was way too late to join Steve & Friends for online games ... and then KWC returned my call so I spoke with him for a while, and then everybody needed to nap.  So, online games was too much for today.  Hopefully I can return to that activity next Sunday.

I've now spoken with somebody on the phone three days in a row.  Weird.  I mean, outside of work stuff.  I talk to work people on the phone all the time.  Phone or Skype or Zoom.  I still hate Zoom.

B has a busy work week ahead, and with his arm hurting from P2 he wants to sleep in his own bed tonight.  T gets his M2 shot tomorrow, but may go stay at B's on Tuesday night, if we're both OK with that.  I'm not certain yet about spending a night by myself in this house without Dax, but T's not certain he'll go until after he feels the extent of his side effects from M2.

I meditated this afternoon before napping -- yesterday I was too afraid of my thoughts and feelings to meditate -- part of the panic attack I was having.  T suggested we can meditate together when I'm too afraid to do it alone.  I'm not normally afraid to meditate!  This is a stressful time!

Maybe I'll have the energy to cook this evening, we've been surviving on cookies and takeout since Friday night.

It occurred to me that even if T spends Tuesday night at B's, I could still head to the condo Tuesday ... the cats would be fine spending a night without us, whereas Dax absolutely required human intervention every six hours or so -- or more often lately, he was peeing more often like I do now that I'm old, getting T up in the middle of the night to let him out.  I no longer have to plan my entire life around Dax being able to pee and eat and swallow pills on schedule.  It's weird.  T and I won't have to coordinate our schedules with each other as carefully as before.  Now it will be 100% about whether T or I need the other's presence or not -- and just make sure the cats have enough food and water to survive until somebody is expected back at the house.  Weird.

Yeah, calmer today ... I always say that it is impossible to hold the same emotion inside your head forever, eventually that emotion will need a break.  It doesn't mean I'll never miss Dax, or never cry about Dax, or never RAGE AT CREATION FOR TAKING DAX AWAY SO UNFAIRLY, but there are also other emotions, other thoughts, other things to do, other creatures to care for.  As for the rage, I told T this morning that I wanted to scream outside.  I haven't done that yet.

I think the longest I've ever held the same emotion before taking a break is about three days.  One time I was super mad at T for three days, another time super mad at an unethical coworker for three days.  My stay in the mental hospital was about three days.  I mean -- emotions return, but eventually you get some breaks from them.  Today felt like a break from the past two days, but not without tears.

The big animal shelter here in MoCo -- where we adopted Astrid & Sam -- is run by the county government and doesn't need $$$ donations.  We're a wealthy & liberal county, so I'm already funding a perfectly good shelter here via my tax dollars.  They do accept food donations, so I'll take our leftover cans of Dax food to them, probably next month after P2+7 and I've had a chance to calm down some.

The biggest shelter in DC looks well run and professional, but they pay their CEO $400K, WTF, and lots of big salaries for other officers also.  I know living in the DC area is expensive, but, shit, they don't need to be paid more than top government executives.  I'm at the very top of the federal GS pay scale now, and I get suspicious of nonprofits that pay their top talent more than federal executives make.  I mean, we're talking about an animal shelter, not a lobbying boutique.

If I want to do something other than pay a CEO more than 2x what I make myself, I probably have to look in the Fallen City parts of the country, some of those parts where I want to live after I retire, like Michigan.  So I've been reviewing the various shelters in the Detroit area, and I've picked the one with the highest GuideStar rating, and they also pay their CEO only $50K: Friends for Animals of Metro Detroit.

$100/month, which matches my highest current donations to other charities.  They say $100 covers the average cost of caring for a puppy from intake to adoption, which sounds like marketing copy, but will make me feel good.  I'll have them send a card to T in memory of Dax as a surprise.

Maybe I end up living in Detroit after I retire, splitting my volunteer time between an abortion clinic and an animal shelter.  Fewer unwanted humans, more wanted pets.  Sounds like the best trade I could ever make with the final chapter of my own life.

In the meantime, if I feel adopting my own dog again would be too big of a commitment, I could always volunteer at an animal shelter.  I don't have to raise a dog myself to help.  But I do still have the cats, the house, T, my job, my own health -- I was already feeling burned out by the responsibilities I've chosen.  Let's see how I feel after Quarantine has ended, after we've adjusted to the loss of Dax, after I'm able to go on dates again.  I suspect my life will still feel pretty full until I can retire.

Eventually I fell asleep again for a short while without the aid of medication, but only until sunrise (I rarely sleep past sunrise in this house, it is too bright and open, as compared to the condo).  Astrid slept next to me, her elongated body pressing gently into my back, as I lay on my side.  I peeked in to see whether T was awake, he was, so I joined him on his bed to talk for awhile about our horrible yesterday.  Then what to do with our Saturday (B isn't coming until tomorrow, he's on his way to York for P2, and will stop nearby to see his mother).  T's got a meditation class today from 9am-1pm, and then we may go on a hike without Dax.  When we receive Dax's ashes we may well sprinkle them along the hiking trail, it was Dax's favorite place in the entire world.  I was able to take him there many a morning during this Quarantine fall and winter, he'd run around off leash investigating the changing of the seasons.  I haven't taken him on a hike recently, because I was switching over to running in the warmer weather -- and he couldn't run with me anymore -- and I was starting to feel concerned that hiking was too much exercise for him.  One of the things I was trying to blame for his recent complicated symptoms.

But Dax was happily on a hike with T as recently as last weekend, despite the symptoms and pains he must have been feeling.  T sent me a joyous picture of Dax while I was alone at the condo, that had me in a good mood about them both as I had the luxury of feeling grumpy about work stuff.  [I just now finally opened my six-month evaluation from my Boss, it was unremarkable.]

It's tough starting this first day without Dax.  In so many ways our lives were organized around his needs (and also the cats' needs).  Dog beds and dog crates all over the house, the big dog ramp we bought for the master bed when Dax's shoulders started hurting.  We'll have to toss all the opened food, medicine, and supplements, but we have a month's worth of unopened food that we can donate to the local animal shelter after I get my 90% Pfizer shield.  T is going to return the unopened supplements to Amazon for a refund.

Goddess, this hurts.  I think I haven't hurt this much from a loss since KWC and I broke up in the late 1990s.  I've felt some temporary grief with respect to K at times, like when he moved out as they2 broke up, or when our relationship has changed from local to long distance (more than once!), but I still have K firmly in my life and before yesterday he'd told me he was planning to visit me after his second shot.  KWC is still around also, we have a good friendship, I should reach out to him this weekend, he knows what it is like to lose a dog.  He'll probably be keen to see me after P2+14, as is Sir Ben.  I should talk with some people on the phone today.  Yeah, this hurts.  Never in my adult life have I cried so hard and so immediately as I did yesterday morning when the vet told us on the phone that we should consider euthanasia for Dax.  T had to tell the vet we'd call him back as I completely fell apart, something I've never done since I was a small child.

I did speak with T this morning about how we'd both have more time and space in our lives now, with somewhat less responsibility.  As with a puppy, an elder dog can be a handful, especially a sick one.  The cats are much more independent and could be left alone overnight or even for a weekend.  I would not have willingly chosen this trade off, but I knew it would happen eventually -- as you all know it has been part of my planning for later in this decade as I approach retirement.  I was pretty sure Dax would not last until 2027.  The cats, I'm not so sure, they aren't showing any signs of advanced aging and usually live longer than dogs.

For his breed combination, a 10-year span was not unusual, but we'd done our work to keep him active and at a healthy weight, we thought we had a few more years with him.  Alas, it is the healther ones who tend to get cancer, because all of us will get cancer eventually, if our major organs stay healthy long enough.  Cancer is a daily roll of the dice that gets steadily worse as you get older.  The type of cancer Dax had -- so incredibly aggressive -- is fairly common in a dog his age, the vet said about 10% of dogs die from it.  And there's no cure for it.  No known way to avoid it either.  A roll of the dice every day.  We kept him healthy until his number came up.

I felt a little guilty for not taking him on a walk on Thursday, but I was feeling sleepy after the drive to York and the symptoms from the second shot came on within hours.  Instead, after my napping, I proposed that PIZZA PIZZA dinner that Dax enjoyed so much.  We hadn't been eating any pizza lately because T has been on a diet, and without new Star Trek he had been skipping our Thursday date nights.  T is thankful that I proposed PIZZA PIZZA for what turned out to be Dax's last night with us.  T said, "I know you weren't thinking of it as his last night.  Instead you were living in the moment, trying to give Dax (and me) the best night we could have.  I appreciate what you did for us."

I told T this morning that I feel inadequate at times in my ability to support him, or others, through difficult times.  I'm an introvert, On The Spectrum, and have been learning many of my interpersonal skills late in life.  T charitably said, "Nobody is rating you."  LOL, he's definitely rated me poorly in the past.  Well, I received high marks for how I handled Thursday night, our last night with Dax.  I can live with that.

One of T's friends sent us a batch of fresh cookies via UberEats last night.  So, cookies for breakfast!  And lunch!  At least I'm eating something.

I've never cried so much in one day in my adult life.

I will not allow this to destroy me, none of those who have passed before me would want that.  But today it hurts.  Sometimes you lose a loved one with little warning, for reasons you did not expect.

I remember back during college, when the AIDS pandemic was raging hard among the gay community, I was so worried about losing my gay friends from AIDS (because eventually I did), and then a woman friend of mine died suddenly in a car accident.  We'd all been at her house just the other day ...

Her death reminded me -- it isn't the problems I'm worried about that will snatch away those I love.  Reality doesn't care what I think.  Focused on this health threat or that health threat, Dax was snatched away by something else entirely that blew up almost overnight.  At least he was active and loved until the end, and then we helped him to his end quickly and humanely.  Pizza feasts, trips to the playground, hikes, snuggles, songs.

T asked me whether I thought we made the right decision today, and yes, I think we made the right decision, I made the vet show me the evidence and explain things step by step.  But it happened so goddess damned fast.  This morning I genuinely thought Dax was getting better.  I remember last night, right before we went to bed, Dax snatched an extra bagel bite from his bowl, and then seemed miffed that I was tossing the rest of his uneaten food away, because the vet requested he eat nothing after 9pm, so they could do the blood test in the morning.  It seemed like his appetite was coming back.  And then this other problem took him within hours.  So unfair.

I'm hitting three of the five stages of grief today -- denial (this is impossible!), anger, and sadness.  I've spent all day, since the vet called, with T, except for a moment while I was calling K, and now I'm going to spend the night in my separate bed, although with Astrid next to me.

Oh, good, Sam is sharing T's bed now, I'm worried about him not having Dax beside him at night anymore, although recently this was more of a burden, because Dax needed to pee often during the night, and he was shivering and whimpering from time to time.  Ugh.  We did our best to fix him over the past few weeks, but he was unfixable.

It's probably the biggest lesson of life, that we are unfixable.  That nobody is in control, nothing is in control of the outcome.

The last thing I said to Dax as his soul went away was, "I would never have left you."

After we got home, T said to me, "That first night when we brought Dax home, I slept next to him in the basement and told him, 'I will never leave you.'"

We were there for Dax from beginning to end.

We spoke with the vet this afternoon -- he doesn't think we're in an emergency situation yet, but he wants us to drop off Dax tomorrow for tests, imaging, and supportive care.  T is feeling very sad; we're both concerned that Dax may not pull out of this.  But that's mainly because his appetite is low, not because of any other symptom or behavior.  I'm still hopeful we'll get this fixed, but I'm VERY concerned when a pet doesn't want to eat at his age.

We've ordered a pizza for dinner, mainly because Dax loves pizza crust and it may be a way to get him to eat something.  Although eating seems to cause him some tummy unhappiness afterward.

I'm hoping the GI problem is part of the UTI problem and that the antibiotic is knocking that out.  But the antibiotic could also be causing him some GI distress.  So ... we'll put it in the hands of the professionals tomorrow.

If we aren't satisfied with things over the weekend we'll take him to the emergency vet for a second opinion.

We have health insurance for our pets, so some of this cost will be reimbursed, but so far the cost hasn't broken my bank, that's not an issue.

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My P2 injection site started hurting after about 4 hours, and then I needed a nap, and I've pretty much taken the day off work, but I'm not feverish.  I was feeling cold, but T turned up the heat -- we've got a frost warning tonight, in late April!

Sharing some wine as we await the pizza.

So much grief.  It's OK, I also feel grief.  I expect nearly everybody does.  I also sometimes have violent ideations, though usually more generic and in the manner of a video game, Borderlands sniper rifles are best,

I don't know that I could write an entire book about my grief for one person, or create an entire music album about my grief for one person, so indulgent, I would instead throw all of my grief into one poem, or one song, or one short story, or one painting, or one sculpture, I would squish all of my grief into this one container, and continue working on this one piece of [art], until all the grief I've ever felt has condensed into a single tight ball of light-contesting-darkness, a neutron star evaporating via quantum tunneling over trillions of years, and I would insist that

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What to read next???

There's a graphic novel that I brought with me to York to read while waiting before and after my first shot, I could finish that pretty quickly, especially if I stay at the house this weekend, though I'm hoping to escape for one night, but with Dax sick I dunno, and we'll have to see how P2 goes ... he's doing better than he did yesterday but definitely still sick :-(  I'm not convinced he's gonna pull through [redacted] in my grief I may want to play Borderlands again for the awesome Headsplosion,

Dax is doing better than he was on Sunday.  But he's displaying symptoms of the UTI, and the UTI is probably the main issue right now -- it could have been the reason for his shivering and nausea and loss of appetite.

He's very thirsty, peeing a lot of clear pee, and eating -- but eating less than normal.  Hasn't vomited since Sunday.

I read some reputable sources about dog UTIs and they're difficult for owners to diagnose because the dogs can't explain what's going on.  You have to do a urine test, which is what the vet did yesterday.  In retrospect, I had no idea that could've been the/a problem.

So, hopefully the antibiotic knocks out the UTI, and that solves the appetite issue, and then we can return to WTF is wrong with his liver.  T thinks the liver problem is caused by Cushing's Disease but the vet is holding off on running that test, following some First Things First reasoning.

I know as humans or animals get older, there can be multiple interacting problems that mask each other and make diagnosis tricky.  In my own case, for example, my asthma symptoms were masking my GERD symptoms and delayed my reporting of my GERD symptoms to my doctor for at least a couple years.  So Dax could have several problems that are tricky to pull apart and diagnose correctly.  We'll see.

Yesterday T was significantly more worried than I was, today we seem to have flipped.  It's not that my own feelings have changed -- I'm concerned about Dax and will remain so until his appetite returns to normal.  But T was worried Dax wouldn't be coming back home, and now Dax is back home.  Whatever is wrong with our pup, we have to figure out how to fix his appetite, our last two pets didn't live long after their appetites failed, though for very different underlying reasons (cancer for Edwina, kidney failure for Lucy).  I wouldn't expect Dax to make it to his next birthday if we can't fix his appetite, regardless of the underlying reason.  But that's based on my own very limited experience with pets, I'm not a vet.

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Update to the Update:  While I was out running before my work day began, Dax both vomited and pooped inside the house (somehow T didn't notice, he was probably leading a virtual meeting in his office).  I'd let Dax out immediately before I left.  He's moping around now.  Definitely a sick pup.  But we're following the instructions and will let the vet know if there's been no improvement after three days.

With Dax on a hunger strike, I'm working from the house on this Maids Day instead of heading to the condo, because we're either taking him to the regular vet if we can get an appointment today, or to the emergency vet -- maybe to the emergency vet anyway.  So I'm ready to be holed up in my bedroom while they're here.

Yesterday Dax was vomiting and shivering all afternoon & evening after I returned home.  He did not vomit overnight, and isn't shivering this morning, but he's still not interested in food this morning.

Hopefully this will pass, but it seems to have become a more frequent or chronic problem -- similar to his shoulder problem that popped up repeatedly a while back, but that was solved by no longer taking him running.  All I've got to go on here is that twice now I've come back to the house to a dog that seemed fine when I left but stopped eating while I was away.  Perhaps eating stuff he shouldn't when T takes him on hikes?  That's my only clue, if it isn't a deeper health issue.  Maybe his body isn't up for these long hikes anymore and T is wearing him out while I'm away -- trying to force Dax to be more active than he can take, so we don't have to admit he's in decline.  I dunno.  Pets are tough to figure out because they can't tell you what's wrong.  And in the case of Dax he's been getting more indiscriminate about what he puts in his mouth.  Putting a muzzle on him when he take him out feels extreme but possibly necessary?

We'll see how the day goes.  It feels like all this stuff began when we put him on the antibiotics, supposedly as a way to fix his liver.  We don't know whether that worked or not, because the vet had left for the day on Friday when we took Dax in for his blood test.  We should learn more today.

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Sounds like we're bringing him in now.