Taken on Wednesday evening, she was tired, but doing well.
Thursday, March 31st, 2016, was pretty uneventful. Ophelia was sleepy and tired, understandably. Derek got up, we took them out to go potty, he carried Ophelia down the stairs.
He went to work, I went to bed, Ophelia went to bed with me. I think she even jumped up on the bed before I could stop her. She appeared to be feeling pretty good. I wrapped her up in a blanket and she stayed right there in bed, sleeping, resting, rolling around a little to get comfortable, occasionally barking at the construction workers making noise outside. Derek came home from work early, Ophelia hung out with him on the couch for the afternoon wrapped up in her blanket. She always had to be near one of us. I carried on with my usual computer stuff, but getting up more often than I normally would to check on her and love on her.
In the evening, we took them outside, she still seemed fine, but for some reason when we got back inside, she was breathing harder than normal. I steamed up some more chicken and rice for her dinner, and she would only eat the chicken, not the rice. I thought maybe she was just tired of the rice by that point, maybe I'd given her too much rice and she didn't like it. She laid around on the couch again for a while. I tried feeding her more chicken a few hours later, she took a couple of pieces from me, but then she didn't want anymore. She went back and got on the couch. This concerned me a little, but I thought, maybe she's just full.
When Derek went to bed, Ophelia went with him, but she didn't jump on the bed this time, she waited for me to pick her up and put her up there. We noticed her belly looked kinda poochy, particularly on her left side, and it was firm. She kept breathing hard, short and fast breaths. It wasn't like she was having trouble breathing, it just seemed her breaths were harder and shorter, faster than normal, but it wasn't alarming. I noticed I was hearing a "click" noise in each breath toward the end of the inhale. I thought, maybe she picked up a doggie cold at the vet's office. This hasn't happened before, but I supposed it could, so I decided to keep checking on her frequently throughout the night.
Every hour, every time I went to check on her, she had not moved, not at all, and she was always awake. She couldn't sleep. Ophelia doesn't lay around awake, she loves to sleep, she was always a napper her entire life, so her laying there awake like that worried me. I started checking on her more often, probably every 20 minutes or less. Her breathing started to sound a bit worse as the night went on, but there was no reason for it because she hadn't moved one inch. At this point I knew she had fluid in her lungs, I wasn't sure why, but I knew it was bad.
Taken at BAVS, before we had to leave her there for a couple of hours, for more ultrasounds and echo cardiograms.
At 5:45 AM on April 1st, 2016 I decided Ophelia needed to go emergency care again. Her breathing had gotten worse and I knew waiting any longer would just cause her more discomfort. I woke up Derek and told him we needed to go. Now. I decided to call this other emergency veterinarian place in San Leandro called BAVS, which is open 24/7. The vet that treated Ophelia at our usual place said to take her there for an ultrasound if she got worse. I think that vet might have known if she didn't start to improve with the antibiotics that it was because she had cancer, but she didn't want to tell us that and freak us out unnecessarily.
The ride to BAVS was agonizingly long for me. The place was hard to find, but when we found it the man that greeted us was so kind. Since we were still thinking infection or inflammation, and I didn't know WHY Ophelia had fluid in her lungs, we were relatively calm. They took Ophelia to the back almost right away so the vet on hand could look at her.
When the vet came out she said that she had used the ultrasound machine to take a look at Ophelia's chest. The area around her heart was full of fluid/blood. She said it was very highly likely that Ophelia had cancer in or around her heart. I was immediately completely crushed. I immediately felt like life was ruined. I cried harder than I've cried in years. They brought her to the room we were in so we could say goodbye before leaving her there for a couple of hours. They wanted the cardiologist to do more ultrasounds when he got in. She was so excited to see us, but then quickly calmed down. She was so tired. She sat in Derek's lap and we just loved on her for as long as we could, until they came to get to take her to the back again. We went home.
Loving on her at BAVS
The entire ride back home, I'd had an impending sense of doom since the vet had told us she most likely had cancer, but I was still holding on to a shred of hope that maybe it wasn't cancer. Maybe she was wrong. Maybe Ophelia had pneumonia, and would have to stay there for treatment for a couple of days, then she could come home to us and we'd have her back.
When we arrived home, right as we pulled into the driveway, the cardiologist at BAVS called us.
He gave me the worst news possible, I started crying, I was hysterical.
He told me it was, in fact, cancer.
A very bad cancer.
Hemangiosarcoma.
He told me she had a large tumor in her heart.
No cure.
Resistant to treatment.
She did not have long left in this world.
I was beside myself with grief. I felt like I had already lost her. I gave Derek the phone and the poor man had to explain it all again. You could hear the heartbreak in his voice. Ophelia was such a great dog, everyone fell in love with her. I imagine the entire time he was examining her he was just petting her and feeling terrible. We kept asking over and over, is there ANYTHING we can do. Surgery and chemo might give us 2-6 months with her, but she would suffer. There was no cure, treatment might not even work. She might not even survive surgery. The cardiologist recommended we just go pick her up, and take her home, and spend as much time as we could with her.
I called my mom, she was so understanding and supportive. Everyone loved Ophelia, but my mom especially loved her grand-dog. Ophelia used to stay with my mother while I went to work and would nap with my mom.
We decided to go pick her up. When we got there, she was considerably less energetic than when we dropped her off. They had her just hanging out with them, no leash or anything. While it warmed my heart they had her just hanging around and were spending time with her, it was also really sad for me to see her just slowly walking toward us. She was usually so energetic and rambunctious, she had been her whole life, all the way up until Wednesday morning. She came up to us and greeted us, then just laid down on the floor in front of us. She was more tired than before. It was like every movement sapped more and more of her strength.
The cardiologist came into the room. He showed us images of the tumor. It looked like it was taking up an entire chamber of her heart. Looking at it made my chest hurt, and I cried more. He explained that she would have had no symptoms of the cancer. That Ophelia wouldn't have even felt it or known it was there. He explained that on Wednesday morning, the tumor had bled into her heart and the area around it, and that sent her into shock. Her body had stabilized somehow, adjusted to the blood and fluid, that's why she seemed better after being treated at our usual vet's office. He said she did not need the antibiotics she was prescribed, there was no infection.
I think we asked the same questions over and over again about treatment options. I could hear the pain in Derek's voice as he kept asking what we should do, "what would you do if she was your dog?" I think Derek asked him. He said, "If she was my dog, I would take her home and love on her for the rest of the time she has left, and then help her along" and when he said that it made me think that he thought she was going to die later that day. But, he gave us a timeline of "a few days" with no treatment, which would turn out to be generous. He said she "might" have 2-6 months left with us if we did opt for surgery and chemo, but she would still succumb to the cancer, and she'd have the additional stress of recovery from a surgery. A surgery she might not even survive, and then chemo, which would have been horrible for her. The cost of all of that would have been from $10,000 to $20,000, which we would have GLADLY paid. We would have paid even more than that. We would have paid as much money as it took if it would have cured her, but all it would have done was buy us time with her and caused her suffering. That seemed selfish to us. Ophelia was such a sweet dog, I never wanted her to suffer. Not for one moment.
The cardiologist explained it was a matter of time before the tumor bled again, or ruptured. We asked him if there was anything that could be done to help her breathing, and what we should do if she went into shock again. He said we could have the fluid and blood drained away from the area around her heart, but that could actually destabilize her. He said the pressure of the fluid may be preventing the tumor from bleeding more at that moment, and that draining it away could cause hemorrhage.
We decided we would take her home. They gave us a list of veterinarians that make home visits to ease a pets passing.
On the way out of BAVS there was two other dogs that she saw, and she didn't even care, she was always very animated when she saw other dogs. She didn't want to pee when I walked her to the fake grass area they had there. I started feeling more and more like I had already lost my baby. I had her sit in my lap on the way home, just so I could hold her close to me. She used to like riding in my lap in the car. She ended up kind of collapsing in my arms and not being able to sit up again. I tried to just make her comfortable. I noticed that her belly was a little bigger than before, and her breathing was a little more labored.
Beautiful Ophelia
After we got her home and I got her comfortable. I felt like I needed to take as many pictures of her as I could.
We got home with her at about 11:30 AM. She went to the kitchen to drink water, but ended up getting water all over the floor somehow. It wasn't vomit, I don't know if she got a mouthful of water and then just spat it out, or what. I remembered that she had done that before we took her in to her vet on Wednesday, too. She went to couch, she waited up but couldn't do it, so we helped her up on to it.
I tried to make sure she knew how much we loved her. I gave her constant kisses. I pet her non-stop, until it seemed like petting her made her more uncomfortable, then I just stayed right next to her, petting her every few minutes.
We just sat with her and tried to keep her comfortable. But it seemed impossible, she kept flailing her legs like she was trying to move and adjust her position, but she didn't have the strength to move more than an inch or so. She would raise her head up and try to sit up, and then lay back down. I tried to feed her again, some steamed chicken, she really loved that. But she didn't want it. She didn't want to eat, and we knew that was a very bad sign. I brought the water bowl to her, she drank so much water. She would drink every time I brought the bowl to her then cough. She ran out of strength to sit up, so we supported her. She ran out of strength to hold her her head up to drink, so we held it. She kept coughing when she drank, like she was inhaling some water. Her breathing got worse and worse so fast. In a matter of hours she was too weak to sit up to drink. I started dipping my hand in the water bowl and letting her lick the water off my fingers, she seemed to like that, as she could just last on her side and still get moisture. I put water drops on her gums under her lip so her mouth wouldn't be too dry, she seemed to like that as well.
As stoic as she was, this picture really shows just how bad she must have felt.
We tried to keep her wrapped in a blanket because if we didn't she would get cold, but in her efforts to move she just kept kicking the blanket off. We were constantly having to adjust her position, trying to help her get comfortable, then wrapping her in the blankets again. I repeatedly tried to get her to eat but she never would. She wouldn't even try. I would put the food on her lips, try to get her to taste it, and she would turn away. Ophelia loved food her whole life, so this was a very bad sign.
By that afternoon it became apparent that her condition was deteriorating rapidly, her belly seemed to get larger little by little, filling up with fluid. We did at one point get her outside to try to see if her belly was so big because she needed to pee, but when we got her outside it wasn't clear that she even knew where she was. She just laid down on the sidewalk, so we got her back inside and wrapped up in a blanket again on the couch.
She was comfortable enough to sleep for a few minutes every so often. She was so exhausted.
It was hard to move her, she was obviously uncomfortable and any pressure on her belly or chest resulted in groans from her that suggested putting pressure there did not feel good. I couldn't help but think to myself, we should put her down now. I hated this thought, I cried and cried. I tried to hide my tears from Ophelia because my crying seemed to make her more anxious, but it was almost impossible, I just couldn't control it. But I knew, we had to let her go.
I realized that if we waited and tried to pull her through the night, the tumor was going to rupture, and that was going to be absolutely horrible for her and us. She would suffer badly. I knew if we tried to pull her through the night, she would get so bad that we would be desperate to get her to the emergency vet's to have her put down. Since moving her already seemed to increase her suffering, that was out of the question.
We used pillows and blankets to try to keep her comfortable, but nothing helped.
I thought about this really hard, and I knew it was time to let her go. Talking about this with Derek killed both of us. We were both just devastated, we could not BELIEVE this was happening to our dear Ophelia. Derek called every veterinarian on the list we had received from BAVS. We needed a veterinarian to come to our home, to let her sleep forever. We were not going to try to get her in the car and drive her anywhere, she was already very uncomfortable and obviously anxious.
I tried holding her to keep her comfortable, it seemed to help for a good long while.
Sometimes it seemed like she wasn't sure where she was. Sometimes it seemed like she wasn't recognizing us right away when she looked at us. When I think back on these last moments with her, I honestly wonder if she didn't have a tumor in her brain, as well, or if she was just not receiving enough oxygen, since by this point she was really struggling hard to breathe.
The next few hours were a blur of Derek making phone calls, coming back to Ophelia's side, then making more phone calls. We tried to get Abby to snuggle with her sister, but Abby was upset and kept hiding under our bed. Ophelia was so uncomfortable every so often she'd try to propel herself forward, she turned herself in circles this way many times. At one point she slid herself off the couch and into the floor. We got a doggie bed into the living room for her, which she saw and managed to stand up and, with our support, step into it, and then collapse. We laid on the floor next to her bed.
We wanted to hug her and hold her so much, but it was hard, we couldn't touch her belly without her groaning in discomfort, so we had to hug her and avoid her belly.
She continued to turn and turn, an inch or so at a time. Her breathing was getting worse fast. Abby started hanging around Ophelia more, sitting by the dog bed on the floor. Ophelia stayed in the bed for a few hours and then suddenly got up and sat in front of the couch. So we lifted her up. She felt heavier. During all this time she continued to drink water and not pee, her belly just getting slightly bigger over time. We didn't try taking her out again, but I had thought maybe she would need to go so bad she would just pee in the dog bed, but she never did.
Abby standing over Ophelia.
Nose touches from little sister.
Derek finally found a veterinarian named Dr. Amy who was very compassionate and understanding. At about 5 PM he called her back, and asked when the latest time she could come was. She said she would be able to be here at 8 PM. Things were kind of a blur of trying to keep Ophelia comfortable and helping her adjust her positioning. Ophelia ended up drinking a little more than a bowl and a half of water, not a small bowl either.
Our good friends Dave and Jenny came over at about 7 PM to say good bye to Ophelia. When they sat on the floor next to the couch to pet her, I saw Ophelia flop her tail in happiness. She was so happy to see them and couldn't express it. They stayed with her until the veterinarian came to the door.
Ophelia was so happy to see our friends.
I was really glad Ophelia got to see them one last time.
When the veterinarian got here I just kept thinking "This isn't real. This isn't actually happening. Oh god, this is real and it's actually happening." and I just couldn't believe it. I could not believe that this happened to my baby girl.
Dr. Amy spent a lot of time explaining everything to us and doing the paperwork. She agreed that Ophelia was suffering, that staying alive just to continue the struggle of breathing was way too hard for her.
We had to say goodbye.
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