This post is the first to be blocked from non-registered readers. If you want to read this, you need to register (then you get access to ALL posts and the possibility to comment), which you can do here. Once you've done that and logged in, you can continue reading about some of my musings about Ella and her old age.
I have like Having said that, I had a hell of a time with Ella. She has stayed healthy throughout her life, until a couple of years ago. It all started when she stepped crookedly on a rock up in the forest and limped a lot for a couple of weeks. After that she has limped on and off, sometimes more, sometimes less, sometimes she has mostly gone a little dirty.
Until the weekend before my birthday, when I thought I would have to remove her pronto. I have never in all my dog's life seen her in such bad shape. She was in so much pain she was about to snap. She could hardly sit – she had such a pain in her back that it showed in the way she sat. She could barely stand, the less go. Most of the time I push it away, that's how disgusting it was.
Now we had lucky that there were some painkillers left since her life's first urinary tract infection a few months earlier, and they helped – Thankfully. Also thank God we got the money together so we could go to the vet and get pain pills again. A really big package – expensive so into hell, but worth it.
The less the news about Ella's probable mammary tumors was pleasant. Considering her age and physical condition, I have no thoughts whatsoever of operating on her. Jag tycker att hon är för gammal och det är ingenting jag har lust att utsätta henne för. Min tanke är att det håller så länge det håller, och när det inte håller längre.. då är det dags.
Det läskiga är to – well, jag har hittat det jag misstänker är de här eventuella tumörerna. Det är två (small) vindruvsstora knölar under spenen längst ner mot ljumsken på ena sidan. Men för några dagar sen hittade jag en knöl till, på spenen ovanför.
Hur tusan ska jag tänka om det? Jag inser ju att det sprider sig. Men ska jag tänka att det sprider sig snabbt? Och hur ska jag tänka, oavsett om det är snabbt eller inte? Nu har hon precis börjat släppa päls, and from July onwards she will run. I googled mammary tumors and read somewhere that they grow faster with rennet (or if it was the other way around!?).
Anything else I read is that mammary tumors can cause the teats to ooze. Her bottom two on the same side as the lumps have been liquefying for quite some time – but I thought at first that maybe it was a false pregnancy from her last run. I've never been through this, so I kind of have zero idea.
But the worst of all is that my dog has never smelled bad in his life (you know; wet dog).. All of a sudden she smells so bad that I almost snap. Not all the time, but sometimes it's like she's released the world's most disgusting dog fart – the room really fills with an awful smell. I have read that this also happens to bitches with mammary tumors.
And so thinks I think it's summer soon. With summer heat, in other words, not just the fantastically lovely weather we have at the moment (and I mean it – loves cool temperatures and hates summer heat). Last summer was terribly stressful for all of us here at home. How will it be now?, considering that Ella is in such bad shape? At the end of February, two of my best friends said that Ella had put on some weight. A month later, she is so thin under her fur that I can grab her hip bones, I can feel the pits in her skeleton. It is not visible on the outside of the coat, but she doesn't have a single muscle as far as her fingers can feel.
I'm terrified for the day it's time. There are so many things to be afraid of. The loss itself is only one thing to be afraid of, and I'm not necessarily afraid of that. I just don't want to experience it.
The uncertainty is it worst. Not that it would be any better if I knew we had a week left together. Neither option is good. But it is precisely uncertainty that I find so terribly stressful. We have a couple of months left? Half a year? A couple of years?
Periodically think I like this so much it's a wonder I'm not completely white. Right now a few more thoughts are starting to come, after being quite calm for a few weeks. We'll see how much I think about this further as time goes on.