How To Say Goodbye

JD passed peacefully a day after we brought her home, looking out the open balcony window, while we were at church last Sunday. We weren’t gone that long, and had left her stable, fed and calm, but she was completely gone, with no signs of a struggle, when we got back.

It was the most merciful, blessed passing we could have hoped for.

No! Wait!! I want to take care of you! I want to put my life on hold for awhile, to nurse you faithfully just as you loved me so unconditionally all your life! 

I thought I was going to be nursing her til the next review of anti-seizure meds in a month. I was buckling down to do just that. Because as long as my best friend kept sticking around against all odds, I was going to meet her halfway. If/when she decided she had had enough, I would let her go. It was the most loving thing I could think to do for her. She gave me, us, so many years of love.

I once prayed that where I landed in my leap of faith over whether to bring 4month old JD home out of the blue was the right decision. I never regretted it, but a Border Collie in Singapore and Hong Kong is not exactly always easy to tend to as nature intended, for the breed. I never looked back. Raising and training this hardcore working dog meant for farms and chores, who initially had behavioural problems to boot, was good and very needful for me.I gave up all my gym time and hunkered down to figure out how to train this screaming thing under our sofa, or at least get her to go with me to classes. (We flunked out for about a year 😀 )

Over Easter Break I spent all my free time while the kids were at camp going to see her, at one point taking her home until she had to go for more tests, feeding her kibble one piece at a time.

As for the “emotional roller coaster,” this was the cause – when she first went down about 8 months ago, tests had indicated she likely had only 2-3 months left to live, she was that far gone. We had grieved, looked at palliative care…. and instead of 2-3, she had lived another almost-8 months before one day doing a little stumble along Repulse Bay where the kids regularly had pasta and she dug a big hole on the beach.

This is it. She’s had all morning with us, the last 8 months have been a blessed gift. Not a bad way to go. 

I can’t just watch her die though, so despite all the regular clinics we were in contact with apologetically saying no one can come that far to help, promising to be ready to save her if we made it all the way over, I go stand at the side of the beach road and try to flag a cab. When I manage to, I beg the cabbie to wait, then run back through the mall shortcut, back down the escalator and to the entrance where my best friend of the last 15 years is gasping for breath, her tongue purple. (Air pressure buildup in her chest squeezing her airways shut, from leaks likely brought about by her still trying to jump into cars and run up and down stairs, despite weaker legs – she hit her chest about once a week on stairs on getting in and out of taxis – inconsequential blows for a young dog, but one of the many vets we met offered a most plausible no-brainer theory – that at her age soft tissue might have eroded away, making her bones especially sharp and hard, enough to puncture her own airways whenever she fell on her chest) I enlist two teenaged boys walking a Pom to help me hold the cabbie and carry JD’s other half.

The kids and I say our loving goodbyes to her in the taxi on the way over. She makes it to the clinic and they initially think she’s stable. The nurse offers me a spare pair of nurse uniform pants from their clinic. I assume it’s because my clothes are covered in the phlegm and drool my beloved border collie has expelled in her efforts to breathe, and I decline, “It’s ok, I don’t care about that.” I just care that she’s ok! Just make her ok!!

Kings has arrived from the office and he gently tells me to put the pants on. The sides of the white slacks I am wearing are heavily smeared with animal faeces from her struggle. I had not even noticed.

As we’re sitting there a helper runs in carrying a bloodied Shiba Inu, followed by a grim-looking youngish caucasian man who turns out to have been passing by when he sees the helper and brings her to this clinic. The Shiba is pronounced dead on arrival from a hit-and-run, after the dog ran onto the busy mid-levels street, and the staff try to find his owner off the helper who is sitting on the floor crying. They eventually search clinic files instead and locate the owner’s number.

The dog’s owner comes in tearfully from work and spends some time with him alone in the next room. She leaves with her partner. Awhile later the dog’s helper/ walker comes back in and asks if she left her earphones in the clinic. In all, about 6 hours pass.

JD is transferred to a 24 hour facility. They tell us she may not wake up ever. This new revelation for some reason causes even more anguish for me. I thought she was going. Then I thought she was stable. Now I find she may be severely brain damaged from lack of oxygen anyway.

In the van going over to the 24 hour facility to nurse/driver asks me if I’ve considered Euthanasia. He tells me there are vets who make house calls and also do this.

Next morning I’m called and told she has in fact woken up. I drop the kids in camp and rush over.

That’s when the roller coaster really takes off. She comes home. They say they can’t believe she is not a vegetable. She crashes at the follow up. She crashes on the transfer. I watch her die several times over. She keeps coming back up to the point beyond needing to euthanise her. So they transfer her for extensive tests. Everything would eventually come back negative.We thought she had a very high likelihood of cancer. She doesn’t have cancer! She doesn’t have any of the terminal things they thought she had. She’s still having seizures in the night, which they say is likely due to being without oxygen for so long at Repulse Bay. Still they test her. Nothing ever comes up conclusive. No cancer in the abdomen, no throat paralysis or other clear respiratory system problem. For awhile I think she’s getting better. Then I get another call in the night about another “seizure” and we are pushed to do another heart test.

I bring her home the next day. They give us all the meds and teach me how to insert a suppository should she seizure again. I can see a light slowly return to her eyes as we’re all holding her in the car and she realises from the car window that we are going home.

I make side arrangements that should it become necessary, we will be able to euthanise her at home (there are “roaming” vets who make housecalls by appointment, but they only work office hours – so the big risk is that should she have a complication in the night we either have to wait til morning or bring her back to one of the emergency clinics she loathes). I talked this over with the kids. That if the worst happened, that there was a wait before she could have medical attention, they would go to the next room and busy themselves, knowing I first had the stuff the hospital and clinic taught me to do, and if that didn’t work we would have to wait it out til proper medical assistance could arrive. Thing is, that already happened to us in the worst and most unexpected way at Repulse Bay the other day.

To the best of our ability she will not suffer a painful end, no matter that she and I desperately wanted for her to pass away when she was ready, in the familiar surroundings of our home, rather than the hospitals she’s so terrified of. Lovingly, we envisioned that all she would know was that she made it home. Bedtime in the kids’ bedroom as always, while they were at school or camp. That would be the last thing she remembered. Both kids know this. HN buried Gemma, her first hamster, not too long ago. Sleeping and not waking up doesn’t sound like such a bad way to go.

That night with JD is everything we could ask for. I have a makeshift stretcher and we wheel her all over the home just the way she likes to move around following the family from room to room. We all eat together watching Annie. Then tv. We stay up late. Then I carry her into the kids’ bedroom just like always. She never has a seizure or other difficulty breathing, but every time she makes a sound I sit bolt upright and finally decide to switch on the pure oxygen machine we have borrowed for the night, if only for my own peace of mind. She stares at me blandly and grunts.

The next morning is Sunday. It’s a wonderful time of taking turns to feed her, and we leave her looking out the open balcony window to go to church. This time when I say “Stay. We will be back soon,” I’m almost sure I get a look. 

She must have gone not too long after we left. It was an incredibly merciful and peaceful passing. No signs of struggle or pain.

There is a pet cremation/ funeral service that makes housecalls – yes even on a Sunday evening. For awhile I can’t stop touching her fur. I know what made her her is gone, but I cannot help missing her so terribly.

At some point during this ordeal HN had remarked, “I don’t want a little dog after JD anymore, Mummy. Because of what I see you going through.”

Later, she clings to me and sobs, just the once (both kids otherwise shed a few tears, but I am the one experiencing the most intense grief by far – the kids have always identified JD, mature border collie as she is, as my pet – Rockstar otherwise holds me tightly and wordlessly if I cry). “I know you keep saying you knew her for 15 whole years, but I knew her my whole life,” HN says.

And so healing begins. Even as we all know there will never be another for us like JD.