I made it into work today. With the three-day weekend coming up, I think I can tough out one day here.
Looking back at my last two blog entries, it’s apparent that much happened between “I do think we’ll be taking Mickey home alive.” and “Our Mickey passed to the Rainbow Bridge tonight. “
In a nutshell, he had an afternoon of tough tests. The results didn’t let us know exactly WHY he was so sick. But we did learn that his right lung was almost flooded with a bloody mucus, his heart was pretty damaged, his liver was enlarged, and he had four bodily systems in failure. He had to be sedated because he didn’t feel comfortable breathing while lying down. The alternatives were 1) more tests, involving general anesthesia from which he probably wouldn’t survive; 2) a “Wait and See” approach, where we’d let him linger for 3 or 4 days and see if he inexplicably gets better, or 3) do the ‘humane’ thing and let him go.
We decided to let him go. Dr. Biele affirmed that our decision was, in fact, the humane one. It’s not good when a doctor says, “There are just so many things wrong with him.” They eased up on the sedation so that Mickey would be up and about when we said goodbye. He licked our hands and wagged his tail happily when he saw us (David, Mom, John, and me) . That was very hard — I almost wish that they had left him sedated. Mom and David stayed with him as he fell asleep. It was quick and peaceful. I stayed outside the room with John. I’m such a wimp. Dr. Biele gave us a piece of clay with an imprint of Mickey’s paw and his name etched into it. I baked it last night. It’s on Noelle’s shelf, along with Mickey’s picture.
The apartment is amazingly quiet without him. Cats are quiet beasts, except when they fight. There’s a certain joy to a house that only a dog can bring.
