An addition to the sadness

 2/11/2023: Well, as expected, I have not been back to this blog much since my last post a couple of months ago. Alisa's progression has progressed unfortunately, and her speech is really suffering. This is part of the brutality of #ALS - it just keeps taking things away from you. As one of our friends said, we have to keep "riding the waves of loss." Quite accurate, but some are worse than others. For my dear Lis, speaking is something she was good at, and always had lots of nice things to say to people, so I can't imagine how difficult it is to have her preferred form of expression curtailed so drastically, especially in the devastating drip, drip, drip fashion that it happens in #ALS. We are just over a year in from diagnosis (1/13/22), which is both hard to believe, and depressing, especially looking back at how she was a year ago, speaking reasonably well, walking well, etc. A picture came up on my phone of her and Bella up on Mt Toby right about a year ago, with snow and ice. Alisa had her hiking poles, and made good work of the walk as I remember. So even though her progression feels relatively slow day to day, the degradation is most certainly happening, as are her falls, which she has had at least a dozen and miraculously not been seriously injured.  There is more to say about what has been happening, but most of that is chronicled on Caring Bridge.

My main intent on this post was to remember my dog Bella, who has been also getting progressively worse over the last 2 years, and especially the last year along with Alisa. I had been dreading the idea of dealing with her decline and death in addition to everything with Lis. But it happened, and was mercifully relatively quick. On Friday 2/3/2023, actually the early morning of Saturday, she kept leaving my bedroom and going downstairs, which usually means she is having gut issues. And further proof of her being the best dog ever, if she is having gut issues and can't hold it, she goes down to the basement and goes on the concrete floor instead of somewhere in the main house. Amazing. I caught her the first time in the basement and was able to get her outside before she went. But the second time, I couldn't catch her in time, which may have been for the best, as her stool was extremely bloody, with fresh red blood (as opposed to her black tarry stools that she has had other times, which I didn't know indicated dried blood farther up the digestive tract). This alarmed me, needless to say, and I contacted a new local vet we have been using since we can't seem to get into our normal vet. They initially said there were no openings, but checked again and agreed to let me in about 45 min later. After examining her, they said her stomach was tender and suggested an ultrasound. The ultrasound revealed she had multiple large tumors that were invading multiple internal organs. Uggghhh. So nothing really to be done, except schedule her euthanasia. They offered to do it right then, but I was not ready, and could not have done it without Alisa having a chance to say goodbye. So I drove her home while trying to see clearly through my tears. They gave us some drugs to help her be comfortable while we came to terms with a difficult decision. So we spent the rest of the weekend with her, and took her to her favorite place to walk, Mt Toby.  That was a really tough walk for me, again through tears. There wasn't really much of a decision, but dammit if she wasn't fairly perky that weekend. The vet had made clear that there was a significant risk of a "bleed out" or massive hemorrhage, which would be terrible for her (and us). So we called on Monday, and scheduled the euthanasia for a home visit, which was a nice thing to be able to do.

So she is gone, and there is a hole in my heart. I said after I was present at my last dog Kahla's euthanasia that I was not going to do that again because of how painful it was. But here I was doing it again, because it felt like the right thing to do in spite of the pain. And I think it was. But to have Alisa there too, holding Bella's head was somehow better and more difficult. I don't know how to parse the feelings right now. But I just wanted to my best to honor her. I want to put together a social media post, but the choosing of pictures is a real challenge - we have literally hundreds that we have gathered.

So off I go to try to do that, again probably through some tears.