And So It Happened

I said goodbye to my beloved Beau yesterday.

It turned out he had several large masses in his abdomen and they were cancerous. The vet told me this type of cancer is always fatal and even if we had caught it at the very beginning he would have had at most 6 more months from the time they caught it. That was with expensive surgery to remove the tumor and expensive chemo as a follow up. I make $11/hour. I would never have been able to afford that.

While I know there was nothing to be done I still feel like I failed him. If I hadn’t been poor, scraping by to wipe my ass and eat both in the same month, I would have taken him in earlier, and thereby ended his suffering earlier. If I hadn’t been so eager to believe his weight loss was due to advanced old age I would have found an extra hour or extra $300 to take him in despite the long workdays and 6 day work weeks. I could have just explained to the kids that it was going to be a mac-n-cheese/hot dogs/peanut butter and jelly sandwiches kinda month so I could afford the vet bill. But instead I was selfish and blind and my poor dog suffered for it.

I was there at the end for him. The vet originally discouraged me from staying because he said as deteriorated as his body was the drugs might not act as quickly. I told him I wanted to be there anyway. I wasn’t going to leave him alone in his final minutes. I might have failed him tremendously in these last few months but I could do the decent thing and not abandon him now.

They put him on the table and administered the drugs as I held him and stroked his neck. He had a moment where it seemed like he was trying to get up but I just held him and told him to relax. He slumped against me, the third drug was given and he was gone.

Farewell, my hunky monkey. I’m so sorry I failed you in your final months.  You were loved and you will be missed.