Phin and Pham

 The other day I let my manager know things were going on with Phineas, and he wished us luck, told us to take all the time we needed, and sent best wishes to Phin and Pham. 

That made me smile. 

Last night at about 9pm, Phin passed away on the living room floor. Around 1pm he started yelling. And he would only stop if I was petting him. I did my meetings from the floor, with him against my leg, head in my lap. If I needed to type, he'd lift his head and yell. If I got up to go to the bathroom, he'd yell. It wasn't howling or barking or whining. It was yelling. It was kind of weird. Not the normal sound this dog ever made. He wasn't a whiner or whimperer. He would yell if we put him in the kennel and this was kind of the same, loud and demanding.

I was happy to give him all the pats he needed, all the reassurances. And ride it out. I would have taken him in yesterday if Doug wasn't at work. I didn't want to take him in alone, I wanted Doug to be there. "Hi, just so you know, I took Phin to the vet and put him to sleep. Sorry you couldn't be there. I suck." 

I realized during the day that he could not see. I would go to pat him, or put the water dish under his nose and he'd be surprised. He'd stick his nose in the bowl of water and blow bubbles but not drink. Okay buddy. The thirstiest dog in the world, is not drinking. We've turned a corner.

Around 3pm I called the vet and they said that they didn't think that he had a seizure after all, that he most likely had a stroke. If he wasn't getting better, was disinterested in food and water, couldn't stand, there really wasn't any coming back from this. Just keep him comfy tonight, and bring him in tomorrow (today). Without an MRI and tons of expensive tests, we can't know for sure, but. The vet we'd been working with wasn't in yesterday but they had all her notes. I was happy to go in when she was working, on Thursday, and have her with us. 

Ride it out.

Doug got home from work at 7. I had ordered chinese food (and ate an unbelievable amount of it), and I tried to nap, since I had 3 hours of sleep the night before. I figured I'd be with him in the living room overnight, and if he was going to yell all night, I wasn't going to sleep. 

At around 8, he was really yelly, and I wasn't napping, so I came out to see Doug on the floor holding him. When I started touching him and talking to him he stopped screaming. Doug said that he must have wanted me. I told Doug I thought we needed to go to the emergency vet. He wasn't going to make it through the night like this. It wasn't fair, whatever it was. And Doug sat up to get his shoes on.

We got a little water into him, and I was so happy to see him drink. I took him outside to try and pee, because I figured he may want to. But he was rubber. Just flopped down, like the no bones dog Noodle. 

It's a no bones kind of night, buddy. Predicting our mood, just like Noodle. So I picked him up to bring him inside and we got in the front door, he puked the water up, so I set him down right inside the door. Doug got a towel to clean up the water, and he went rigid, and started to breathe hard and fast. 

"He's going," Doug said. "This is just what Gonzo did. This is it." So Doug stepped over, and put his hands on him, and encouraged him that we were there, it was okay.  I called Geoff upstairs, I wanted him to be there if he wanted. So he came up. We all told him what a good boy he was. 

It took about 15 minutes, but, he breathed his last. 

I'm just going to post this now - as it was yesterday's entry to begin with. I will have an official post for today coming up. 

Thank you Phineas, for being the weirdo we needed in our lives.

digits below

digits

exercise: 11/12 hours of 250 steps. (missed 8pm because we were dealing with actively dying dog)

blood glucose:

9am: 180
4:45pm: 141
11pm: 364 *** (note, forgot to take the dinner time metformin+jardiance...)

food:

coffee, water, iced tea
10:30am pbj sandwich on 647 white bread
11:30am: Metformin
7pm: chinese food - general gao's chicken, mongolian beef, shrimp curry, combo fried rice, 3 pan fried dumplings, one egg roll
11pm: metformin+jardiance