Monday night 1/22/18 I called my vet and made the appt. I cried all day. I knew Samson was so miserable. He had let me know like two weeks ago he couldn’t go on.
I extended his life took him to University of Penn to learn the virus destroyed bone in his sinuses and had finally lead to nasal bone lymphoma that had spread to his liver, spleen and was affecting other things. (To learn this we are in debt to the tune of 7 grande, can you imagine? Pray for us on that bill to pay ) I have cried off & on since, almost hysterical because he was so sweet, so communicative so affectionate so intelligent smarter than all the others…
I told him throughout the day I was taking him to the Vet tonight, and I was going to set him free of his misery and pain.
He came to my chair at work desk around 5:30 pm looking like he might want to come up on my lap. I brought him up he jumped down, so I just reached and petted his soft haired head. GavinLaRue came over and licked him a bit. When it was time to leave I put him in a high walled bed and carried him to the car.
In the car he started purring and rubbing his face on my neck and face and hands. The whole drive he did this n in the office he did this. I think he knew this was goodbye? They put us in a room alone with him. He would stand up n head butt Ricks face then back to me the whole 15 min till vet came in.
She stooped down on her haunches and said there were a couple ways she could do this No on ever have me this choice before. She gave him an IM injection that fairly slowly put him to sleep while I held him. But he was still breathing and I still petting and holding him. When his tongue was sticking out eyes open, she said he might be like in dentist chair drugged can hear but don’t care.
I didn’t want to be there for the last deadly needle so she took him lie handing over a towel with outstretched baby on it and left to take him to another room while we went to the car. It hurts so-very very bad. I want to awaken from this nightmare. But I know I will not.
He is gone.. freed from the pain in his facial bones his body from misery of the virus & lastly the the lymphoma.
Here is my story,… the history to this painful night.
I was looking for a kitten, I like long hair, reached into the pet shop window box and touched the back of this tiny mite, the purr rang up out of this little thing and he raised his back for more, more more… I had to have him!
I brought him home in 2002. He was a character! A little terror at times as he teased and corner Silka in a litter box! At other times as I sat at the kitten table working on a project, he would come to my chair and let out a little cry for help up, I reached my hand down and he would clmib into my palm and wrap his upper paws around my wrist holding on tight as I lifted him up. He would nestle in for a love session until curiosity took him elsewhere.
I had a work table near my kitchen sink. It wasn’t too much of a jump for him and the first time he did it he gave me quite a fright as he leaped from the table to my shoulders, swaggered himself around into a comfortable shawl around my neck, with rear paws over the left shoulder, one to the back and one to the front, his face snuggling up to mine on the other side, breathing sniffing and purring, all at the same time.
He was the smartest kitty in the house! There came a time over the years that I needed to put the food away behind cabinet doors. He figured that right out. All he had to do was stand on his hind feet and curl two little furry paws around the handle and pull! His eight little pounds were just enough to make that door give. Of course if the door was open, this meant that Samson ate for sure, and probably some that should have only eaten their speciality diet instead.
In the fall of 2014 he got sick with some sort of sinus infection. He was about 13 years old then. I took him to the vet and they gave him antibiotics, not a big deal. Only,… he got sick again in about two months. And back I went. This became the continum. Why, I wonder aloud to the vet. “Ah, more than likely he has the herpes virus.” he said. He shrugged his shoulders with a communication about for his age he has lived a good life and it won’t be so long till he’s dead, after all he is thirteen. I could not afford the test. Not all of us who love animals, actually have the money to afford it. But that dosesn’t stop us, does it?
I took him to another Vet. She was willing to help me fight for his little sweet life. He was such a very good little patient. tolerant of the doctors pokes and probes and needles. I on the other hand, I took to the internet.
I went hunting for anything and everything to help him fight. I even asked the pastor at our that time church to pray for him, after all, God made this sweet little creature. I was always doing what I could to make life better for him. I put normal saline drops up his nose to help keep it wet enough to blow out the mucus. He learned to “blow” when I told him to, I said it so often!
Sometimes at 3Am in the night when he could hadrly breath he would come wake me for a couple of drops, by standing on my chest, turning around laying down, stand up and do it all over again. I kept saline drops at the bedside.
By Spring 2017, things were getting worse. It was time my vet said to get him a rhinoscopy. How much does that cost? $2500.00! I cannot believe my own ears. Since when did medicine for animal cost as much as it does for humans? All I could do was keep putting charges on the “cards”. I was always asking for antibiotics, or more prednisone, I was ordering Famciclovir which is not cheap, Anything I could learn of to help his immune system fight, anything to keep his from going to a wall and laying there unsocial and in misery. We learned it was the Calicivirus and some other germ. Agin, back to the interent.
I bought higher protein foods, liquid vitamis, gave him L-lysine , Vit C, even some of the homeyopathic stuffs like Colloid Silver, Aloe Juice, someone said it fights cancer, …… In the fall of 2017 he had some really good weeks finally. I took him on vacations with us to be sure he got what he needed. I felt all the vitamins were helping. Then he started bleedling from the nose, and getting swollen places on his face. A different antibiotic would throw out the ous and take the swelling down. It was very irritating to have various vets at these 24/7 places touch his face and say, oh that feels like tumor.. despite my telling them, “tumors don’t go back down to normal after giving antibiotic”. But some of them you cannot tell them anything.. and they weren’t there after the treatment to see what I mean, nor were they likey to believe the photographs I showed them.
Novemebr 2017 he was doing so well I thoughtI would try to wean him off the predisolone. Maybe this was the worse thing to do but he got sick within two weeks sick like never before. I return to a 24/7 vet hospital place, because don’t these things always happen when your vet cannot be there, its the weekend. The female who was on that night was for some reason a bitch! All I wanted was for someone to help him feel better. Help him breath better, help him be rehydrated. It seems her ego was totally threatened by the fact I knew so much about his illness that I was switching his antibiotics, I was determining for him what he needed or what wasn’t working. She didn’t think that after treating and caring and searching and seeking over 27 months, I actully might know something? How dare I not being a vet be determining these things? With her arms crossed in a haughty manner she said, So what can I do for you?
I said, well I think he is dehydrated, he isn’t eating and he isnt drinking, and he is hanging out by the stove. well I can do that for you she said smartly.
I added, his face is beginning to swell. She touched his face gently, Well looks like tumor to me……. You need to make an appointment in the morning with the pulmonary doctor you have seen before. I said, well I tried to today, but (on a wednesday) they told me that the software is down and that they would call me on Monday to make an appointment. To this she had nothing to say. I knew if I didn’t do something different he wasn’t even going to make it till Monday if there was help for him.
Sure enough the next day his nose started bleeding again. He was looking quite miserable. I called around trying to find the best way to go for him. Someone to,d me to take him down to the University of Penn. They are the best around.
That they are….. they are tried to do “a diagnostic workup”.. after all they are doctors still in school but high up the ladder. I was too tired mentally to take charge, to see to it that they only did what was necessary, for him. One of the sweet doctors there told me , “You have taken very good care of him.” I am still not sure what she meant, was it length of life? His appearance? .. (It took me half an hour a day to prepare his vitamins crush, put in a sweet high cal mix, clean his nose, and sweet talk him, and eye dropped into the side of his mouth, right down to his favorite part.. giving him some-make-him handsome-again-brushin. If he got to far out of my reach, I would say… come back here if you want more brushin…. and he would come back around for another stand still sweep. Now and again I got a little head butt in the knee, I guess expressing some appreciation yet for me despite the yucky tasting vitamins given he.
I don’t know why it seems these things so often happen to me. I took him to HUP Thursday. evening. They called Friday morning to ask me what they could do. They said they wanted to do the facial CT.. I said go ahead… but they didn’t somehow get that. and so it was prolonged until the following Wednesday. They found other things to do to make my bill run up. We think we should do more lab tests, we should really do an ultrasound of his belly and see why some of his liver enzymes are up.. his calcium is too high, maybe we should do an FNA on the nodule on his liver…NO! When they finally did the CAT scan of his face. Guess what…NO TUMOR. However, they did another rhinoscopy and took bx’s of his nasal bone tissue……Large B- cell Lymphoma. And now you know the basic story. I am crying again as I miss my smart little smart…..loving….. purring…… huggy…….. buddy.
I woud have told you two years ago that there is no way I would spend this kind of money on and elderly pet. But then, I didn’t know I would be so enthralled with his personality, I didn’t know that he understood so many things, I didn’t know he was so smart he knew he needed me nd the help of the doctors to keep going on… He understood my love for him, and he knew before I did, it was time for him to go. So I have spent us into great debt more than we can afford over these three years making some bills missed and some later being paid. My husband wondered about bankrupcy, but we would losing the housing for not only us, but the rest of our pets. And besides that, the bills really are my responsibility, not his. So, I thought for all the other cat lovers who know how it is and understand, perhaps you would help me with this final hospital bill that filled up my Care Credit Card, which I paid off once when my elderly aunt died, a blessing in itself, otherwise we wouldn’t have gotten any help, insight, extensed days or answers, for my sweet Samson dear. May he greet me at Heavens gates and ride my shoulders round heaven forevermore.
If you do, I do Thank you forever so much.
PS. I recommend this wonderful book called
“Cold Noses At the Pearly Gates” by Gary Kurz |
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