RIP the Bean
The Bean died on Monday.
I brought her home from the hospital on Sunday 22nd January. They let me take her home, not because they thought she was dying, but because she was so bright and cheerful. She caused quite a lot of confusion to the vets I think, because her medical signs- the levels of toxic bilirubin in her blood, the severe yellowness of her jaundice, would, they told me, in other dogs have them crying in pain and lying down to die. The Bean was depressed in her cage, but out of it was playing, wagging, sniffing around. Living. They thought sending her home might help her to carry on living.
The vets said that they had, however, run out of medical options for her. They were recommending surgery to investigate further why she wasn't getting better and also to try and improve the situation re her bilirubin levels by doing a bile duct by-pass. They would also put in a feeding tube straight into her abdomen. The Bean, my tough, stoic dog, hadn't eaten more than one or two mouthfulls of food a day since becoming suddenly ill on 28th December.
I brought her home believing that being at home would make her want to eat and that she would build up her strength, get better enough to cope with surgery. I wanted her to have the surgery, I thought, because I believed she could get better. She was so strong- I knew that. Her life so far had been full of incidents where she demonstrated super dog strength. It was really expensive and the insurance had run out but I had money I was going to spend on me and Charlotte going to Japan that I would spend to save my dog instead- and if I ran out of money- I'd get more. I wasn't joking about the sponsored run.
In the first couple of days of being back home, I managed to get her to eat a bit by persistence and subterfuge. I engineered a rivalry for the food between the dog and the cat which succesfully prompted the bean to eat some tuna in order to prevent the cat from eating it. When she would no longer eat tuna, I fed her fingerfulls of baby food. I wiped food on her toys so she would eat a bit by mistake when playing. Her appetite would occasionally be piqued by a morsel of food from our plates.
It became increasingly clear that she wasn't going to start eating. In fact she became more repelled by food and gave up eating altogether on 27th Jan. I carried on trying to feed her but it was stressful for us both so I gave up trying too a few days later.
Even though the recovery I had hoped for didn't come, I still hung on for a while to my conviction that the surgery was the right thing to do. I told myself and others that I couldn't cope with her dying, knowing I hadn't done all I could do to save her. That she was really strong and clearly wanted to live. That I had to let her have the operation for the tiny chance that it might save her life.
Charlotte had from the beginning, challenged me about whether the operation was really the right thing and had helpful conversations with me about quality of life and choosing a peaceful death. I did a lot of thinking about this and more talking with C and my counsellor. I began to realise that my conviction about the operation was more about me trying to divorce myself from responsibility for the Bean's inevitable death. If I put her through the operation I could satisfy myself that I had tried everything. If she died on the operating table, or didn't recover afterwards, it would be the vets, not me, who had failed her.
It was easier, having worked this out, to see that to really do right by the Bean (and the people too) would be to let her live out what life she could at home and in peace. Not to put her through major surgery and further hospitalisation.
So that is what we did. My undying gratitude is owed to Charlotte for her help everyday in making sure that in the 22 days that the Bean lived after her discharge, that dog had only half an hour on her own and I was able to carry on going to work and to my Japanese class. (Thanks also to Simon, Sylvie, Simona and Ceri) This was a great gift we were able to give her. The Bean really loved being with the people, being on the settee in the middle and being in the bed under the covers. She got all of this everyday in her last 3 weeks on earth.
RIP the Bean. No, not rest in peace, rip it up, rip up that cardboard box.