Goodbye My Sweet Angel

I euthanized Lindy this morning. It was very peaceful. We tried to do it on my bed but we couldn't place a catheter because she had some weird bleeding diathesis and formed a huge hematoma whenever we poked her. So we took her to the ICU for catheter placement.

I euthanized her in the quiet room reserved for euthanasia. I stroked and kissed her head while her doctor injected propofol and her head slumped into my hand. Then we gave her a massive overdose of barbituates. I didn't expect to cry but I started to tear up and cried the whole way home.

My only regret is that I did not have the strength to let her go a day or two earlier. She definitely had a lot of pleural fluid again on Friday during her echo even though we had tapped her Wednesday night. I am sure it was not comfortable for her to breathe her last days and I regret that I kept hoping she would get better and just couldn't give up that hope until this morning.

She was only 9, but she'd been in renal failure her whole life and so had quite a long life for a renal failure patient. I had been giving her fluids for the past three years, every day. She just hadn't been right this fall, she was so weak and vomited frequently and was inappetant. I felt certain it was her time.

I never did find out what caused the pleural effusion and Lindy to fail as a result. The echo was showed a normal heart with mildly decreased contractility but normal cardiac output, wall thickness and atria size. The other differentials are some kind of cancer (lymphoma, mesothelioma), vasculitis secondary to the uremia or pressure from the pseudocyst on her kidney causing blood to regurgitate back into the aorta and leak that way.
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Dear Lindy,

I will miss you so much. You were such a sweet cat. You never once tried to scratch or bite me even though I poked you with an 18 gauge needle multiple times a day for years and poked your neck and bladder frequently for blood and urine samples. The worst thing you ever did was wiggle a little when things really hurt, like when we tapped your chest the week you died.

I will miss your deep purrs, how you liked to crawl under the covers and curl up next to my chest at night. The way you curled one side of your lip up in a smile when you were happy to see me. The way you always wanted one part of you to be touching me, whether it was your paw on my leg, your side against my arm or your the tip of your tail just touching my hand.

It is so unfair that you had to suffer so much in life, sweet girl. You were very stoic right up until the end, eating, drinking, grooming, cuddling, going outside to lie in the sun and sitting in the window looking out.

You taught me so much about what it means to care for a sick pet and that will be invaluable to me when I become a doctor and will help me to be compassionate with clients in similar situations. Thank you for teaching me about how important it is to be an astute observer, how even an astute observer can miss the subtle signs of dyspnea and how difficult it can be to make a decision about euthanasia when what is going on is a mystery.

I will miss you and love you always.

HT