I'm a veterinary technician and I suffered burnout and compassion fatigue. I quit my job at a vet hospital last August and I've been adrift ever since.
Copernicus got sick in the middle of October. He didn't eat breakfast one morning. Very unusual for him because food was everything to him. I checked him out and palpated his abdomen. Good thing I know what I'm looking for - I felt a small mass in his upper abdomen. I texted my friend who is a vet at a different clinic from the one I had worked at. She was going to go to the clinic for me to look at him. God was I thankful for that.
When I got there we weighed him. I don't recall exactly what his previous weight was and for the life of me I can't remember what his weight was that day but it was a small drop. She examined him and palpated the mass. We took some blood and ran it. Ultimately there wasn't much on the bloodwork except for a drop in protein.
I kept an eye on him for a couple of weeks. His appetite was off and on, nothing really getting any better or worse. My friends clinic was having an ultrasound demo and they needed pets so we scheduled a day for me to bring Copernicus back.
When she palpated him she felt the mass had grown. We ultra sounded it and found that it was wrapped around or growing into his intestine. She sedated him and aspirated a small sample from the mass. I waited in agony for a couple of days until it came back. It didn't specifically indicate malignant cancer (the big one being lymphoma) but it showed bacteria (possibly from within the intestine itself) and lymphocytes. She suggested started him on antibiotics for a possible cystic infection. He didn't do well on the meds. He stopped eating.
Wednesday night was an awful night. Copernicus was restless, not settling down. He was painful and would sit and stare at the floor. He was sleeping on the heat registers because he was so cold. When I went to bed he slept on my pillow beside my head. He tried jumping on the counter in the bathroom and onto the windowsill in the bedroom. He couldn't because he was too weak.
Thursday morning I texted my friend. I told her I had palpitated his abdomen and felt a second mass. I told her he was weak and cold. She asked THE question. Was I thinking euthanasia. Yes, I was. My husband and I bundled Copernicus up and drove to the clinic.
He had dropped a pound in two weeks. While waiting for sedation, he was rubbing and cuddling with us, nonstop purring. The sedation was given into what was left of his lumbar muscle. It didn't take long for it to take effect. He relaxed onto the blanket and my friend placed a catheter in his leg. She asked me if I was ready. I wasn't. I didn't want this to happen. I had lived with Copernicus for 10 years. I needed another 10 years with him. It was too soon! But I knew he wasn't going to do well. He was going to continue getting sicker and sicker and he would lose more weight. He would get weaker. I couldn't do that to him.
I cuddled him and cried over him while she injected him with the euthansol. He was very relaxed and didn't feel a thing. I felt his life slip away.
I cry as I type this. I know I did the best for him that I could. I can honestly say I did everything for him that I possibly could. I didn't let him suffer because I wasn't ready. I made the selfless decision to let him go.
I have his ashes sitting in a lovely little urn on my fireplace mantle. There is a small bag of ashes that wouldn't fit in the urn and I'm going to bury them at my parents house beside his housemate Frisky, who we said goodbye to in 2010.
I miss Copernicus with all my heart. He weaseled his way in while I was in my first year of college. He became best friends with my dog Casper and my other cat Shylock. He became my companion, my lap cat. A day doesn't go by that I don't think about him.
I started dreaming about him maybe two months after he passed away. I dream frequently about Frisky. He became my constant dream companion shortly after his passing in 2010. In my first dream with Copernicus, Frisky was lying in a basket, got up and let Copernicus in. I cherish my dreams with Copernicus but they also make me sad knowing that I'll never hear his meow or his purr again. I'll never have him on my lap or in my bed. I'll never see him again except in my dreams.
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