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Saturday, April 8, 2017

April is a Hard Month

You may have noticed I didn't write much last year, if at all. It was a hard year, and this one is not much better. April 2016 hit us hard.

Our beloved dog Chaos had to be put down on the 17th. She had been declining steadily with health issues and on that Sunday, when there was no way to get a veterinarian, she fell - several times actually. She had gotten unable to go down our few steps out of the house so we had to help her, and the return trip up was worse. Her back end was constantly going out from under her as her spine had fused in some places and outright dissolved in others. She was in pain in spite of the medication she was on. First she fell in the barn. It was her ritual to go for at least a little while just to get out of the house. I would take her in just before we started milking because we couldn't keep an eye on her and there was just too much for her to get into out there. After she kept falling I finally took her back to the house. When we got back a few hours later she was sprawled on the floor in her favorite spot right where I had left her. She had fallen trying to get up, probably to go get water, and she could not get up for anything. We managed to get her up but she winced, which told me she had tried and failed at least a few times and had bruised something. We got her up and she managed to get a drink but it wouldn't stay down and she didn't eat. Then she fell in the living room and within an hour her abdomen was swollen almost double and she whimpered. I got a look and saw it had started turning purple. She had ruptured something and was bleeding inside. It was the hardest thing we ever did to have to get her outside and put her down. There was nothing else that could be done. We mourn her loss daily. Honestly, I can't even see a picture of a yellow Labrador retriever or any dog that looks similar, without bursting into tears even now, a whole year later.

Then just a few days later I found out that the supposed pneumonia my father had been suffering from for over 6 months was not actually pneumonia. I told my mother to get another opinion from other doctors for several of those months. By the time they figured out (at another hospital) that he had Squamous Non-small Cell lung cancer he only had days to live. He kept saying he didn't want me there because he didn't want me to see him that way. I finally made arrangements to go anyway about the time he started calling for me at the hospital in his delirium. The first leg of my flight out of Wisconsin to Chicago was on time. Then the flight from Chicago to Miami (odd way to get to Tallahassee) was delayed. Then when we got to Miami the connecting flight to Tallahassee had already left and they had to book me on the next flight out later that evening, except the pilot never showed and they cancelled the flight until mid-morning the next day. No one had any flights out that night. He died early in the morning and I had missed the chance to say good-bye. I will never get over that!

My dad passed away 12 days after we lost Chaos. So, you see, April is and always will be a very hard month for me.If it weren't for my dear cats, I'd be totally lost.

                                                Chaos
                                                    My mom and dad (They are holding my first book)

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