Comatose

I have had multiple people ask me about being in a coma, so I thought I would share what I would remember from my experience.

As I stated earlier, I was admitted to the hospital on March 14 and at some point in time that night I stopped breathing.  The doctors intubated me, and made the choice to put me in a medically induced coma.  I remained that way for about 3.5 weeks.

While this was happening, I was having very vivid and violent dreams.  One dream I remember involved attending a wedding, after which the couple was murdered.  I somehow became involved in the search for the killer (I am a teacher - no connection with law enforcement) and was kidnapped and detained in the basement of a building.  The person who kidnapped me had tied me to a bed and I was fighting to get free.  I found out after waking that I had spent a portion of time restrained because I was trying to pull the tubes out, and because they were having issues with my blood pressure falling and it seemed to stabilize if they could keep my arms still.

A second dream I had involved me being asked to babysit, but I wasn't to let anyone know I had the baby.  I took the baby to a public restroom and tried to hide it in a hole in a carpet, and became absolutely frantic when anyone came near that spot.  I then decide to take the child to my mother's house, only to trip and have it fall from my hands and shatter as if it were made of glass..

In the midst of all of this, the action would stop and it would be like elevator doors would open.  I would see someone I knew.  Sometimes I could hear what they were saying, sometimes I could just see them, but I recognize people from my life for brief moments every once and awhile....and then the elevator doors would close again, and I would be plunged back into another one of these dreams.

I had my trach put in and transferred hospitals during this time and don't remember it.  Shortly after Easter I woke in the new hospital and saw my parents staring at me, and they told me how long I had been asleep and I thought they were lying to me.

It was a challenge to function when I first woke up.  I didn't have a speaking valve on my trach, so I had to write everything down.  My writing was a hot mess and looked like that of a kindergartener.  Someone had sent me a tiny stuffed dog, and my mom put it in my hand.  I became so fixated on it that it was all they could do to get it back away from me.  And to top everything off, I decided to get up and walk around with no one to help me, and fell flat on the floor in the middle of the night.

I used to joke that I wanted to go home and sleep for a month - I will never do that again.

Let's Talk about the Dog, Part 2

The very first picture I ever took of Cat in 2008.

    As much as Cat seemed to want to go home with me, she seemed to hate me the minute we walked into my apartment door.  She parked herself in the corner of a room and wouldn't look at me.  She wouldn't eat, wouldn't pee, and her little tail was as straight as a stick.  I was so upset, thinking I had made a huge mistake and I had no idea what to do.

     This went on all weekend.  I was never so glad to see Monday come in all my life!  I carefully caged her and went to work.  When I came home, she had messed all over the crate and pushed it out through the bars.  I took her out so many times, but no matter what I did, she wouldn't pee until I stuck her back in the crate when I went to work.

     Finally, a friend of mine suggested that I baby gate her in the kitchen, and see if she would cooperate better that way.  We went to Walmart and picked up a gate and she helped me set it up the next morning before work.  We put Cat in the kitchen, bid her farewell, and started down the stairs, only to hear a loud thump.  We went back to the apartment to find Cat waiting by the door, having jumped the baby gate.

    We eventually got a 4 foot tall piece of particle board and hooked it into the kitchen doorway to keep her enclosed.  Even then, she tried her hardest to dig through the board or floor with her nails, but eventually figured out that she was not going to be successful.

       Every evening when I got home, she would resume her position in the corner.  We weren't bonding at all.  It seemed like it was just going to be a matter of who was going to break first, because we were a bad combination.

     At the same time, I was making a huge mistake without knowing it.  The friend that had helped me with the baby gate had only ever had large dogs.  When I got Cat, she bought me this cute little collar that just happened to be a choke collar.  Neither one of us realized how sensitive the eyes of a pug are, making a choke collar a huge mistake.  I was walking Cat daily on this collar and she was pulling on it, sometime quite hard.

     One day I came home from work and went to let her out of the kitchen.  She lunged at me and tried to bite me.  I wasn't hurt, but was shaken because I hadn't seen this side of her before.  By the end of the evening I noticed a red spot in her eye, and the next morning both eyes were completely red.  I called the vet and made an appointment for after work.

     This woman looked at her and diagnosed her with separation anxiety and told me I obviously wasn't fit to have a dog.  She then advised me to return Cat before I "killed her."  I left the office crying and feeling like a total failure.  I attempted to contact the place where I had gotten Cat.  I got no answer, so I just drove there.

     I sat in the car outside for awhile and just cried, believing the vet was right and dreading giving Cat up.  I called my friend and let her a message telling her that Cat was leaving and headed inside.   As I went to put Cat in her pen, her little paws dug into my shoulders and she clearly didn't want me to put her down.  I took that as a sign that I needed to give this another try, and took her back home.

     That was the turning point in our relationship.  We bonded that night, and didn't look back.  It turned out that her eye issues were from the choke collar, and we both finally trusted each other.  Also, I never let that horrible vet lay a hand on her again.

Let's Talk About the Dog Part 1

 I spent a large part of my life telling people that I was afraid of dogs.  If I was being truthful, I was more afraid of what would happen if I loved a dog.  This was due to something that happened when I was in elementary school.

Our collie had an unplanned litter of puppies, and one puppy was extremely shy and wouldn't allow anyone to approach her but me.  I LOVED that little dog and spent hours with her.  I felt so special because she only wanted to be with me.  The puppies grew quickly and my parents started giving them away.  I came home from school one day to find that it was my puppy's day, and she was gone.  I remember sitting on the front steps and crying my eyes out, and I decided then that there would be no more dogs.

Fast forward about 25 years, and I was driving with a colleague to get our taxes done. As we neared the home, my friend looked at me and told me that the tax person had an "ugly little dog" but if I just ignored it, it wouldn't hurt me.  I was immediately on edge and dreaded what I was going to find.

We arrived at the house and rang the doorbell, and I heard the beast come rushing down the stairs.  The door opened, and I was face to face with a pug.  I worked so hard to ignore that dog, but it was having nothing of it.  It circled me like a shark in the water, bringing me toys and begging me to play.  The pug (named Snookie, by the way) twirled on her rear legs and begged for pieces of watermelon licorice.  By the end of the evening I couldn't take it anymore, and I sat down on the floor.  In just a few seconds Snookie crawled onto my lap, and looked at me with those big brown eyes, and I was in love.

So I quickly sat about on a search for my own pug.  After a couple of dead ends, I ended up at a place that had two.  Having seen pictures of both pugs, I went in expecting to come home with one in particular.  She, however, was a wild child and we just didn't seem to bond.  The other pug strolled into the room, curled up onto a pillow beside me, and seemed to be waiting for me to take her home.  And that is what I did.

This pug's name was Catriona (Cat-tree-own-ah), but she answered to the name, "Cat."  She turned out to be stubborn, a drama queen, and extremely set in her ways - but I couldn't have loved her any more.  

                                           Catriona, aka "Cat," taken shortly before her death.

A little back story

If I am being honest with myself, this problem probably started last summer.  I felt run down and sick all summer long.  I was dealing with a variety of issues that required several minor surgical procedures, all of which should have been a day's recovery, but weeks later I was still feeling shattered.

I chose to ignore how I was feeling, however, because around this time my dog became ill.  She had already been diagnosed with dementia and had a bad habit of sun downing, so I was lucky to get 4 consecutive hours of sleep because she was so hard to keep calm.  In October she started to have issues and I found out that she was diabetic.  With most dogs this wouldn't be a huge deal, but I had a little drama queen - I had to sit and beg her to eat so that I could give her an insulin injection.  Her care quickly came to consume all of my non-working hours.  Don't get me wrong, I didn't mind it because I loved her to death, but it really took a lot of time.  

And in the meantime, I was ignoring my own symptoms.  I started to get unbearable muscle spasms throughout my legs,  I was always tired, and my weight was ballooning even though I was barely eating.

Then the bottom fell out of my world.  February 6 I came home from work feeling awful.  My dog picked that day to be especially difficult.  She had refused breakfast so she didn't get her morning insulin shot, and when I came home she wouldn't eat again.  I spoke with my vet, and she offered to see her, but I was so tired I couldn't bring myself to take her.  I promised to update her in the morning and bring her if necessary.  And of course, once the clinic closed, my dog started to vomit.

Morning brought several things:  an ice storm, my work being closed, and more trouble with the dog.  She wouldn't eat, she wouldn't pee, and all she would do was pace.  It was so slick outside that I was afraid to even walk out there, never mind actually getting in the car and driving.  I spoke to the vet again, and she gave me some things to try and told me to keep her updated.

It all went downhill from there.  The dog continued to pace and pant, I couldn't do anything to comfort her.  I was so sick that I fell asleep around lunch time, and when I woke about 2 hours later, the house was silent.  I was filled with a sick feeling of dread for what I was going to find.

I called out for her, no response.  I checked all the places she liked to lay, she wasn't there.  I finally found her in my bedroom, pressed up tight against a stuffed pug that I had, almost like she was looking to it for comfort.  

I took a quick video of her and sent it to my vet, and she sprung into action.  She was over an hour away, but she had set about making arrangements to have some of the clinic staff come to my house and get her and take her in.

Those last few minutes were so hard, because I knew in my heart that she wasn't coming home.  I held her close and stroked her gently, telling her that as much as I felt like I couldn't live without her, she couldn't stay for me.  I told her I knew she was hurting and it was time to let go, and that I would love her and miss her until the day that I died.

When the vet techs arrived and pulled her from me, I could see in her eyes that she was no longer there.  My vet gave orders over the phone to the people in the clinic, while texting me to let me know what was happening.  I told her not to force anything that was going to make her suffer, if it was her time to let her go.  It wasn't long before I heard back that she thought that was what needed to be done,  About 7 pm, the best thing that ever happened to me left this world.

As I lay trying to sleep that night, listening to my own almost primal wails, I wondered how I was ever going to make it without her.  I know there will be other dogs, but she was special - and I really don't think I can ever connect to another dog like I did to her.

Needless to say, my physical condition continued to deteriorate over the next month or so.  It hit rock bottom on March 14, which is when my first post starts.  Coincidentally, March 14 would have also been 10 years to the day that I brought my dog home.