Thank you to everyone who partook in Aunt Bea's Celebration of Life to help pay her medical and vet fees.It was greatly needed and appreciated.
She fought so hard, and so did I.
She started here with the cards stacked against her, after being rescued by New Moon out of a starvation situation. Her blood work showed the havoc malnutrition had on her little body.
But one of my three wonderful vets and I fought hard to help her, and I have never had such a brave little patient. Shots and drenches every day, wrapped in old sweaters for warmth, she hung on and on, always eager to eat, but unable to get up or walk. Her walking was worsened when her right front leg suffered some kind of nerve damage making her unable to put pressure on it. I was getting her up at least four times a day to move her, and pat her sides to help her rumen and the water in her lungs. I had even looked into buying a wheelchair for her.
Her treatments were nearly over after 18 days so the vet came to do a blood test on her today. We had hoped to see any kind of improvement in her Pac Cell count. Instead it was worse. We discussed an option of more injections for three weeks to see if we could stimulate the bone marrow - a treatment that has helped dogs and cats. But with the blood work in, we both felt it was time to help her over. It was a hard decision - because I had fought so hard too.
But you have to stand back and ask what you are fighting for - you, or the comfort of the animal. She had become more uncomfortable in the last few days - constant groaning - which could have meant so many other things were going wrong in her.
I held her little head, and she fell off to sleep, sweet slumber, and then she was gone. To not see her teeny little head sticking out of the hay bed tomorrow morning might just kill me. But the vet said it best - she had more attention in the last month than her whole life. I know this.
It was dark when I left the barn. I looked up to the sky but there were no stars. Just like her little blanket had kept her warm all these days at Apifera, the sky now offered her a blanket of fog to keep her warm on her journey.
Thank you to all who helped.
