With life comes death. In the field of veterinary medicine, this is a reality that comes full circle on all too regular a basis. Over time, I’ve learned to accept this and step into the role I have in assisting people and pets with attaining quality of both. While it is always sad, I’ve gotten to the point where I can quell my own empathetic pangs for grieving owners enough to be strong for them so they can do what they need to do. But every once in a while, a situation presents itself that breaches those walls and just leaves you struggling to hang on to a composure that was tenuous to begin with.
One Tuesday, I saw a little 1 1/2 year old cat who has been sick for a week or so. He came in two weeks prior for vaccines, and other than a mild fever he was fine. The other vet in the office sent him home and told the owner to come back in a couple days because of the fever. A couple days later, he was not eating, and kind of dehydrated. He got some fluids and antibiotics.
A few days after that, he stopped eating. That brings us to Tuesday. He had been steadily declining; starting to stumble a little, moderately dehydrated by this point, not drinking water. The owner agreed to bloodwork. Based on what I saw, I was pretty sure he had Feline Infectious Peritonitis (FIP), a fatal viral disease.
I sat down with the owner, a very nice woman, as I explained that her cat very likely had this horrible virus for which there is no cure. We discussed the prognosis, with me as usual wincing while telling someone there wasn’t a whole lot we could do. After absorbing this information and going through several tissues, she decided to take her cat home for a couple days to say goodbye, then come back with her boyfriend Thursday to euthanize him.
Thursday, the boyfriend arrived, alone, with the cat. The woman had decided she wasn’t able to accompany them. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to be present when the cat was euthanized, and after the tech went over a few things I went into the room to explain how the process goes. I expressed my sympathy, and asked him if he had any questions.
“Well,” he said, “I kind of want to know how it happens. I feel like I should be there…but, I don’t know.” He pauses, then speaks softly. “I had a son, with leukemia. He got sick just like this, this fast. I was with him when he died. And I don’t know if I could do this again.”
And as the tears start to well in both our eyes, he shares with me the loss of his 17 month old baby. How he had to choose whether to keep him in the hospital or bring him home to hospice care, to die. And how eerily similar this experience has been for him, that two years later he again has to make the same decisions for the cat who he had taken in such a short time ago as a salve to that rent in his heart.
My usual expressions of sympathy, the words of comfort and encouragement, all just faded away on my lips as I watched him relive the loss of his son while he held his cat, and all I could do was give him a heartfelt hug and then take the cat away.
All this happened in the midst of a huge rush of clients, so I bit my lip and tried with only moderate success to keep the tears away so I wouldn’t scare off the rest of the clients. You can blame allergies; an errant eyelash- but only if you cry only a little. So while Reggie’s owner went home to mourn another unexpected loss, my nurses and I held Reggie while I told him to keep an eye out for a little boy waiting for him on the Rainbow Bridge who would take good care of him, and off he went.
And off I went, false smile hastily glued on, to the waiting pets with the litanies of worms and vaccines, hoping the rest of the day would be exceptionally unexceptional.
(And for those who haven’t watched Sesame Street for a while, the reference in the title is to a character on that show.)
Sob. Rest in peace, Reggie.