Loss

Katie's gone...

A glimpse of how she got her name, Katie-Bar-the-Door.

This is the expression I loved most on her face. Joy.

The image that inspired the winsomebulldog name. 

 And finally...

Yesterday, at the emergency clinic.

If you know me, then you know that our girl, Katie, has been sick for a while. Yesterday, she was so weak that she could barely stand. I took her to the ER and they ran some tests, but couldn't find anything wrong. (It should be noted that we all thought her problems were connected to either her chemo or the heart issues that were brought on by the chemo.) So, I brought her back home yesterday evening but she got worse during the night. I took her back up to the clinic this morning and they took some x-rays and spotted what they thought was pneumonia in her lungs. So they kept her to give her fluids and antibiotics.

I got a call this afternoon a little before 5 letting me know that she had stopped breathing. They did their best, but as I was on my up there a little while later, they called to let me know she had died. I'll spare you the gory details and just say that additional blood work revealed that her kidneys were failing badly. It is likely that the cancer spread despite the chemo and caused significant damage, bringing on the kidney failure and other symptoms that were mistakenly attributed to her heart. No one is at fault. She was just a sick baby.

Right now, I'm fairly numb. I cried all the way up there. Spent almost an hour with her and cried some more. Then cried a good portion of the way home. So now I'm just in a holding pattern until the next wave of grief hits.

Losing her sucks, plain and simple. But it's made worse in so many ways because Mark is not home. He has made what should be his final trip to retrieve machinery from New Jersey and is due home this evening. His plane should already be in the air. So he had to deal with all this while being unable to be here for either me or her. Please pray for him, as Katie was particularly special to him for a variety of reasons.

I'll say without shame that we both loved Katie as though she were our child. I know some people take offense at that, but I'm sorry. Katie was a part of our lives every single day for eleven years. She will forever hold a home in both our hearts and nothing and no one will ever replace her in any way.

I wish I could somehow convey how incredible she was. So much unconditional love packed into one short, pudgy dog doesn't seem possible. And there's simply no way for me to express how much pure joy she brought to my life. I still can't quite make myself imagine living without her.

I needed to get this out there, to share it for her, to honor her. I'm so tired and I have one of those "after crying" headaches. I'm thinking that I might need to lay down for a little while. Maybe, in a few more days, I'll be able to be more philosophical about it all. Right now, I just want my baby girl back.