Wait. Not Yet.

Jeremiah Lewis
Jul 10, 2017 · 7 min read
Photo by Jennifer Bastian

We’d planned it all, as much as we could, anyway. We wanted Buster to be in our home when it happened. We wanted to do whatever we could in a situation in which we had absolutely no control. In the end, even those plans fell aside. Life and death happen in their own time, mostly, in their own mysterious ways. We pretend to control them with schedules and plans and anticipation. But, like death itself, Buster kept no strict schedules, observed no arbitrary boundaries, anticipated nothing beyond what he knew already. And so when death came for him, he accepted it and moved on, and we were left behind.

But wait. Not yet.

We didn’t know he was sick until suddenly he was extremely sick. We were on vacation in Virginia. He’d been to see the vet before we left for a slight concern we had about a leg he was favoring. We thought it was an aggravation of an injury the year before, and the vet agreed that was probably it, or maybe onset arthritis, but we scheduled a followup appointment and x-ray the week we were to return from vacation.

The trip down was amazing. The easiest twelve hours on the road I’ve ever done. We flew through six states in that time, and Buster was awake for most of it, because he was never content to rest and sleep when we were in the car. He’d take cat-naps, but mostly he wanted to always watch what was going on outside the car. He’d watch the road, he’d occasionally try to crawl over to my lap while I was driving — a strict no-no — and we’d have to gently get him to settle back in Emily’s lap. But he was fine. Better than fine.

Virginia gave us three good days before the bad days. We sat around and enjoyed the mountain view from Emily’s parents’ house and watched fireflies like confetti as the evening sun descended. Buster was a master relaxer. He knew intrinsically, the ways all animals seem to know and most humans don’t, the value of sitting still and just Being. He loved most of all to be with us, his humans. I still don’t understand how that bond works — two biological entities with separate needs and different DNA somehow being intertwined. If love is a chemical reaction, then ours was a universe unfolding every day from some indescribable Big Bang. Like the universe, it was and is unending, at least until all energy is expended and we go back to nothingness.

But wait. Not yet.

When it happened, we won’t ever know for sure. He became lethargic, yelping when we tried to pick him up in a canine shriek that still haunts me. I questioned later if I had caused the mass to start bleeding, but even if I did, it was only a hastening of the inevitable. We waited until morning to see if his condition would improve, but it didn’t, and in fact, his breathing had gotten more labored, and it was clear that he was in trouble.

The trip to the emergency vet in Virginia was the first of many moments of waiting and tests. His diagnosis came back fuzzy in terms of specific details, but clear enough in the long term picture. There was a mass, and a lot of fluid buildup in his thorax — probably blood — and it was compressing his lungs. Without medical intervention, he was going to bleed to death. Wait. Not yet.

The emergency vet did not have the facilities or capability to do much more than that, but she referred us to the Virginia-Maryland Veterinary Hospital, one of the top vet schools in the country, and ironically where I used to work during my undergrad days at Virginia Tech.

He was placed into ICU in an oxygen cage, the fluid drained (confirmed to be blood from the ruptured mass) and given a transfusion in the middle of the night that actually saved his life. And somehow, miraculously, he stabilized, the mass stopped bleeding, and he regained enough strength to undergo further diagnostics to try and determine what we were dealing with and what we could do about it. More waiting. More watching other people with their pets, more time passing by both slowly and quickly.

After the last test — a CT scan which required him to be put under anesthesia — he came back to us. He was stable, but the mass had grown to invade three ribs and it had also spread to his lungs. Surgery wasn’t a viable option and chemotherapy and radiation were mere palliatives. We opted to return home with him and hope to keep him alive so that we could plan his death. Please Wait. Not yet. Hold on.

The trip back was nightmarish, the evil doppelganger of our journey down. Every bump, every truck that threatened to squeeze us off the road, every mile that kept us from home was terrifying. We didn’t want him to die in the car, and we didn’t want him to suffer. Somehow, we made it back home, exhausted and traumatized by too much time in the car and veterinary waiting rooms and worry.

It’s amazing how quickly we adapt to our circumstances. We could no longer afford to let Buster go up and down stairs, so taking him out to the bathroom became a group effort — me carrying him in a special way so as not to cause pressure on the rib mass, Emily opening doors and carrying his leash. We couldn’t let him jump up and down off the couch, so we barricaded it with our ottoman and another chair. Our apartment became a safe zone.

The first few days back were uneventful. We consulted with the University of Madison-Wisconsin’s Veterinary school, and they too were only able to offer palliative treatments that would not measurably increase his life and would measurably reduce his quality of life. Six times going under anesthesia for radiation treatments? Skin burns and fur loss? And so we explored holistic, non-medical treatments in order to make his life as comfortable as we could for as long as he had left. We scheduled acupuncture and ordered supplements that would help keep his immune system working properly and give him nutrients that might help give him strength to fight.

The week following we spent our time just spending time with each other. We spent much of it outdoors, on our back balcony filled with flowers. Buster reveled in the sun and the wind, and we were blissful in those moments. He seemed more himself, and we were getting back a sense of normalcy. We were determined to make the most of the time we had left with him.

Wait. Wait. Not yet.

Sunday, July 9, he was lethargic. He’d spent a bad night, and he’d seen family and friends the day before so we thought it was just over-stimulation. Or, we wanted to believe that. But we had learned to read the signs, and around 3:30pm we checked his gums for signs of anemia, and they were pale and non-responsive. We called the emergency vet line at UW and drove him in where they took him in and did an ultrasound and ran some blood work.

Wait. Please. Not yet.

They came back. He was bleeding again, and fluid buildup around his lungs was substantial. Would he last the night, we asked. He might, but he would have been in pain and he would have slowly bled to death or suffocated. We asked if there were any at-home vets that worked Sundays. But the one we had planned on using closed at 4pm and no other hospice services were available.

And so, even our best plans were set aside as we made the decision to put him to sleep there at the clinic. Thankfully, they let us go outside to a green area beside a river or creek, under the shade of a maple tree, in the grass and the wind and gnats and mosquitoes. We asked for a half hour of time with him, and there we loved him with our words and our hands and our tears as he snapped at gnats and slowly gave up the last little bit of energy he had held onto for us.

Wait. Not yet.

They came out and asked if we’d been through a euthanasia before. We hadn’t. They explained how it would work, the first shot slowing his breathing, the second to overdose his heart. His eyes were already growing heavy, and it was time.

We said goodbye, kissed him and held his head so he would not go away feeling alone. Then it was over — so quickly — so quickly. He was there, and then he wasn’t.

We’re now in an apartment full of memories that we can’t escape and don’t want to, and yet in a way, I feel utterly helpless at the moment, to do anything more than cry and remember. He was the spirit of our lives in so many ways. He had a sweet and gentle disposition and, if once he came to know and love you, never forgot it. He had such an energy to him and yet his favorite thing to do was to curl up next to us and just Be. He taught me how to be a better human. He helped me grasp empathy and compassion and unbounded love. I’m still learning those things, to be sure, but he pointed me in the right direction. Strange, for a little furry creature with anti-social tendencies, to impart such wisdom.

After he was gone, we celebrated his life with family and friends, with champagne and stories and laughing and crying over photos. And later, we sent up two Chinese lanterns in his memory.

Now. We are alone. Our hearts are broken. Our baby boy is gone.

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writer, producer, all around good guy.

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