Why

Tears and Fears and Tests

I’m sad that over this last year I have not dedicated time at night to diarize what has gone on in our world of doctors and specialists for Greg.  After stating on my Facebook page about starting this year by journaling, I have already failed that.  But today is a new day and it’s not too late.  I’m going to keep a diary about this journey Greg and I are on.  What changed?  Life changed and will continue to change.  Writing about it helps to release feelings and tension.  Whether I choose to re-visit the year later, is up to me.  My sister and I went to clean our parents’ home in a lodge.  It was overdue for a cleaning.  We found my mom’s journals on a bottom shelf.  There were quite a few.  But it inspired me to write my stories for myself.  Not the ‘I got up today and made coffee’ stories, but the things that really are heavy on our hearts, happy or sad,  things that did or might change our lives.

On Monday, Feb. 22 life did change . . . that particular morning I left our house after kissing our puppy and hugging him as he lay on the sofa very weak and very sick.  I was to leave shortly to go to the Foothills hospital to go thru a series of tests to see if my kidneys were strong and healthy, healthy enough to give one to my husband.  It was a bitter sweet morning.  I cried because my puppy was probably dying and I had to leave him, but I had to leave to see if I could give my husband a better life.  It was a horrible feeling to leave my husband at home with a sad heart along with our puppy.  We had noticed on Friday that “Meeka” was beginning to get very lethargic.  On Saturday morning we had a vet appointment.  Meeka was diagnosed with a blood disease.  A blood disease that very much resembled Greg’s disease.  How could this be?  This was crazy.  The timing is just unbelievable.  The coincidence that he also has a blood disease is just incomprehensible.  We chose to take Meeka home and give him 2 drugs.  One would build red blood cells and one would kill the bad blood cells that were killing the red blood cells.  He became worse and worse.  We carried him out to go pee and carried him back in.  He wasn’t eating and not sleeping well.  He began a rough cough too.  His eyes were very yellow.  On Monday, after I left for my appointment, Greg took Meeka back to the vet to see if there was anything they could do to get him to perhaps eat.  When the vet saw him she said he was loosing a lot of blood, thus the yellow eyes.  Greg left him there for the day to see what, if anything, they could do.  I got home at 4:00 and at 5:00 we returned to the vet clinic and said our goodbyes to Meeka.  He was so weak that he could not hold his head up.  When he heard Greg and my voice his breathing became more laboured.  He knew we were there but he couldn’t lift his head or wag his tail.  We kissed him, cried, and said goodbye to our little “buddy bear”.  He was always there for Greg, together with him everyday, especially since we moved back to Alberta and Greg worked from home.

Talk about emotional.  And to go back a bit . . . I’ve walked thru this storm with Greg and told him the stories that he didn’t remember about being in the hospital.  To possibly have the opportunity of giving him a better life was not even a decision I had to think about.  Of course I was scared saying yes, I think that’s just being human.  It does involve surgery after all.  If I don’t make the grade then there are other options, but we won’t go into that right now. 

The doctors and specialist that he has seen over this past year is overwhelming.  The lab work is constant.  Each day is different in how he may be feeling.  We take the good days and go with it and he rests on the bad days. 

I’m not sure when I will hear the results from my tests.  If it’s a ‘thumbs up’, we wait for the doctors to decide when Greg should be given another kidney.  His kidneys have to be functioning at a certain % before they will go forward.  He will then have 3 kidneys as they do not remove any.  He would be given the lesser of mine, leaving me with the better one. 

I still cannot believe the timing of all that has happened this last week and the coincidence of loosing our puppy and how. 

So I will be here again, shortly I assume, with the results and the next step in our life.

~Bonny