Loss

A little update if you will.  If you remember from my last blog post, a coworker gifted me the flu for Christmas.  While I wish she had stayed home since she knew she was sick, another coworker had worked an entire week sick while we were in Wisconsin and probably got her sick to start this all off.  I'm a little frustrated but also, I understand.  Let me explain.   It's weird, I've never worked a job that didn't have sick leave and very little PTO.  Most of us have kids and lives and we live on the edge of our PTO.  It's the system and it makes me mad that we are forced to work sick which then infects everyone around us.  I try and always be considerate and mask up if I think I am sick, but others aren't as considerate. Sigh.  It's a broke system and I have no clue how to fix it.  Our boss has a laptop we can take home so we can work from home if needed, but sometimes you are so sick that work isn't going to happen or sometimes your job doesn't allow for work from home kind of work.

As I sit here on day 13 of this mess, I do feel like I am turning a corner.  My cough is very productive and not as deep.  I am finally getting quality sleep at night.  I feel my energy coming back.  Of course, we are in a blizzard right now so even if I wanted to get out and run, there is no way I could.  I was hoping to get a week of working out and running in before we head back to Wisconsin for another week of being homebound thanks to the experiment we are doing.  That may or may not happen thanks to this big snowstorm.  So much for ending December strong and starting out January equally as strong.  This is week four of no working out, no running for me and I am mentally going insane.  Part of me feels like a huge failure but then the other part of me realizes that my job and my job getting me sick is the reason for all of this and that I just need to chill.  I've never taken this much time off and maybe it isn't the end of the world for my body.  Again, while it will suck to start back, running is always there for me and will be waiting for me when I return.

To close, we lost stella today.  It was very, very sudden.  I knew that she was starting to have issues, but I had no clue that this would be the end for her.  She had been having little seizures here and there, nothing major, but still enough to worry about.  They were always triggered by either excitement or medication.  I had made the decision we were done with heart worm meds as those seemed to trigger her more than anything.  Today while I was typing on my computer, I heard her cough, and she went down hard.  I screamed for the boys since I had to grab ollie and keep her off of stella while she was seizing.  The rest of the day she was either out of it or having more seizures.  Of course, we were snowed in with over a foot of snow outside and huge drifts.  I am lucky that I have amazing vets, and we talked back and forth as to possibly what was going on.  In the end, we made the very hard decision to let her go peacefully as she was sleeping.  I honestly thought she had passed several times during the day so to have most of the day holding her and loving on her was a blessing.  

Tony and I are gutted.  She lived life HUGE from the minute she was born.  She came into this world being a force to be reckoned with and that never stopped. We actually watched her be born on camera and missed our agility class that night. She was my shadow till the very end.  The hole in my heart is almost my entire heart and I don't know how I am going to get through this.  Please pray for peace for Tony and I.  We have now lost Miller, Harley, Deuce and Stella and all of their deaths have really been hard for us. It's part of owning a pet, a part that I really, really hate.    You always wrestle with did I make the decision too soon or not soon enough.  Could we have done tests to figure out what the cause was or did we even want to know the answer.  She had lots of old lady lumps, and some were not in great spots and or were inoperable due to blood flow.  She in recent years had issues with growing tumors on her eye lids and since that time her eyes had always had issues and weeped.  Her allergies had come to the point where the meds were at their highest level and she still wasn't seeing any comfort and was having medicated baths, which she hated, to try and help with the itch.  There were lots of little things adding up, but she had such a great quality of life otherwise.  Hell, I bet she still could have run at least a mile a few times a week.  I will probably write a separate blog post just about her life and how she lived it.  I am crying and am so glad I had the day off of work today to process all of this.  She was a great dog and will be missed by Tony and I greatly.  Please keep us in your thoughts and prayers.  

Have a great week and think of me.  I am not okay, but I hopefully will be someday.