And then There Was One | Down to One Dog

Look, it's us from the future. So this day was literally the beginning of the well, yesterday was the beginning of it. Today was the worst of it. In this vlog, I have some clips of where Dan and I went to Second Chance Animal Shelter to check out the cats. And it was super cute footage. And I don't want you guys to not see it because I know we all need something to make us happy. So we're going to roll into that footage. And then afterwards, I'm going to continue the story. So here is the beginning of what would have been what? October 24th. Roll the footage, Dan. Hi Dan. Hi. Hi. Two cats. It's so cute! Both their little motors are just going. This one over here is a little skittish. So I've been trying with this one here. It's working. Okay. Hi, how you doing? There you go. Oh, we should probably start a vlog, Dan. Good, wonderful, beautiful kitten this morning, Claudia. Oh my gosh, the kittens! Dan's got a cute one over here. We came to Second Chance to come say hi. Hello, super up close! We're gonna start today's video with kittens instead of dogs. What do you think? Oh my goodness! If you guys are ever looking for like super, super friendly kittens, lovey kittens, the shelter up here always has some pretty good ones. I really like that one. And the fluffy one, I think, where'd she go? Disappeared. Oh, there she is. That one. Yeah, the black one is probably my favorite, but this one, she's got a warm up. So, hi! Let me see your face. Oh! Coming out of your shell. Your motor's running. Oh, well look how cute you are. There's somebody coming at me. I'm adorable. Dan, I think you're the cat whisperer. Look at even the Rizzo cat. He's like, ooh! You've got all of them. Oh, that was annoying. You are definitely a black cat. Yes. There's one up here too. They're still all in your corner. Yeah, they all got a kitty. What's on your shoes? Snow hole. Oh my goodness. What a great way to start the day. I know, right? I'm pretty happy right now. You got her to warm up. I did. Look, even the Rizzo looking kitties over here. Those two have to be related. I think so. They're both so floofy. Way too cute. All right, now we're gone to the snow cats. Yes. Later. . Hi. Oh my goodness, you're crazy. I know, you're crazy too. So those were actually the last vlog clips that we took up until after Kira passed away. I didn't film anything else between that and when she passed away. When we got home from the shelter was when she kind of actually, I would call it collapsed. We were calling it, like, falling down, but that morning she actually collapsed. I did a full video of this over on Gone to the Snow Dogs if you guys want to see, like, all the details. So it is a 30-minute video that was not only ridiculously hard to film, it was ridiculously hard for Dan to edit. So once again, Dan, thank you so much for everything that you do. It's, I don't know how we keep doing this. But anyway, so like I said, this was kind of, you guys saw all the vlogs up until now. The only footage I took today was us at the shelter. Kira kind of collapsed. I called the urgent care because we have an urgent care in town. We live in a little tiny town and there's not a whole lot they can do here. So we took her to the urgent care. They got her out of the car for us. They took her in because she was not doing good. They took her in the back. They listened to her heart. They ran a bunch of tests and they kind of said, you know, we still think it's a vagovagal syncope response, which is what they had told us if you watched the previous videos, that it was like a response to pain. Basically, she was having a pinch and then she was going down. So. Anyway, again, go watch the full detailed video on going to the snow dogs. Uh, so we took her in, had that discussion, brought her back home. Hi, Eleanor. So they gave us two more medicines to give her. One was a muscle relaxer and one was a, like a nerve block, but they didn't want me to start giving that to her till Monday. They wanted me to see how it was going to go. So the plan was she was on the anti-inflammatories and then we were going to start her on the muscle relaxer and we were hoping... That if it was actually the pain response, that within 24 hours, it was going to take 24 hours for that stuff to get into her system, that she would stop falling down and collapsing. I'm guessing. We came home, it happened again, I believe it happened one more time, and something didn't feel right. Again, this is why I always tell you guys like, trust your gut. Because I had just been to the urgent care. I called again, her regular doctor was there, we went in, we talked to him for a very long time. He kind of still felt the same way, that this was a back pain issue. You know, and again, small town, we don't have the ability to do a lot of lot of stuff. So he also told me that if we wanted further testing, like Neurology, MRI, things like that. We would have to go downstate. So we had the discussion and then when we got home we kind of decided that we were going to do that. We were going to call on Monday, see how long it would take her to get in, those types of things. She went down a couple more times Saturday but we kind of were expecting it and she went down right before bed Saturday and she completely passed out. Like passed out. This was an actual like pass out fainting. She was out. That was alarming but we But we were trying to give the medicine time to work. And, like, she would pop back up and be completely normal, which was the weirdest part. All right. The next morning, she got up, she ate, she did all her stuff, she went outside, she went down again. I caught her. I caught her every time. Every time she went down, I caught her. Um. She went down again. And that was when my brain said, this is enough. We got to... Dan actually had called downstate to the hospitals that Dr. Ryan had told us to call. We found out that we could take her down there. She would probably have to be hospitalized overnight, but that they, then they could get her into emergency neurology on that Monday. And this was a Sunday. So we're like, you know what? We're done playing the games. Something's not right. Let's go. So Dan and I went down there with the expectation that it was going to be neurology and all this stuff. We got her down there. She didn't faint at all in the car. She panted a lot. You could tell that something was not right. You could tell, I could feel it. Like we knew something wasn't right. So we get all the way down there. We get her into the hospital. We went to Blue Pearl in Southfield. Um, and then she was going to go to Blue Pearl in Farmington Hills, which never happened because they were the ones with the neurologist. Um, I almost took her to MSU, but they also didn't have a neurologist on staff. They wouldn't have been there till Monday either. So that was where we went. And, um, we got there and she fainted right when we walked in the door and they picked her up and they took her back immediately for triage and she was in full crisis at this point now she had been fainting and every time she would faint she would go completely pale but this time uh she wasn't just pale she was blue i know this might be too much detail for some people but it was she was blue Uh basically, if you don't know what that means, it means that her body wasn't producing enough oxygen in her blood. So she would pass out, and then when she would come to, her body had to work really hard to oxygenate her blood, which would cause her to go pale, and then she was blue because she was no longer making enough to keep going. They ran a bunch of tests. They came in. They told us it could be a blood clot. It could be a mass. I signed a bunch of papers for them to run a bunch more tests. They ran more tests. They came back and said they did more scans and they were pretty confident it was a mass on her heart, not a blood clot, which we were kind of hoping for a blood clot because there might have been something we could have done for that. And then they hospitalized her overnight, Told us to keep our phones on in case she didn't make it. They were really... Really concerned that she wasn't gonna make it through the night and this is what I don't think a lot of people like it's a Hard thing to understand and I know I haven't done the best job explaining it because there's a lot going on in my there's a Lot going on up here, but she was in full crisis. Like I don't know how we made it to Detroit with her I really don't at any point in time She could have went down and that could have been it and we were so fortunate that we made it down there Uh, she made it through the night. Jamie came down, he got up at 5 a.m. Monday morning and came down with Eleanor. Because again, we didn't think we were going down for something major. We thought we were going down for like a neurology consult. So, Dan came with me. Jamie was just gonna stay here with Eleanor. What a nightmare! What a nightmare! So, Jamie came down the next day and we got the call from the cardiologist. They confirmed it was a mass and then they asked me if I wanted to call some specialists. Which we did because I wasn't willing to give up but also I kind of knew there wasn't anything that was going to be able to be done and unfortunately I was right there wasn't anything that could that they could do um and it was bad she was bad you know we've been through this many times and honestly like they look at you and you just know and when we got there to see her she was it was I'm to the point where I feel like I've told this story so many times now, I almost feel numb. I don't feel numb. But if telling this story can help one person notice early signs of anything that may give their dog a better chance, even if we would have noticed all this, even if we would have put everything together when she had her back pain, the doctors all said it would have been the same outcome. The only difference is we would have known. We would have known we were going to lose her for a month, which would have been horrible. And there still would have been nothing they could do, which is horrible. They brought her to us. We went to the vet. They brought her to us. It was bad. It was bad. She fainted when they got her up. She fainted when she got into the room. And at any point in time, one of those fainting spells, she may not have even got back up from. So we made the decision to not let her suffer because I couldn't see her like that anymore. I couldn't bring her home because she probably wouldn't have made the car ride home. They told us that. And I couldn't imagine having to go through that. Ugh. I wanted to. I wanted to bring her here. I wanted to bring her here so she could see everybody one last time, but it's just that. It's not how it happens. It's not ever. It never ends like you want it to. Ever. It still just ends. This dog is lonely and sad, and yeah. She's got a friend that's supposed to be coming over in the next couple of days, but it all just sucks. So like I said, not that you want to suffer through another one of these sad freaking videos, but I did film a 30-minute video over on Gone to the Snow Dogs, and you can go watch that if you want. It goes into a lot of detail, but yeah, this is where we're at. Yeah, I know. This is where we're at, huh? It's weird. It's weird. And I do want to say thank you to each and every one of you for your comments, your messages, everything. We do appreciate it, and I know this is difficult for all of you guys as well, and it's hard to only see the one dog. Try living this life, because right now it sucks. But you've got to keep going, right? That's what we do. Apparently, that's all I know how to do is just keep on going. I see that floof though. I was gonna steal it. Can I steal it? Can I steal your floof? It's right there. Can I steal it? Can I? Maybe. Maybe I steal it. I steal a floof. Maybe. Maybe I steal. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. You're so low to the ground now. Thanks for making us laugh at the end here, Elle. I'll get your floof. I'll get it. I'll get that floof. I'm gonna get it. I get it, get it, get it, get it, got it, got it. Yeah! You're okay, right? Jasmine is destroying toys again, so that's good. Anyway, enough of this! Regularly... They're not really regular, but normal vlogs. Haha! They're not normal either! Vlogs of the current timeline, coming soon! Alright you guys! Excuse you, ma'am! Thanks for watching! Thanks for subscribing! Stay positive! Even though, sometimes it doesn't matter how positive we are. We still get the short end of the stick, right? Thanks for watching. Thanks for subscribing. Stay positive, dream big, and we will see you again. Good night.