Living for one more day...

This morning when I first woke up, I remembered what had happened last night when we gave Jazzie, our tiny treasure of a fur baby, his medicine. I rejoiced to have another day with my very special little friend. Jazz is epileptic, diagnosed last year, around his tenth birthday in June.

We always give him his epilepsy medicine twice a day- once at night and again in the morning. Last night, right after he'd taken it, he had a seizure, the first since August of last year. But, we didn't know it was seizure. I hold him to give the phenobarbital to him from a dropper.

Since he had just had his medicine what happened next looked like he was dying in my arms. He laid down into my hands and his head fell back, and he stopped breathing, his eyes rolled way back and I calmly told my hubby, "He's dying, B. He's dying. He will die in the next few seconds." I remembered the film, "I Dreamed of Africa" where the boy calmly tells his mother, "Mother, I am dying". I was that calm. J was unconscious and not breathing for about 15 to 20 seconds and we rolled him around in mine and DH's arms trying to get him to breathe again. And suddenly his head wobbled up and though he couldn't stand, or see, he could hold up his head.

I stayed awake til 3 am watching my tiny miracle of love sleeping peacefully after that ordeal, and knew that I could face his passing away, whenever it came to be.

He will surely die sometime in the next few years and I must live without him. But I had not wanted to have any screaming or hysterical crying to be the last thing he heard from me. I had thought it all so thoroughly through how I would react, and we just had the "dress rehearsal", if you will, last night. Since the only thing that I could relate his movements to was a heart attack in a Holland lop rabbit that had died in my arms, ON my arms and chest the same way as Jasper was, eyes rolling back, head lolling, and of a heart attack. That's what we thought he had had. Since he has a heart murmur, and epilepsy just adds to the stress, we thought this was the end for him.

Because of his problems we both decided a long time ago that to get him to a natural peaceful passing would be a success, however short his little life would be. Late last night, after I was sure that he was alright, I rose from bed and came into the room where the computer is to look up any information I could.

On one vet's site there was a clear explanation of what had happened. Jazz had had a grand Mal seizure but because the medicine was already administered, he didn't have the same amount of preliminary teeth baring, or the mania afterward. He did have the collapse and the cessation of breathing. Later on last night, I remembered that the veterinarian had told us that their goal of medicating the dogs was to have NO more than one or two seizures a year and to have them be mild.

Today Jazz was a little confused and didn't eat well at all. I was so in so much shock from last night that I didn't have a single hunger pang all day. I have seen the end of his life, and can now face it even more calmly than I ever expected to.