Wednesday, March 06, 2024

re:re:beagle died

4.40pm. trust a fucking noisy motorbike (most likely another underage malay [or that 1 indian] male child) to ride past and have the noise all echo about in this high-ceilinged prison i call my room, despite the rain still continuing. (it was raining cats and dogs with lightning and thunder an hour ago, whereas now it's the lighter side of moderate.) sigh, back to how i wanted to start.

as in this title's post, i've decided to continue filling in the blanks. because i didn't know i'd be haunted for not continuing. i just...don't know how to write something any more, without it getting all traumatising yet again. but there is no closure for me not to continue, so i might as well (before time catches up and erodes more of my recollection). 

that said, after i'd lost my memory immediately after my hit-and-run and when it started flooding in, no thanks to my ptsd (and likely because desmopressin is a nootropic, yet i...divinely needed it to not keep drinking like a camel and emptying out all those liquids every few minutes, to the point i hardly have time to do anything else [which is still the case when my pill efficacy starts to run out]), it was insane how vivid and jarring old and distant memories were to me. 

stuff that i thought i'd long forgotten exact details about, started to resurface. yet...i keep wondering if it was god taking me back in time to those moments. because for over a year, it was like i was harry potter staring into the pensieve, where all those memories i was recalling were always me viewing them from a silent, invisible 3rd-party perspective. 

it got to the point where i was starting to feel left out of my own memories, because...i was basically staring at someone else living out their life, and rifling through the diary entries, photos and videos of another, or so it seemed. thank god for eventually correctly realigning my memories to a first-person view. that was the closest to depersonalisation i've ever experienced, and there's no doubt the greater harm it would've caused me had that continued. back to title's topic.
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the final time i'd checked up on, and gone over to beagle while he was still alive (around that 12.30am-ish timing on the 5-mins-fast wall clock, was roughly when i'd last left him), i felt his nose. and found it unusually dry; ditto his tongue and side of his mouth. his left nostril (not the usual right one) even had crusted-up blood stuck to it, which signified that blood hadn't been running for some time. i tried to pluck it out but when beagle kept moving his nose away, i knew it was too physically painful for him. 

so i went to the sink, got some t.p. and dabbed water with it, then gently dabbed away that crusted-up blood. there was hardly any new blood dripping out of his nostrils so (again) i thought whatever injection he was given, must be working in helping him improve. (i didn't know he was running out of life and blood to to bleed out.)

i then brought over his water bowl, carefully lifted his head above the bowl (he couldn't even lift his head, just like hours earlier, i'd observed), but he didn't open his mouth). i then left bowl nearer to him (by the screen door & grille, instead of further away almost behind him by the cardboard 'wall' perpendicular to the grille), despite my parents only just scolding me earlier in the month for not doing so (because my father'd step into the water when opening the grille). 

for the past few months, beagle's had to use his front paws to heave his body toward the water bowl, because his back legs tend to go temporarily lame after being not-sitting-up for some time. i'd also noticed how...much more water he drank, during the almost-1-month i'd returned, until the point of his death. and how much hotter he became when nights were hot. i just thought it was due to the hot weather and his thick fur coat, akin to my insipidus condition. the last time i'd brought him into my air-conditioned room to cool off was at the start of last month.

i then decided to t.p.-dab with water from his water bowl, and then dab his nose with it. i also dipped my fingers into the water bowl, and then wet his tongue, and stuck my fingers into the sides of his unusually dry mouth, to get his jaw to open a bit more. strangely, he only opened his jaw more as a result, but didn't lick the areas i'd wet or made-damp, like he usually would have. i know this signified physical weakness, but based on that incorrect info about (how strange, that several hours later it still lasted) the anaesthetic being the source of that, i was too fucking ignorant to trust my gut and ignore the lies.

at that point, beagle's nose started acting up and he was struggling to breathe (as if trying to breathe out whatever blood that was blocking his breathing). so i prayed over him, and ran my right index finger down his nose, which seemed to stop the struggling, for the first time during that nosebleeding long-drawn-out nightmare, i prayed for "healthy nose cells" because those words came to mind. unfortunately, i could not remember one of the 2 go-to prayer clips that i've chopped up (as in, selectively edited and kept) and played over beagle, that he has always responded to the most, and indicated as if he's understood the words. 

(i believe god enabled him to. and likely did impart some healing to him

—oh god, the fucking 'mat motor' child hellion returned; thank god he's soon putt-putted away—

albeit not complete healing, at least not in this life. as in, i believe the prayers really did extend his life, and slow down his illness' progression. but sadly or not, he only got fully healed by going to heaven.)

---
sigh, one of them's returned, is running his motorbike engine and sometimes revving it up, while yelling to another child. how i long for living-in-this-prison nightmare to be over, where i don't have to keep hearing these hellions over and over again. and have had even 1 of them terrorize my house for months every few hours during lockdown (so both him and i hardly got any sleep) until i called the cops, who surprisingly responded, prolly coz i'd dialled emergency and mentioned my severe mental problems. ok he's audibly speeding round and round these roads. which means i have no choice but to ignore, yet remain on edge and have that affect my writing (in a bad way) as i continue. fyi. back to topic.
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the prayer clip in question was when jp prayed psalm 103:2-5 over his congregation. all i could remember (at the time i was last with beagle) was the last part of jp adding in his bit before he ended his prayers. so i said (like i've always reappropriated, when playing out that clip to beagle), "beagle is young again, strong again, healthy again, because of jesus!". it visibly relaxed the dog in the dark.

i then said sth like, "if beagle needs any help, just call 'jesus, jesus'!" and flapped his ears as i said that. he again looked visibly calmed to hear that – he has always...looked like he's understood, whenever i've mentioned jesus by name. i then stupidly returned to my room (coz it was a hot night yet beagle didn't want the cold, as i said, plus my menstruating made my body temperature even hotter than normal) and continued googling beagle's meds and and blood test results, instead of breaking for "dinner" like i ought to've done, since it was past midnight already. 

i only ate close to 6am that day for "dinner" that night, since (after the family cleared off) i'd spent 2 hours until nearly 4pm by beagle's body, half-heartedly trying cpr without the mouth-to-mouth (coz his jaw was closed a lot firmer, and i didn't wanna break his jaw by opening it up, his lolled-out tongue was in the way, plus there was already some halitosis). at least i got to try it this time on this dog...although after learning the next day what i'd learned, i was a lot more understanding of why it'd be cruel to temporarily resurrect him (only for his suffering to be prolonged until he'd die again, shortly after).

fast forward to me finally checking again on beagle at 2am. i found the water bowl in between his paws (so he must've used the last of his strength to paw himself over), with his head dangling oddly to the right of the bowl. and...that eerie silence in the dark. i immediately knew he was dead, verified (after putting away the bowl) and started shouting through the door of my parents, before going over to my room to grab my phone (and then return to record how he was last found). after roughly only a minute of filming, i returned to my room to scream and wail for a while. (i soon stopped because...it was pointless. there was still a sense of disbelief at the time, yet peace also.)

my parents and brother'd exited the room to congregate where beagle was (with my parents checking up on him). when my brother thought he was still alive but unconscious, my mother noticed his lolling-out tongue. 

i mean, his tongue has always had to stick out because of his busted-up gums, but he's always slid it back in to lick water, breathe, etc.. and there was at least some tension to it when he was still alive (even at 12.30am when he hardly had any strength left to move)...not limp and lifeless, like that-point-onwards.

i immediately pointed out the absence of breathing, and lightly moved my fingers in front of his nose (i didn't block his nostrils, but my mother soon waved away my fingers). there was no breath coming out of them. his eyelids could not be closed (even by the time i'd left his corpse around almost-4am), because they'd pop back open by reflex. but there was nothing scary about them; just...me feeling sad. at least his body was still soft, cuddly (alas, too late for him to feel me hugging him) and warm by the time i'd left his corpse. because it wasn't the case when i'd checked back at 5am (it was cold and rigor mortis had set in).

and that video (of finding him dead) was helpful in looking back, to...remind myself that his face wasn't a look of pain or terror or fear or agony. it just looked like...he was sick and had a stuck nose. my father wiped up a bit of water by his chest, but at least none of my parents or i remember his mouth or chin being particularly wet. this was helpful too because...for a while, i did wonder if he was waterboarded and choked to death. it looked like he'd drunk his last gulp of water (but managed to somehow at least lift his chin out of the bowl) before likely choking to death, which was likely the choking-and-gurgling i remember hearing. (i'd thought it was of the same kind from the previous night. so, like i said, i stupidly ignored it.)

fast forward to the next afternoon. my mother asked if i wanted to be informed when beagle's body was getting buried but i declined, coz (i) i hadn't slept yet and the sunlight was too bright for my eyes, and (ii) it's only his body and thankfully not his spirit that's still in there, so what would be the point. since i still couldn't sleep, a few hours later i did ask (to video) where they'd buried him.

god'd somehow caused one of the large-leafed potted plants (on one of my parents' many cars*, except this was one of the degraded-to-point-of-scrap-metal ones) to have one leaf in particular, wave conspiciously, apart from the other not-as-wavy leaves, when i was approaching beagle's body's grave (as if it was beagle's version of tail-wagging). i never saw the leaf wave that way again.

*the fucking hypocrisy: so many cars, yet i've never been allowed to drive them. and even attempting to drive the car in my name, that i'd even finally bought back last year after my court case settlement, has been met with so much opposition. and scolding and nasty words, to the point i am too anxiety-ridden to even drive out (ever since moving back here), still.

i squatted down and could immediately smell him. it was only the next day when i did that again, and could still smell him, that i remembered something i don't think he was aware of, but merely following god's leading toward: the night before he died, in order to get him to empty his bladder* outside, as well as to compensate for his nosebleeding unwell-ness, i opened screen door and grille and helped him out.

*my parents have been cruelly expecting him to hold it in, yet keep him indoors for up to 12hrs ago, and scold him if he pisses indoors. my father's even roughly shoved his falling-out c-shaped curled-up body out once, when beagle couldn't move back legs in time to walk out; horrible fucker.

(what i meant by helping him out: i'd grabbed one of the kitchen carpet-doormats for him to walk over the rolling door&grille 'tracks' so he wouldn't slip. this and previous night were the only times it occurred to me to do so; since i'd moved back in, i'd noticed my parents had once again confiscated the carpet-doormat he used to sleep on.) 

he went out sniffing around as usual. but what was unusual was how his nose led him to the front 'garden' area of the house where his body's now buried. i thought he was eating grass again (like...all my dogs have sometimes done), so i waited for him to sniff his way back to the front gates, where i held out his compensation (the final of-that-opened-pack stick of dentastix). he gratefully accepted it after i'd quickly gone through the usual paw-shaking and pointing-out-of-features (re: his unique markings) with him, before passing him his prize.

at one point, it sounded like he was choking, but when i turned around (i was by the grille), i saw him walking between the 2 cars by the front of the gates. so i didn't worry too much. by the time he'd stepped back onto the carpet-doormat i'd rolled out for him, there were surface-level drops of blood (from his nose) as he did so, that i was able to later wash off at the kitchen sink.

so...him walking over to what-would-be his body's grave site, was why i could still smell him after that. shortly after visiting beagle's body's grave site, i went to sleep. (how i wish i awoke to beagle and heaven, instead of this still-shitty life's unchanging-for-ages circumstances. my life would be drastically different if my mother would just give me my damn space.)

shortly after i awoke and had my dinnertime "lunch", my mother'd returned from her mother's. she said before she'd gone there, she'd stopped by the vet's clinic to return the pills beagle never lived to ingest (and to claw back some $, which she did). it was truly...providential that the vet beagle saw was out for lunch, because she could then speak to the vet clinic's namesake.

she showed him beagle's blood test results where he was able to reveal they were indicative of internal bleeding. (this helped relieve half of my guilt, because...i really thought i'd killed the dog, since i was the one who triggered his nosebleed.) he said at that point, a blood transfusions would be needed, of which that clinic has no stock. and even then, there was no guarantee a transfusion would help in beagle's cells repairing and not bleeding again. he mentioned other what-to-do-next options that...would only prolong, not cure the dog's life, at that point. he also at least apologised thrice, on behalf of previous day's younger (read: inexperienced), newer vet, for not at least warning my father and brother that the dog was at death's door.

that said, it is also my father's fault for not saying more. my mother only told me (around that time) that her husband told her the vet had said beagle was haemorrhaging. (motherfucker: does that word not even mean a thing? if i'd heard that i would've sat by beagle's side until the end, no matter how hot the weather or how much i was not-harmfully bleeding.)

and 2 nights later when my father finally revealed his account of the vet's, he said the vet actually said beagle's blood platelet count was low (which was what was in the test results i was googling; it also said his white blood cell counts were high and that he was anaemic i.e. low on red blood cells). my father also said the vet had suggested putting him on an I.V. drip (which was what i'd originally bemoaned, after seeing beagle drink the littlest i've seen in...ever – namesake's vet told my mother that putting beagle on the drip would've only prolonged his life for a few hours, but not have changed beagle's life-threatening circumstances).

but that my father'd declined coz he thought the vet was trying to squeeze more $ out of him. (what is wrong with these...idiots. even for all i've suffered after my accident, it seems that $ matters more to them than a human or canine life. honestly, there are many times i still wish i had died, for every brush i've come close to death with. the pain of living through tragedy after tragedy is...so much worse to deal with because i'm still alive.)

my father also said the tranquiliser injection at the start (before the vet dared to touch beagle and check his mouth and front-of-nose – sad that this had to be the protocol, because beagle has always been so amiable towards every human) had stopped beagle's nosebleeding, but that beagle still had strength in him, coz he was still holding up his head head on his own.

and that it was only the injection of (it sucks how these people don't even bother to ask) "antibiotics" (that my father allowed, just before leaving the vet's) that significantly sapped beagle's physical strength, and took away most of the remaining ounces of strength he even had left in the remaining hours of his earthly life. 

my father also meant it to be conciliatory, but it did quite the opposite for me: he revealed that my brother'd photographed beagle upon parking at the vet's (and waiting in the car, while my father went out to ask if beagle could be admitted a lot faster, beyond the always-long queue – yes, for a fast-track fee).

when i later got my brother to send me the photos (he'd taken 2), the photos troubled me for the rest of the night-to-day. poor beagle was posing for smiles, despite blood spurting out of both nostrils and onto his tongue. his eyes were more crossed out than usual.

speaking of crossed eyes. from the 'internal bleeding' diagnosis (and the blood only being emitted through his nose and never his mouth), i can pretty much guess it must've been another one of beagle's tumours, except this time it was in the nose. googling tells me nasal tumours in dogs are rare and tend to happen to city-dwelling dogs.

i can't help but wonder if beagle's eyes were crossed (they're a lot more obvious when he's staring-intensely-and-smiling directly at me or any of my family members) because of that tumour. and the signs were...in hindsight, telltale (yet no vet picked up on it, likely coz he knows how to be quiet when he's around people he doesn't know): noisy breathing and frequent sneezing, throat-clearing, and coughing.

it also made me wonder if beagle's previous owners, or relatives he got handed over to, had actually (i) already taken him for a neck-upwards scan for his busted-up gums, (ii) seen that the scan showed a nasal tumour, and (iii) decided to dump him on the streets because they were likely asked to euthanise him (as is common for this country's vets) or because they didn't wanna pay for his chemo sessions (i.e. the only non-cure but life-prolonging treatment for nasal tumours in dogs, according to googling).

i'm theorising this handed-over part because...i noticed something highly unusual too, around 7.20am on...(i think it was) the day of the night i made him nosebleed. (it was either that day or the previous day.) i hadn't slept yet and was about to head into my room to email, when i heard him "ooh, ooh ooh!"-ing loudly. at first i thought he was injured, but when i went over to by-the-grille where my parents have kept him most-of-the-time at (for the past few months), he was evidently dreaming. i actually saw his tail wag for a bit...which i've never noticed him do before*, when dreaming, after that only, came the usual ear-lifting and nose-twitching, which i'd recorded before. too bad there was no repeat so i couldn't film it.

*i've also never heard beagle call out in that way when dreaming. for the times he's talked in his sleep, he's either gone "woof, woof" or "howwwww" (the latter of which is what he usually sounds like when awake and daring enough to talk in this house, what with all the beating and threat-of-beating).

a few days after beagle died, it made me wonder...was beagle dreaming of a loved one (possibly his owner) that has died, the way people who are going to die tend to dream of already-dead loved ones? i was only reminded of this because, when i was telling my mother a few hours after beagle's dreaming (when beagle was still alive and not-nosebleeding), she said he must've dreamt he was "coming home". i was half-joking that it sounded like he was going to heaven. and...how (sadly, in a temporary way for me) true that turned out to be. 

as for the 2 verses that assured me beagle's with jesus, i forgot to preface that with the verse that...i'd immediately flipped to in my bible, in the minutes after discovering beagle's lifeless body. it was totally out of context for its passage, but i am one who increasingly believes god uses his written word in even different interpretations, as long as (i) they're in line with god's grace, and (ii) they confirm the HS' prompting within me.

the first words i saw (without even being aware of the story) were, "when the time was up, they looked healthier and stronger..." from daniel 1:15. and then i saw how different the context was. but...although it made sense with me telling beagle (the last time i saw him when he was still alive) he was healthy and strong because of jesus, i couldn't...make any sense of beagle's time already being up. i thought he still had many years ahead of him.

so mercifully (and thanks to answered prayer from myself and the only other two who know of beagle's passing), my mother seeing the right vet, helped to reveal that...that beagle's time was indeed up, and he wasn't as more-or-less healthy and my whole family thought he'd been. i mean there were more signs towards the end, but my parents put it down to aging.

for example, my father was saying a month ago that...beagle seems to've aged drastically in these past few months when it came to walking, because my father had to carry the dog back in his arms as-the-norm coz beagle'd be too tired to walk back. and...i think it was only a week prior (or 2 at the most) that, no matter how much i blew into his nostrils (like i usually do when his throat's irritated and he needs to clear it), i still failed to successfully clear his throat and prevent him from coughing a great deal. and the drinking-more-water thing. (i noticed this of snowy on the pre-dawn before he died later in the afternoon: of how snowy drank a loooot more water than usual when i'd helped him to the bucket my parents've always allocated for the dogs outside.) and so on.

as for the other jp prayer clip i'd chopped up? it had to do with praying for fatigue, heart conditions, removal of fear of death and problems with memory. i'd even sing the song along with him ('teach me lord, to wait'), and reappropriate it, such as "rise up on wings like beagle". (how sadly-or-not true that turned out to be. at now, instead of beagle having to wait, i am the one that has to. to see him, and all my other previous mostly-dogs-but-also-other-animals, again.) beagle already knew what 'run', 'wait' and 'walk' were, because they were in my everday interactions with him.

i always found it amazing that beagle could stare intently at that almost-9-minutes clip and not get bored. but i was the impatient one. so i'd last only played that song portion, as well as the psalm 103:2-5 clip, over beagle when he was finally sleeping after the first night he'd nosebled. he was noisily (with his breathing) in agreement when i played the two and gently rubbed on his shoulder. (he's also the only dog i know, who's never minded me disrupting his sleep. my parents would always scold me for doing so. but i always pointed out that he's never minded, when i came over to cuddle him while he was already sleeping, for example.)

i didn't do so for the following nights because i...thought his frequent nosebleeding was disruptive enough. as for the 2 verses that assured me beagle's definitely in heaven with jesus, they were: my bible's illustration, and that particular translation of psalm 23:4's "even though i walk through the deepest darkness..." (with a figure standing over and holding the hand of another who was in bed, as if dying), and 2 timothy 4:18's "and the Lord will rescue me from all evil and take me safely into his heavenly kingdom."

as for my church's theme this year, it was something the worship leader said, to remind the congregants (and me, and everyone else who was watching online). and when she said it, the prompting in me immediately knew it was referring to beagle too (despite jp not believing animals go to heaven). and how i need to remember it's the same for me too, although not all of me's there yet. she reminded us we were living in the upper room (this year's theme). and...that's when the thought formulated in my mind: beagle's living in the upper room (i.e. with jesus now).

as for the whole "this is not a shrine!" retort, it's because 6 days later when i went to visit beagle's body's grave (i wanted to do so half an hour earlier but waited till my father took a break and returned to living room to watch tv), i saw a dustbin and pail blocking the entrance, the shade-providing plant in front of beagle's body's grave now cut up, and 2 potted plants in front of the horizontal wreath of bougainvilleas my family'd laid out, as well as a cross for beagle. in fact, the day after beagle's body's burial, my brother'd pointed out a photo frame he'd placed in front of beagle's grave. 

it's now in my room because my father got angry that day, said a buncha insensitive and rude words*, and stated sth like, "what, so i can't do anything with my garden there after this?!?" in anger.

*like "who the hell are you, man!". who the hell am i? is this how you respond the daughter you've beat up for over half their life, and whom you've still been scaring and threatening to beat up, every time your eyes bulge, nostrils flare, and you start almost chest-bumping in that...retarded asking-for-a-fight stance? like i said, i do not want to be around people whom i...don't even associate with, as being my real "family" (other than through genetics).

as for why my mother mimicked the 'shrine' statement, it's because she'd picked up a large photo frame my brother'd left for beagle, which was at the corner of where beagle was mostly confined to for the last few months of his earthly life. this was 6am on a turning-into-thursday pre-dawn (of 29th feb), when i was finally considering bathing, after over 2 weeks of not doing so. (after beagle died, i couldn't for a week, because when i'd carried him after death, his scent was still on my right arm.)

and i haven't bathed regularly, or rather once a week (or longer) has become my new 'regular', not since after lockdown when that bitch known as my mother returned, and has even-until-last-month scolded and scolded me, to the point that i dare not even bathe any more. i used to bathe at the places i'd escaped to, or nearby my workplace, during the year of my accident when i'd finally legally owned my own car. yet that bitch was scolding me even up until last month, mockingly claiming i'd also bathed once a week during that year.

this is the kind of living hell i have to put up with, and more. remind me again, jesus, why i am still alive? back to topic.

she'd awoken at the time to use the toilet. whereas i was still snacking (in vain, after hunting around for various bits of snack-like food to eat for at least half an hour, after a very not-filling-at-all meal i was given). 

(i used to drive out on my own to get myself food after my court case was settled. but that bitch kept interfering and buying me meals, so i had to stop getting my own. and nowadays she's scolding me for not getting my own meals, and whenever i've finally almost worked up the courage to go out, has started dissuading me and buying me the meals she when-in-a-bad-mood wants me to buy instead. fucking hell! when will this nightmare end, and my freedom begin! i just want to be free from my mother. and even that is something that still has not happened, nearly 4 decades later. every day i declare and pray i will not suffer the fate of my spinster aunt. i have a lot more faith after my accident that it will not happen, whereas just-before my accident, i was starting to resign myself to it.)

she then kept scowling and growling while walking around trying to find where else to place the photo frame, and repeating that 'shrine' comment, while declining whatever places (in the communal living space) i suggested she could place the photo frame at. i mean, i'm not the one who bought that photo frame (and all other photo frames eric'd helped to put up, mostly of beagle, before he flew back overseas – one photo has helped me cope; the rest have not). yet, i was getting blamed for it (yet again, as has always been the default mode in this family whenever anything goes wrong), at such a late hour, right when i was seriously considering getting myself to finally bathe.

needless to say, i lost whatever remaining willpower to bathe at the time. i did bathe the next night though, by the grace of god. and i will bathe a lot more often, and be free, hopefully this year too, by the grace of god. well...that's what i always pray for every year. and i will not stop praying until i die. (and then, i'll finally be free of that bitch. i don't wish anything bad to happen to my family; i just want to be free to live my own life, the way i want to. seems like that is too much to ask for, from a helicopter parent. nonetheless, i will not stop praying for freedom until i die.)

Tuesday, March 05, 2024

re:beagle died 2wks ago

12.16am. cool...this is the first time i've ever blogged from a mobile device (a cheap tablet). it started raining heavily almost 10mins ago, & it's making me sleepy in bed & lazy to...finish such an upsetting real-life story, in incomplete but still great detail.

so i won't finish it tonight. i'm not sure when i will either, except to at least conclude with a summary of the inevitable:

12.30am-ish on monday (technically 20feb tues coz past midnight) was the last time i'd gone over to check on&spk to him, & saw him alive. i heard him gurgling-&-choking again around 1am (or maybe 1.30am), but i ignored it coz:

Monday, March 04, 2024

beagle died unfairly 2wks ago

4.28pm. in less than half a day, it'll mark the 2-weeks-ago passing of yet another dog, due to yet another family-ignoring reason, with both parents yet again scorning the aftermath of my grieving as if it's nothing. (my father even said "this is stupid!". fuck you, not literally though. i wish i was never associated with these parents. my mother later mimicked and mocked her husband's "this is not a shrine!" retort. i mean i get that, but fucking hell, couldn't they at least show some respect, even after his earthly death?)

at least with this dog, i've never been more assured by god that he is in heaven with the rest. which i'll get to, likely at the end of this post. i'd like to chronologically go over...the beginning of the end, and the immense regret and guilt i still sometimes-feel, and will likely carry with me for the rest of my life. (or maybe i'll feel the pain less, like with fibi also when she wasn't sent to the vet, and died as a result. in this case, beagle finally did get sent to to the vet...but it was a fucking killer vet clinic, i.e. the very one i'd specifically told both parents months ago not to go to after such death-related terrible gmaps reviews, and had even provided an alternative better-reviews vet to instead visit.)

it's my fault for not bringing him (to the vet) even though i'd triggered it (what led to his death), and...fucking hell. if my fucking parents didn't fill me with such anxiety that i was afraid to go out, if i wasn't myself bleeding (but in a healthy, on-the-rag manner, and therefore finding it inconvenient to go out), if i wasn't myself still recovering from a nose-affecting flu (and stupidly equating it to beagle's infinitely worse condition), i would've brought beagle. yes, he would've died eventually, if his suspected diagnosis is correct. but at least, in my mother's words (after she'd returned to killer vet's clinic for answers), "we would've been prepared" and "we would've have time to say our goodbyes".

thank god i now know i'll never have to say goodbye to beagle, and every other dog, eric's hamsters, or visiting ex-stray cats i've ever (co-)owned, because i am a lot more assured by now that i'll see them again. it also does help that the church-i-now remotely-consider myself-a-part-of reminded me of a theme this year that...in a way, reminds me of this truth.

5.25pm. took a break for snacks, another drink, and a half-pill retake (of desmopressin – the dosage of which, is frequently a bone of contention between always-getting-transferred-out or not-my-preferred endocrinologists since my hit-and-run caused this; i have no mood to elaborate why).

back to beagle's predictable run-up to his health's deterioration...which resulted in his death. i wish i'd fucking listened to my gut about it being life-threatening, instead of dismissing it as fear-mongering, when i myself was too filled with irrational fear to drive out. 

even after his death when i said i wanted to drive out (which i wasn't even going to mention if my brother hadn't finally gotten ip cameras installed*), she kept scolding and scolding me until i became so filled with anxiety, i never left the house.

*which is telling (as to who their favorite remains...i'm trying not to care as much about such a fact). coz i'd bought a cctv this time last yr for this purpose that my mother refused to fix up despite 2 previous januaries of robberies. and this january was spared likely coz beagle was sleeping by the sliding-door-left-open-for-him area.

i still haven't driven out on my own since last moving out. wanted to try 3 days ago but again, she picked-up-on, and prevented that. 

(first, she scolded me for not getting my own meals. i had to remind her that i used to do so after my court case finally ended, yet she kept buying me meals after i myself had already bought them. [coz i tend to bulk-buy so i don't need to go out every day, just like my stints in sg post-accdt.] so i made plans to drive out. said i was scared, on the day itself, and that's all it fucking took for her to offer to drive out and get me meals instead.

---
great, some hellion child can be heard screaming "waaaaahhhh!" from this echoing high-ceilinged decades-long prison i call my room. at least it wasn't another 'mat' swearing or 'mat-motor' noise-causing...which was as recent as a couple hrs ago.
---

i wish she'd offered to take beagle to the vet. i had been asking and asking, yet my whole family didn't give a shit till it was too late, and even then they took a very happy-looking (yet clearly physically suffering) him to the killer vet. who sapped out most of his strength, yet left my fucking, always scolding and either daughter-beating or threatening-to-beat-again father to scare me into not staying by the dog's side at his passing. at least i broke the rules part of the time. but if it wasn't such a hot night and i wasn't on the rag (my body temperature seems to be even hotter than my hotter-than-normal insipidus condition when i'm bleeding that way), i would've been by the living room.

ditto if i wasn't busy googling for beagle's blood test results and meds. technically i'd finished, but the ignoramus in me thought i might as well compile-into-simple-english and whatsapp-write my fam of my findings, oblivious that my dog was literally hanging on to the last of his lifeforce, yet forced to face it in the dark without human company that he craves. (at least i am more convinced now than not, that One human [and also God] was with him as he gurgle-choked and likely suffocated to death.)

7.03pm. had to take another toilet and drink-making break (among other minor things, like washing my oily-as-the-norm face...and getting too hung up over how facial tissue was causing more fluff to get . was also post-accdt's frequent-itchy-throat coughing and cooling off, due to burning up. sigh, i do find this insipidus condition a bother, but it's not bugging me enough to desire total healing atm. it'll happen, just...i'd rather it not, rn.

hmm. 🤔 think i'll write a lot less than i'd originally intended, coz...it is a rather long story. and thank god i have 2 people to write it out to, 1 the most. it's been helping me process my grief, remorse, regret, anger, guilt...and sometimes derive divinely-prompted answers too, that i know wouldn't otherwise've happened. i won't even be informing others this time, unless they happen to ask how i'm doing.

so back to what happened with beagle, chronologically. it was a saturday (technically 18 feb's sunday coz it was past midnight) night. i'd heard beagle howling earlier and when i went outside my room to check, my mother said she was cutting up a newly-discovered-he-likes-it 'sior bak' (some roasted, crispy pork belly fat thing that isn't really my thing, hence me giving my previous portions to an eager beagle). but she said she wasn't gonna give him any.

so by the time i was done on my com in this room and ready for my own "dinner"*, beagle was already fast asleep. 

 *long story. but ever since i got healed of gastritis through one of jp's sunday service ministerings in mid-oct, i've been a terrible steward of my stomach, and have been eating later and less. my last endocrinology appointment last week celebrated my "healthy" weight, which took (ironically) zero effort to maintain, but i was saying my mental health was the one suffering instead. (at least the likely-temporary staff said he hoped i'd feel better. and asked if the psych dept would help. i then had to launch into my story of how useless he was, and why i hardly frequented the place. i didn't bother going into my own personal discoveries that...i don't need a psych; i just need jesus.)

i felt bad, and was disappointed that my dinner didn't have any 'sior bak' for beagle. however, it did come with crumbly minced pork. so i woke beagle up and fed him some of it. except he understandably* chewed up and dropped some crumbs onto his 'blanket' (my parents only give him a towel, and they keep confiscating the t-shirts i give him, or even the doormat carpet they'd initially gave him – i'd buy him a dog bed, except they confiscated that from one of my previous dogs too).

*(a) it was crumbly, and (b) ever since his arrival, he's had a busted-up gum that results in him never being able to close his mouth all the time (and for his tongue to always have to stick out, though never as much and as limply as when i'd found him dead). a trip to my brother's vet (i'll just refer to it as mbvet for short) revealed that he has a cancer growth there. but assumed it to be benign. over the months we've had him (coz beagle'd only entered our lives a year and almost-a-month before his passing, care of eric driving him back after beagle's been in a thankfully-not-close-to as-bad-as-mine hit-and-run), he started developing more growths on each of his hock and one on one of his front nipples (i've never owned a male dog with nipples before, so i had to look it up). 

plus he had what i'd thought was a mole at the tip of one of his ears (that the mbvet said was a skin tag – i've never been with beagle to any vet trips, so it's been only what my parents've relayed back to me) and a skin tag on one of his whiskers. (coincidentally or not, a skin tag is also small, benign growth.) he'd also arrived with a small, bald patch between his eyes that never grew back. looked flea-sized, but mbvet checked him out to be free of fleas, ticks or mites at his point of arrival. so i guess that happened some time ago.

but not understandably, my ocd didn't like it. so i made the mistake of gathering up all the crumbs, lifting up this chin, and sticking my fingers in to open up his reluctantly jaws-nearly-shut mouth*, and pouring it all in.

*special mention to beagle for this. he is the most docile dog i've ever owned (and the only one who's never bit me, even with food around – most he's ever done was shout and push my hand away with his nose). so much that it hurts to know what he's had to go through (at the fault of cruel humans), and guess (from implied responses) of whatever he's had to go through. 

for example: the 1st and 2nd night from his rescue, my father whacked him with a stick (for howling repeatedly), to the point that he'd gone to the back garden to hide and refused to come out for dinner. at least my mother was around and i'd learned (only too late, when he'd slapped scottie often, unfairly for peeing in the house, during lockdown when she was in nz and i was stuck with this first-beat-me and-now-beating-the-dogs fucker i have to unfortunately also know as my father) that telling her, is the only way to stop the beatings.

so she scolded him. but for subsequent months, he's always come out with a stick in the middle of the night, to whack nearby surfaces to scare the dog into silence. at least by the week before beagle died (and thank god he started howl-barking again that week – i really did miss his lovely voice, after he'd been scolded into not-shouting and kept silent for so long), all my father did was show up in the dark and confront the dog, in order for beagle fall silent.

i should also mention that i named him beagle. because his tail wagged when i mentioned that breed name, as if his previous owner'd told him he was a beagle too. (he also immediately knew what "good boy" was, and was quick to sit down when i lightly pressed the small of his back, on day 1 of his arrival here. he also let me carry him by his armpits to the-corner-my-parents-wanted-him-to-remain when he was curiously wagging his tail and sniffing around. this was just after my bro'd brought him outta the car and after he had to barf, coz he'd been placed on the floor of the passenger seat, facing the opposite direction in the dark. i'd get motion sickness too, from that position. and my parents were wary of touching the dog because they had some stupid notion that beagle'd bite them.)

that action of mine must've got food down the wrong ear-nose-throat channel, coz he started snorting several times, as if trying to push the crumbs outta his nose. and that also triggered the start of his nosebleeds. i told my parents through their closed room door, but they didn't bother. so i attempted, and was able to clot his little-in-comparison-to-the-future nosebleeds every hour or few, by pressing t.p. to his right nostril (which was always the one that bled...until the next night, and the final, fateful night of his death) for a minute before wiping it off. 

he also sneezed out blood clots once or twice, which scared me coz it reminded me of the blood clots he'd peed out when his prostate was enlarged. (parents also waited a few days before sending him to mbvet for an ultrasound scan, and i was even more worried back then that he'd die.) little did i know this was merely nothing, in comparison to the next night. i thought photographing a picture of what he'd sneezed up would convince my parents but, nope.

after my successful attempts at clotting, he was able to sleep after some time. (i'd also played what i'd been regularly doing for the past month: either 3d-modelled sceneries of places near rolling beach waves or rains, or jp's healing scriptures. both've been helping him sleep, more so the latter.) i reminded my parents about his nosebleed in the morning, but because he wasn't nosebleeding by then, they didn't care. i slept daytime and awoke evening. i used the toilet just as my mother was about to bring beagle for a walk.

when she'd returned, i asked how beagle was. she said he was still nosebleeding "but only a bit", so she didn't see anything wrong with it (!). that whole night-to-day, the dustbin was half-full of either bloodied t.p. or my own nose-blown mucus. my attempts at blood clotting failed this time. and beagle could not fall asleep beyond 15mins at a go. playing 3d-modelled scenarios or healing scriptures failed to help beagle fall asleep. it was so bad, he had to sit up in order to breathe better, and for blood to be slower at coming outta his nose.

that night, i did worry if...he was going to die. but a peace soon came to me as i reasoned that, even if he dies, he'd be with jesus. the scared-chicken in me still did not bring him to the vet, despite me asking my mother (just before my parents and bro uncaringly left for breakfast) if she'd bring him to the vet, since it was serious enough to disrupt his sleep. she merely said maybe, but not at the moment, before leaving.

i was thinking i'd rather sleep (after sending out an email). i was also thinking that going out while on-the-rag is...not appealing to me at all, less so with me still having to blow out mucus from my not-as-bad-as-2-previous voice-removing bouts of flus. (both occurred from...the point of me first setting foot at the last place i'd moved out to. i got scolded by my mother about this next thing, but i was thankful i still did it, now the dog is gone: i'd moved back since 24jan to my parents'. i was thankful coz...sigh idk, maybe beagle'd lived longer if i didn't trigger his nosebleed. back to topic.)

---
9.10pm. another toilet break as well as talking to my parents, who'd just returned from some apparently ungrateful clients' house. my father was lamenting mistakenly driving my car into some ditch or small drain, when he parked at said client that my mother's friend insisted was "urgent" but actually wasn't (and had a client who didn't even wanna be a client, so he was essentially saying he went there for free only to 'injure' my car, and that he'd send it for dent-repairing tomorrow). 

i replied that it wasn't a big deal, since...my car still has the all-around key-scratches from night-before hit-and-run from the vandal (yet another angry malay young male) that insidiously caused my tyre to keep going flat in the first place (and thereby position me right where i could be hit-and-run into). so i essentially view my tardis that car as a high-end beater car by now. it saved my life anyway (i mean god did, but he made use of it to help with that), coz if i didn't strategically fall (or was placed) onto its roof, i'd be dead by now. (which...the nihilist in me sometimes still wishes i was, the more i endure painful or disappointing memory after memory. thankfully i am not in that mood atm. back to topic.)
---

when i awoke (and after i'd used the toilet), i got scolded as usual, when i asked if beagle'd gone to the vet. my mother said "we'd just come back" but she only later clarified that she'd just returned from her mother's, while my father and brother'd only "just"* brought beagle back from (of all people) the killer vet's clinic. i immediately groaned about beagle being brought there, and why there wasn't any scans done. my father started retorting about how much more that'd cost (fucking hell – i already said i'd foot the vet fees, so long as my parents brought beagle to the vet, but i didn't know they were going to bring him there, and only so late). my brother even complained at how pricy it was, and how we'd all hafta split the bill (who cares, i mean the dog's life matters more than money...does my family not see this?).

*alas, the ip camera footage of that time wasn't continuous and only showed a few seconds of humans going in and out, or one of my family's cars arriving at the gates and then leaving. so there was no footage of the dog being carried there and back. but the timing showed that they'd left a couple hours before sundown, and were back an hour before i'd woken up.

my mother said only blood tests were done, and when i asked what the results showed, she claimed they were "inconclusive". i wasn't convinced, hence me later googling to decipher its results (that seemed increasingly scary to me, to the point i was...amazed beagle was still alive – i stupidly had no idea he was dying, what's more with that fucker known as my father claiming otherwise). my mother said beagle only started bleeding profusely at the end of the day, by which point mbvet was about to close.

she even said if i didn't keep trying to tissue-clot his nose, it wouldn't keep bleeding, and that the previous day, my parents just let him nosebleed and nosebleed until he finally fell asleep. except this time he was never able to get to sleep because the nosebleeding was that bad. i mean, would she have reacted as lackadaisically if it was a human toddler who was nosebleeding like that, and with over 2 full days' warning, too? (this is bringing back flashbacks of when fibi finally died after not being able to eat for i-think-it-was 6 days, without ever seeing the vet. back then i didn't even have a car, and my parents kept saying no taxi here'd let me bring a dog over. fucking hell, i also wish i'd just rented a car then, or still bothered to call taxis here and offer to pay more.)

beagle in the meantime had his paws close to his face, and was...i mean, he looked like he was snoring with his eyes open. except when my mother went to check, he blinked i.e. wasn't snoring. (he was likely trying to stay awake so he didn't die yet.) my father even scolded me for disturbing him and said the (killer vet clinic's) vet (that was on beagle's shift) said to "let him rest" and "don't disturb him". (my mother then relayed that beagle was given a "tranquiliser" and "antibiotics" [supposedly] i.e. 2 injections to help beagle rest.) i want to kill myself, every time i think about how many fucking times that fucker has been scaring me unhelpfully into making the wrong decisions. my whole family* then proceeded to head out, unconcerned, for dinner. 

*i'm referring to my brother (who was back from overseas for the holidays, and also didn't give a shit whenever i'd pointed out beagle's nosebleeding during the times my brother awoke to use the toilet for those 2 nights) and parents.

since they were gone, i went to check on beagle. his back legs seemed to have gone to sleep. coz after some time (of observing him, while sitting at the nearest living room's rattan-with-sofa chair), he pawed twice in the direction of his water bowl, but seemed unable to move his body. i immediately brought the bowl to his mouth. and most unusually, after drinking, his chin just hung onto the bowl, as if he had no strength to even move his head. i thought this was so unusual. and he drank less than usual too. so i helped detach his chin and paws from the bowl.

and often hung around that chair area, amidst returning to kitchen to wash dishes or drink water. i saw him attempt to shift positions (to put his nose away from the desk fan*, which was the only fan left on instead of the ceiling fan) but could only move his head and front paws. 

*it's placed on a large box so that it's above beagle, and aimed downward at him.

so i went over, switched off desk fan (despite it feeling hot to me; i also switched on ceiling fan) and positioned his entire body to lie down sideways in the direction he'd wanted. (in the midst of all that, i also wiped away the least blood i'd seen since his nosebleeding started: just a bit in front of his chest where he was sphinxing, a smear by the bottom tile border of wall, where he'd first moved his nose away-from-fan to before readjusting his face to look outside-toward-the-grille, and both his nostrils. i thought at the time that the injection must be working, and that he must be healing. little did i know he was running out of living-blood to bleed out.)

he immediately attempted to sit up, and indicated (with his breathing) it'd be hard to breathe lying down. except he couldn't even get himself up at all, and was pawing in vain. so i repositioned him to the original position i saw him in, i.e. sphinxed, with his paws close to his body.

i found it so weird that his back paws hardly moved on his own, when i was moving him. it was like carrying a limp deadweight for his bottom half. i even physically 'cycled' each back paw for a short while, so as to help with circulation. i was surprised there was hardly any...resistance from his back paws, when i'd moved them.

i then went to the kitchen for a while. (i forgot, maybe to finish my tea drink or sth.) when i got back, his back legs looked like a dead dog's, coz they were...unusually hanging and resting at the knees, instead of tucked close to his body (like usual). so i went over and helped tucked his back paws close to his body. except he didn't readjust them like usual. i even placed them a bit too close to his body, but...nothing. his trunk was still expanding and contracting with his noisy breathing and his eyes were open, but...there was no resistance again, like i said.

i observed him like that for a while until my fam came back, then i mentioned my findings. my father then said "it's the anesthaesia" as to why beagle couldn't move much, then wrapped a towel around the dog (after feeling his fur and noting that he's not as hot as usual). i wish, i wish, i wish i'd been able to put two and two together for every increasing red flag i'd ignored. my mother than said he needs to sleep, and switched off living and dining room lights at that unusually early hour of 8.30pm-ish, thus leaving beagle only illuminated by moonlight (coz kitchen lights were too far away, what with him being unable to even move his head and turn around).

so i also soon went back to my room, since the lights were off and it was a hot night.

the penultimate time i'd gone to sofa-chair area to glance over at him, which was after using the toilet, i found it...also weird (as in, this has never happened before) that beagle turned his paws and face toward the wall, instead of either staring outside (where cats, rats, shrews, lizards were often making noise and running around just beyond the grille) or inside (where he'd lately eventually howwwwwl in the dark for me to get outta my room to go eat my "dinner" and share it with him too). 

the rest of his body was positioned nearly-that-way after my dad'd wrapped his usual towel around him (in place of his blanket). (when not-sick, he's loved snuggling into that blanket. likely coz it's the softest, and also coz [i think, from my observances] that he used to sleep in bed with his owner with soft bedding and blankets like that all around him.) i thought he was sleeping (what with the fucking family killing the lights), so i didn't even go over to say hi. 

10.49pm. back from toilet. i think i now oughta break for my dinner since my stomach's calling, after having lunched at a more appropriate timing for lunch (close to 2pm). will continue the final part of this living nightmare, within a few hours.