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.
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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.)
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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.