June 2nd 2009 10:36 am
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My husband and I put Lucy down yesterday afternoon. Lucy had been going through chemo for Lymphoma since September 2008. She had gone into remission after the first treatment. In January, the 16 week protocal was completed and we stopped treatment. About three weeks ago the cancer came back and we started a rescue treatment of CCNU.

Over the weekend she began refusing food, throwing up and doing diarehha. We even tried penut butter, sardines, gizzards, rice... and she wouldn't eat. She became very lethargic. Yesterday morning I took her in first thing and Dr Chris said she was in liver failure. Her tummy was becoming bloated because of fluid retention, her eyes and gums were yellowing. Dr Chris said that we could do treatment for her but there's no gaurentee it would work. And, her lymphnods never went back down so there really wasn't that much hope for quality of life. He also said if we did the treatment to repair the liver, we probably wouldn't be able to do the CCNU treatment for the Lymphoma anymore because it would wipe her out again so there'd be nothing left to do. Dave and I had made the agreement, with Lucy and the vet, that if she were to start suffereing, it would be time.

The last few days were hard. Lucy spent most of the time in her crate or just lying around. Dave did get her out in the garage Sunday night on the tie out and she chased her favorit toy. But by this morning, she had no desire to do even that. Though she did sleep in bed with us that one final night. Neither of us thought the news would be so bad on Monday. She didn't even say goodbye to the boys. I knew she was bad but didn't realize how bad it had got.

My heart just aches. We'll miss her a lot.

I cant say enough at how wonderful the Lake Geneva Vet Staff was. They even offered to do it outside since Lucy and I were waiting for Dave for 3 hours while he finished a job. We sat outside and enjoyed the beautiful June morning. We ended up opting for inside. Dr Chris always put up with all our phone calls and our countless questions. I'm glad we did what we did for Lucy. She was our wonderful little girl and we'll miss her always.