April 2010

It has been several months since I wrote the earlier posts and more than a year since Percy died, but still I couldn’t bring myself to write this post for April, T.S. Eliot’s cruelest month and the month Percy left us.

In a strange coincidence, I learned as I was looking up “The Wasteland” to quote a section for Percy’s memorial card that the title alludes to the story of the Fisher King. This king, in the legend of the Holy Grail, is wounded; as a result of his wounds his lands  become a wasteland, and in many versions he (and his lands) are healed by the grail recovered by Percival, who is usually recognized as the purest of the knights of the Round Table. Little Percy was named for him.

April 2010 began with some lovely mild weather and the outdoor furniture began optimistically to get into position. Percy had had a seizure March 29, still keeping to the seizures every week or ten days, but as the month turned he seemed in good form, ravenous as ever, and midweek found me cooking up the weekly batch of his diet early one evening as the dogs roamed outside. Once I’d mixed it up and put it away in containers I set the mixing bowls outside for the dogs to lick; this was a big treat. This was the last moment of calm and contentment I remember before the decline of Percy’s last two weeks.

Easter fell the first weekend of April that year. Beginning around 2 a.m. Easter Sunday, Percy had a series of three seizures; this was the worst he had ever been. He had barely recovered from the first and I was sitting with him when the second struck. When it passed and he was trying to move around, stumbling and agitated, I carried him outside, as I felt that he was best outside and maybe could avert a third seizure there– he had never had a seizure outside. But he did now, his third, and I was holding him shaking out in the grass, wondering if this was how he was going to die. After the seizure finally passed I got him back inside and took him to my son’s room on the first floor; it was now around 3:30 or 4. I wrapped him up and lay next to him; Nocci came in and lay nearby and we all slept– me fitfully– for a few hours.

I was up early to get breakfast for our houseguests, leaving Percy asleep, which was unusual. But soon he came trotting out to the kitchen, and to look at him one would never have guessed the horrible night he’d just had. I looked at him in disbelief. Perhaps this would be like the period in December when the seizures accelerated just before Christmas and I feared it was the end, but then he rallied and came back by the New Year. I hoped.

But now, within a few days I saw that his appetite was flagging, and this was the first time he’d lost his appetite, especially since he’d begun the phenobarbital. I began to grow really concerned. By the weekend I was coaxing him to eat bits of special foods, the most delicious tidbits I could think of, as he would not even bother with his food dish. I felt him wasting away in front of me. I had to laugh though, to see him continue to graze on rabbit droppings outside. When all else failed, he still seemed to want to eat those.

The weekend after Easter I traveled to my parents’ for a sister’s birthday and Percy enjoyed the change of scene, but his appetite did not improve. We returned home and the weather remained relatively mild, but I kept him in his little polartec coat outside as his weight loss left him shivering. By Tuesday, though, he was spending most of his time outside curled up in a tight ball, and for some reason he seemed to seek out the chilly, shady areas, and he was going off by himself. There was no doubt what was happening. I took him to the clinic for a final round of bloodwork on Wednesday, just to confirm.

Thursday April 15 was a pretty spring day that we spent mostly outside in the sun; my son was able to get home from college that afternoon, and our vet came in the evening to euthanize Percy, who lay in one of his favorite spots, on top of the big ottoman in the kitchen. He used to lie there and keep an eye on me as I made dinner. His beautiful eyes flickered open and closed after the first injection, but then he was as if sleeping; he died so quickly and without a movement or sound that it seemed he was just waiting to go, perhaps to know that it was ok.

I had told him that day what was happening and let him know that he would be ok, and so would we. He had lost about 5 pounds the last ten days and seemed so small and skinny, and as heartbroken as I was, I could only be glad he was not suffering anymore. From 3 1/2 months to 10 1/2 months, he had been sick, and we knew he would not live very long. But though it was all too short and marked by illness and seizures, Percy seemed to enjoy his life. And he was loved.

April 14: BUN 208, creatinine 6.8, phosphorus 13.5