Wednesday, September 17, 2008

:(


My best friend, Amanda who lives in Oklahoma had her birthday yesterday. She is absolutely one of the strongest women I know and I absolutely love and miss her to death. I met her over in England when she was just a freshly married 18 year old. Very naive and very ignorant. We became friends when she started working with me an our friendship deepened when her then-husband (aka "jerkface") was deployed. She grew so much in those few months she evolved into this smart, capable woman. Anyway, she is now a single mom, going to school, raising her beautiful son and living on her own. Seeing how she has blossomed is INCREDIBLE to say the least. Oh, she is also the most genuine person on this Earth that I know. She would do anything for her friends.

Anyway, when we lived in England I adopted my three cats from an amazing cat shelter, Cats Protection. I was lucky to get them because they never let Americans adopt because we tend to abandon them when they are stationed elsewhere. (How awful, right?) Well, I was lucky and promised them that I would in fact bring them back to the States with me when I left, which I did. And so I had my three babies, Duke, Toddy, and Nadine.

Back to Amanda, she really wanted cats so I told her let's go to Cats Protection and I'll bring my photo album. We'll show them my cats that I got from there and maybe they'll let you adopt if they remember me. So we went and the volunteers said, "Of course we remember you, if you vouch for her and say she's a good person, we'll let her adopt." :) Amanda picked out Pickle and Edward, two year old cats. Pickle is a black and white kitty with one tooth (hehe) and Edward is big and grey with no teeth. She flew them back to the States with her when she moved and they have been her babies.

She texted me the other day that Edward was in the ER because had lost a lot of weight, he wasn't eating and he was hiding (uh oh). He was in the hospital for a few days and yesterday, on her birthday, they told her that he had taken a turn for the worse. Ends up he had triad disease; he had pancreaitits and his vessels were leaking into his tummy and all of it in the same area which was all too much. They told her the odds of treatment wouldn't work.

Well, she made the decision to put him down. She was so distraught she couldn't even go in the room with him while they did it. He was only 7 years old, "he's just a baby and I feel like I just got him." She told me crying. My heart breaks for her. I was just there one month ago with Duke. I tried to tell her to think of Edward's best interest and would he really want a feeding tube down his throat? I would never advise her to put him down, that was her call.

I think of how it was with Duke. He's 13, I've only had him for 7 years....and my best friend only had Edward for 5 years and he was only 7. I knew about Duke's illness for almost two months and had time to digest it all, to grieve, to scream, to cry, to get all my emotions out before I made the decision to put him down. He was in good spirits till he passed. He had an appetite, he was happy, he was himself. I think of myself as lucky and grateful that I had that time with him, I wish Amanda could have had that experience..I had weeks, she had hours.

Please send good thoughts her way today. It's just weird how this has happened to the both of us in just a matter of months...and I wish it hadn't happened to us at all.

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