u/something_other817

2 days ago I posted about how my heart dog, Monty, was going to be euthanized at home on Thursday and yesterday at 1pm it happened. It was the most surreal, traumatic thing that has ever happened to me. He was sort of disoriented and seemed scared after the first dose of “relaxing” meds which was fucking awful, but it was peaceful after that. I just am having the hardest time wrapping my head around the fact that the dog that has been with me for a third of my life, my entire marriage, infertility, the birth of my two human children, etc. is just… gone? Even after he was gone and we took him out to the vet’s car I kept worrying about if she would turn the AC on quickly enough because it was so hot outside and I didn’t want him to get too hot wrapped up in the towels 😭

I can hardly eat or sleep and even zoning out to trash tv doesn’t give me relief. I keep thinking I feel so sad I need to go cuddle Monty and then realize that I can’t because his death is the reason I’m sad😭

And it feels like other than the “dog people” in my life, everyone else just doesn’t get it. I feel like it’s a blip to them that I should just get over in a few days but they don’t seem to understand that my entire daily life just changed forever. We have another dog (who is 70lbs and 12 so fml, probably will be doing this again within the next year) but she doesn’t bark or ask to go outside nearly as much as my Monty, the house is going to be so crushingly quiet.

To top it off, I am wracked with crushing guilt about not giving him more attention in the last two years as I navigated becoming a human mom, a miscarriage, and a traumatic pregnancy I had to be on bed rest for. Monty was often a source of overstimulation for me when he would come over demanding attention or barking at the back door. I regret the times I shoved him away or yelled at him to stop barking so much. What I would give to go back and wrap my arms around him one more time and tell him thank you for all he’s done for me.

He declined so rapidly that I don’t even feel like we got a good last day with him. He was able to eat a lot of yummy food which was great but he was so out of it. He could barely move and seemed sort of unfocused and unengaged. My only consolation is before that final vet visit before we found out about his cancer he got up to greet me when I got home (which was horribly sad bc he could barely move) but I pet him for a while and told him all about how wonderful he is and how thankful I am that he saved me during my deep depression during infertility and he wagged his tail and licked my face and I feel like he at least heard me then.

I have a newborn and a 2.5 year old who I need to be present for (and the 2.5 year old naturally got really sick the same day this all happened) but I don’t know how to do anything but lay around and cry right now. My 2.5 year old keeps asking about when Monty is coming back and every time I feel like I’m being stabbed. How am I supposed to just… go on with life?

I am just tortured by these images of his final days and my entire house feels triggering because it’s just images of him limping everywhere or some of his final moments. I feel tortured by random thoughts like how I forgot to get him a Christmas gift this year. And I feel angry at everyone who doesn’t seem like they care enough about this loss I have experienced, I feel like acting normal is giving them what they want from me and I refuse. I want them to see how valuable Monty’s life was. It feels like the only way I have left to honor him is with my grief.

I don’t really know what I’m looking for here, maybe encouragement that eventually I’ll feel genuine joy and normalcy again, idk.

Today we found out our precious 11 year old pit bull mix, Monty, has extremely aggressive osteosarcoma and we will be letting him go tomorrow afternoon so that he doesn’t need to feel any more pain.

I am so heartbroken and devastated. This dog has been with me through the worst years of my life - crippling mental health issues, years of infertility, a traumatic pregnancy, a miscarriage, and another traumatic pregnancy. During infertility he and his canine sister were my whole world. We cuddled all day while I worked from home during Covid, we played and did lick mats and enrichment activities, we took them with us to Colorado so they could run wild amongst wild flowers, they had the best life and in return they gave me so much comfort and joy. Monty could hear me crying from across the house (which was often during infertility) and he would race over to lick my face. It actually became a party trick that I could pretend to cry and he would run over to sit in my lap and kiss me. He was just such a sensitive, attuned boy always ready to meet my needs. He was my little shadow. When my daughter was born 2 and a half years ago we had to kick him out of our bed because we needed to cosleep with my daughter and it wasn’t safe for him to be in the bed with us with her. I was so heartbroken about it as we cuddled every night of his life prior. As motherhood went on I found myself being able to give the dogs less and less attention. I stay home so of course they got meals and let outside whenever they wanted but I often was so overstimulated by the baby and their barking and begging for attention or food I’d be pushing him away and sometimes realize I went entire days without petting him.

I don’t think I even realized when he started slowing down a little bit in the last year. He’s still such a puppy in attitude that even though it was less than before he still felt so alive and exuberant I assumed we had years left with him. In February of this year I noticed him limping for a few weeks and we took him to the vet for X-rays (which came back normal) and pain meds. I was worried sick the full week just begging God to heal him. And he did, temporarily. It was a beautiful 6 weeks of him walking, jumping, running totally normally. I remember instead of being overstimulated by his barking and begging for dinner I was so relieved he was acting like that again. I took a lot of pics of him and enjoyed him in a renewed way during that time but unfortunately was still very distracted as I was very pregnant with a very high risk pregnancy and tons of appointments and juggling a toddler at home.

Literally the day I gave birth I noticed he was lifting his leg a little again and I was worried sick about it. Even in the hospital I was texting my mom asking how his limp was. Over the next 2 months (which brings us to now) he would have good days and bad days but seemed responsive to pain meds. We were so preoccupied with our newborn who was born very tiny and had feeding issues that we didn’t have a ton of time to deal with Monty and he was acting normal other than the limp so we just assumed he was reaggravating an existing issue. He was literally parkouring off our retaining wall and initiating play with his canine sister a few weeks ago. However when he started progressively getting worse the last week I knew something in my gut was wrong. He was barely able to get around and get down the two stairs to our back yard. I noticed muscle wasting in his arm too. Even still, he was jumping on his good leg while I made his breakfast this morning and sitting on his favorite perch barking at people who walked by. We scheduled an urgent follow up and they redid imaging and today they confirmed what I had feared all along - osteosarcoma. He has arthritis in his hips already and has other cancer removed a year and a half ago and he’s terrified of the vets office - it just doesn’t make sense to put him through surgery and chemo and such just to buy a few months with him. I hope we are making the right decision but I want him to go peacefully and not because of an emergency fracture due to the cancer or bc of regrowth while he recovers from an amputation. It just doesn’t seem fair to him.

So instead they gave us some heavy duty pain meds (which unfortunately has left him totally zonked - tho not too zonked to eat some ground turkey from my hand earlier lol) and tomorrow a vet will come to our house and he will cross over to heaven in our arms after he eats a really delicious last meal.

I am so heartbroken that I wasn’t able to give more of my attention to him the last two years and especially the last two months as I’ve adjusted to a newborn in the house while caring for my toddler. I feel so awful about it and have so many regrets about not appreciating him more and yelling at him for barking constantly. I’m just mad at myself 😭😭😭

I don’t really know what I’m looking for here, maybe if any other human children moms can relate idk. I’m going to miss my boy so so very much. I feel like he knew I couldn’t bear to lose him right before my son was born and so he stayed long enough to see us through the end of our infertility journey and to meet our son.

What a gift from God he has been in my life, I only wish I didn’t have to wait until heaven to see him again after he leaves us tomorrow 😭❤️‍🩹

And also, I’m all ears if anyone has advice on how to cope with this. I already have really bad anxiety and have been struggling with OCD, PPD and PPA and this is just the icing on the fucking cake. I want so badly to take an edible or one of my hydroxyzine tablets but I cant even take melatonin. I am breastfeeding and cosleeping and have to be incredibly careful about taking anything that could make me remotely sleepy or out of it. I just want to numb out of this horror and I can’t 😭

So I just got diagnosed - have spent my whole life thinking this was just infected follicles caused by staph. The spots have always gone away super easily with some mupirocin ointment so I wasn’t worried about it. Anyway, I’m postpartum right now and dealing with some really stubborn spots 😭 right now I’ve had one in my armpit for going on 3 weeks. The derm did a steroid injection in it bc it was causing me so much pain and gave me a different antibiotic ointment and that helped for a week but then it started firming up again and hurting a little bit. It’s not getting bigger just not getting better and totally going away either?

Does anyone have any recommendations on how to get it to go away entirely?

So far I have tried
-2 types of antibiotics ointment - switched back to mupirocin bc this seems to work better for me than the metro gel stuff my doc prescribed
-Red light therapy with Lume box (this does seem to help a little)
-My Magic Healer (the purple one- only have done it maybe 1-2x a day bc alternating with antibiotics)
-Epsom salt soak

help😅 I’m in so much pain😭😭 I also have a giant lump in my groin I made way angrier by trying to lance at home like a dumb dumb lol but im hoping that one won’t linger so long

I get literally SO many calls from UHC asking me if I have a moment to learn about the nurses hot line available to me. I have taken the call MULTIPLE times, had the benefit explained to me and even chatted with a nurse to discuss the benefit. I don’t get why they won’t stop calling me about this? It’s insanely annoying. I just let them go to voicemail now but I’ve gotten 2 calls in 2 days lol (it’s not always like this but there’s phases lol)

For reference I have a PPO Choice + plan and I call UHC a lot from then messing up my out of network claims (I have infertility and did IVF so over the years I’ve had lots of weird claim situations I’ve had to bug them about - so much so that they assigned me to their family engagement center for family’s with special healthcare needs)

Anyway, I don’t really get why they are pushing their nurses line so much? Seems like it’s just a place to ask basic healthcare questions and such, I’m trying to figure out why they benefit from me using this.

So I have a big lump in my armpit right now that hasn’t been responding to mupirocin ointment which is what I usually use. I went to the derm for it and she immediately said it was HS since I have a history of these. She did a steroid shot and prescribed a different antibiotic cream (metro something?) so I’m hoping that helps. Still don’t really understand why antibiotics help if it’s a chronic illness??

ANYWAY - my history is that since I was in about 8th grade I have been getting boils and lumps in my
Armpits, occasionally happens in my groin or other places too but mainly my armpits where I shave. At the time my doctor said they were staph infections, gave me mupirocin to keep on hand and as long as I
got cream on them as soon as they started they would go away within a couple days. I just assumed I was colonized with staph and it would take over when my immune system was weak as they often happened when I was stressed or sick. But idk it was never a huge deal once I got ahold of the mupirocin. I would feel them coming on before they were even really visible and treat and they would go away.

As an adult they started happening less frequently but probably around 1x a year and again, I’d just keep mupirocin on hand and they’d go away with a couple days of treatment so it didn’t affect my quality of life really - I just made sure to always have ointment on hand.

I’m 5 weeks postpartum rn so obviously sleep deprived and stressed and hormone fluctuations etc and I’ve had 3 lumps in the last week - 2 went away super easily but the third wasn’t responding to the mupirocin and I was in a lotttt of pain so that’s why I went in today.

Does this truly sound like HS? I already have endometriosis and Hashimotos so really annoyed at adding another chronic condition to the list lol