Hey all. I haven’t been around much lately because I keep thinking about @jz78817 and how he loved it here. But this is my place, too, dammit. 
I was here before him, too! Heh.
So, things are … Tolerable. I’m handling them amazingly well, all things considered, according to my therapist. See, before Jim passed away, I already had a lot of shit on my plate: some problems in my marriage (mainly due to lack of communication and it’s hard to work on that when the other person wants to default back to shoving everything away and not dealing with it), my spouse lost their job and they went in a spiral of depression, which they’ve never experienced before.
And then just two fucking weeks after Jim? We had to put our beloved baby dog, Charlie, to sleep. He’d been on heart medications for 5 years (seeing a cardiologist, even!) And they were too hard on his kidneys. So basically he was in kidney failure and the treatment for that – pushing tons of fluids – would have put him into heart failure. He was 15.5, so he had a long life (we adopted him from a Cavalier King Charles rescue when he was 5), but holy fuck we loved that doggo so goddamn much. We’re the stereotypical older millennials who are married with no kids but had a dog. I grew up with dogs so I at least had experience with this, but my spouse didn’t and it made the depression worse.
Then all the stress etc made them have blood pressure so high they had to go to the ER and spend the night in the cardiac ICU. Now they’re on BP meds and their bp still hasn’t stabilized.
And then, just last Sunday? We had to have my parents’ dog, Bosco, put to sleep! I shit you not. And it was completely out of the blue! He was a 10 year old cocker spaniel who had really helped me after Jim and Charlie. He had really bonded to me and followed me around the house (I’ve been staying with my parents since Jim died, because of that and also the above marriage issues).
He had seemed totally fine until a week before, where it seemed he hurt his back a bit (which he had done a few years ago) playing with His Ball. Got pain meds etc from the regular vet but they stopped working late Saturday night. ER finds it’s not his back. He had fluid in his abdomen that turned out to be blood and he had dozens of tumors on his lungs. They said there was nothing medically they could do.
This is the first time my parents have had NO dogs in 32 years. I just keep wondering what’s going to happen next.
missed this the first time around due to handling stuff with my mom, and then my own grief. But I wanted to let you know I feel for you, and know how hard it can be first hand.