Colby

Click here to view this photo book larger

After our scare Memorial weekend with Colby, we thought he was all better and that he had ingested some kind of toxin, but it worked its way out of his system and that he was all better.

But driving home from Dallas on the 6th of July, Colby had a focal point seizure.  He was fine for a couple more days and then he had another.  After a couple weeks the focal point seizures started happening almost daily and we decided we needed to take him to vet, but Justin was out of town (no way was I going to the vet with all 3 children).

Then Colby had another focal point seizure which turned into a grand mal seizure.  Seriously scary stuff.  And the boys didn't know what was going on - they thought that Colby was playing a game.  They kept laughing and trying to lay on him while he was seizing.  I called the vet and made an appointment for the next afternoon once Justin would be home.

After spending way too much on Colby's hospital visit in May, we really didn't have the money to have testing done to find out why Colby was seizing.  Instead we had some blood work done and started Colby on anti-seizure medication.  He would go a couple days without seizures, then have a few focal point seizures within a few days, then repeat the cycle of no seizures for a couple days.  Luckily he didn't have another grand mal seizure.  But after a month of medication when Colby went back in for blood work our vet felt like Colby shouldn't be having seizures that frequently while being medicated.  Since his latest blood work was all good, we upped his dosage a bit.

Another month went by and we continued to see focal point seizures every few days.  Apparently, Colby should have only had a few seizures a month while being medicated.  We tried out another medication in addition to the one that he had been on and while the seizures were a lot less frequent Colby had completely changed and he just wasn't our Colby anymore.

He had no energy.  He acted like he couldn't hear well, couldn't see well and couldn't even smell things right in front of him.  He never played.  When he came to clean up the scraps of food thrown on the floor (if he came to clean them up) he couldn't find them.  He walked around in circles a lot.  He slept like 22 hours a day.

We knew that Colby's time with us was over.  It was hard.  We cried.  I cried a lot.  Without testing we don't know for certain what was wrong with Colby but the vet felt like we were looking at either a brain tumor or brain lesion.

I spent all night one night crying and sent Colby to the vet with Justin the next day.  I didn't think that I would see him again.  Instead Justin and the doctor decided that we would put Colby on steroids for a week to try to help him act a little more like himself and we would be able to say goodbye to him.

That made it even harder for me because Colby WAS acting a little more normal.  He was nowhere near back to his normal self, but he wasn't sleeping as much and would perk up when we called him, which he wasn't doing before the steroids.  I was starting to doubt if we should say goodbye to him.  Maybe he would get better.

But then he started having more seizures.  First it was a few focal point seizures, then he started having grand mal seizures.  When he had his 3rd grand mal seizure in less than 24 hours I felt like he looked at me and asked me to end his suffering.  I held him and wept.

Justin and I took him together to the vet that evening (Thursday, October 25th).  The week before Colby pulled and pulled trying to not go into the vet's office.  This time he willingly walked in.  He was ready to not be suffering anymore.

We cried as we said goodbye to Colby.  We stayed with him for a while after he was gone.

Sometimes I still expect to see him come running into the kitchen or out the doggy door to chase birds out of our yard.  It seems like he should still be here curled up on the couch next to me.

Even though it was almost 6 months ago, we miss our Colby like it was yesterday.