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Grief

Freya died. This is probably obvious from the previous post. She did very well making it to 12 (the approx lifespan of her breed is 7-10). I know she stayed as long as she could.

Will and I had a miscarriage right before we found out she was dying as well, so it’s not been a good time. Everybody seemed to get savaged by something in that same period, I blame 5 planets being in retrograde.

I wasn’t going to talk any further about this than the post I already made, because keeping up with this website is hard at the moment, but I’m struggling with a lot of my feelings so I find myself doing this.

Her death was the best it could have been but it was still deeply horrible. I hated knowing in advance that it was coming, I felt every second slip by and I felt like I was wasting all of them. There was nothing special to do, she was tired and just spent every day flat on the floor staring at nothing. She didn’t want a fuss or to play with anyone. But I still felt like I wasted the time.

She died surrounded by everyone. The other animals saw her before and after and I hope it helped them understand why she wasn’t going to be there anymore.
She chewed her Kong a bit, the first toy she ever had, and the vet gave her an injection that made her fall asleep. We spent some time stroking and talking to her. Then she received an overdose of anaesthetic that put her to sleep in the permanent sense.
That was maybe the hardest I ever cried in my life. Her body was surprisingly heavy when she was no longer in it.

After a while the vet brought in a dog basket and a blanket. Freya was lifted into the bed and had the blanket put over her. She was carried out to the vet’s car and put in the back. I’ll never forget how she looked in the back of that car, the image is burned into my mind. She just looked like she was asleep under the blanket but it was so sad.

I thought I had felt the maximum pain but when the car drove off with her my heart shattered into a million pieces.

The house is so empty without her. There’s still 3 cats, a dog, and a snail, but her absence is so strong.

But I’ve definitely felt some things. The first night after her death I honestly felt in my gut that she was in the room with us. I also felt the weight of her climbing on our mattress. I keep seeing flashes of her but I don’t know how much of that is just my brain.

So I think I have to accept that I do, in fact, believe in ghosts. And also that I might be vaguely clairsentient. But nothing fancy.
Even though it feels like she isn’t far away, normal life with her is gone and it’s absolutely devastating. The nights are the worst for me, because everything gets quiet and I run out of distracting thoughts. I can’t really accept that she’s died. She was my baby and my souldog. Will is the opposite and tends to get worse during the day.

We’ve brought her ashes home now and they are safely in our room, until we buy a home where they will almost definitely be somewhere more prominent.

Freya was a very good dog. I couldn’t have asked for a better dog. She was too smart for her own good and you could see the cogs turning in her brain when you asked her to do something. We used to keep treats in a little tub with a purple lid. We kept it in an upper kitchen cupboard. One day she trotted into the lounge with the tub in her mouth, put it on the table and looked at us to ask for treats. This was not long after we got her and we still have no idea how she was able to reach the tub. She used to love rubbing her sides on our damp bath towels. She would try and bite the water when we were showering. She once stole a pair of my underpants off the washing line and chewed them. She used to love watching the bin men, and staring out of front windows in general. She saved my life.

It’s nice to know that she meant something to other people who reached out. They will probably stop thinking about her one day, because she wasn’t their dog. But I will never forget her.

My ideal afterlife would be a spectral version of our eventual home where every animal we ever loved lives and we just stay there forever doing normal things. I don’t think I’d reincarnate if we had that, I’d just stay forever with Will and the animals.

In other news, I think I have a phobia of needles I’ve been in denial about. Specifically a kind of Blood-Injection-Injury Phobia (unfortunately acronym BII-Phobia).

I don’t mind flu jabs. I don’t mind tattoos (these aren’t hypodermic needles anyway). The migraine botox is unpleasant but I can usually cope with it.
It’s specifically venepuncture that I cannot cope with.

I had a CT scan with contrast the other day, because it’s possible I could have tumours on my adrenals (a.k.a. the tops of my kidneys) as well.

Just having a cannula put in beforehand was a complete disaster. I love cannulas in principle and I love intravenous therapy as a thing. But getting the tube into my veins is a problem.

As usual, the nurse didn’t even have a needle yet, she was just poking at my inner elbow veins and I started feeling sick and dizzy. Fainted after the cannula went in, for some reason my legs were on fire as well, which I think is a new sensation.

That was rough enough but I thought I’d surely be fine for the actual scan because the stabbing was finished. I’ve definitely had CT scans before but I don’t think I’ve had contrast.

They hooked me up to the iodine dispenser and I thought it was all going fine, aside from the scanner being a bit close for comfort. But it turned out the iodine hadn’t gone in yet. I went so intolerably boiling hot, it felt like I was being cooked alive, I’d never felt anything like it. And the scanner was spinning so close to my face for some reason. I had a panic attack. I thought I was going to die, and that I deserved it for putting my dog to sleep, and that maybe she got this horrible hot feeling with her first injection. I asked to come out of the scanner, they said they got the images they needed but I’m not sure if they just wanted to let me go.

It was not only embarrassing but also distressing enough that I am so done with being tested. I really shouldn’t need to jump through any more testing hoops before action is taken and my endocrinologist already admitted that he fucked some stuff up. This should have ended so long ago.

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