Need support with losing Carbon

My friends that haven't dealt with a diabetic cat won't get it as much as you all. I'm really struggling.

Carbon was diagnosed in late September. Just as I started a new job keeping me away from home more. I got a roommate with Type I to help give shots and test. It took two times taking him in for his front legs shaking and muscle loss to get him properly diagnosed. I switched vets. I took him an average of once a month and well over 10K in the last six months.

When my first roommate moved out, I got another one to take care of him. She is high strung, bipolar and not well medicated. She made a lot of mistakes and added stress as she tends to walk around yelling her stories. Carbon loved her (she was crying once and he jumped higher than he has in ages to get on the counter to butt his head against hers) but he was also scared of her rants. She loved him and has a good heart under her illness. She has cried with me a fair bit since we lost him, and I'm sure cried alone.

I can't get over the guilt. It's almost two weeks and I still can't even get close. I should have had him checked for something else going on, given how impossible he was to regulate. Even the second opinion vet said he only responded to lantus and then only barely. I should have known there was something going on.

In his final days, I moved him into a friends home as my house was contractually rented out nearly 6 months before his diagnosis. It was stressful for all of us. My other three cats struggled with diarrhea the entire time. Carbon never came home.

I had an appointment with a new vet that was closer and supposedly really good and seemed to understand diabetes. It would be the fourth vet. I just wanted someone to listen. However, the day before his appointment he was doing really well (or so I thought) and I was stressed myself with my own life, so I though I'd take him in after we moved home. Less stress for him. That was tuesday. He didn't eat that night and the next day he wouldn't eat, so I took him to our emergency vet. She kept him to run tests and I had to go to the airport for work. My roommate picked him up and was given appetite stimulant and some antibiotics. His organ levels all otherwise seemed ok.

She called me the next day said he wasn't eating. I hemmed and hawed about her taking him in, because he'd only been on the food stimulant for a day and he'd had all these tests run the day before. She syringe fed him wet food and he was still drinking. The next day he was worse. I had her take him in. They called me and said if you want to be here, you need to come now. I hopped on the earliest fight to get me home - the next morning, no sleep, and was there to say goodbye. They gave him fluids and treatment all night but he didn't respond at all to any of it. He was definitely dying when I got there. He couldn't breath when he'd move his head so I didn't even spend as much time as I would have liked saying goodbye, because I didn't want him to suffer for my needs.

He was in DKA though the vet said there was definitely more going on. But why didn't I have him go to the better vet tuesday, why didn't I have her take him in the next day? Why didn't I run more tests on him. How much stress was he in. What if I had found a way to not move out? I didn't have to rent the first week - I could have cancelled that. He wasn't home in his favorite sunny spots the last weeks of his life. He wasn't where he loved. He was in a stranger's house. What if I found a better roommate?

I started blocking FMBD on facebook because I keep reading about people that had cats diagnosed and they lived a normal life. Searching life expectancy of a diabetic cat results in "can live a normal life". I ****ed up. There's no denying it. He should be here, in the sun.

He found me, ran into my house injured, feral, in January 2006. My ex and I took him to the vet and the vet said he was full grown, at least a year maybe two years old. He was almost dead. We got him fixed up and then I insisted on keeping him when the ex and I split. I kept all four. I hate that I did the math today, because I thought he was older. But that puts him at 14, maybe a bit older. Still should have had years. All my cats get close to 20. My other three are the same age and super healthy.

Though writing this, and going back through pictures trying to find the earliest one so I could figure out when he actually came into my life, I saw so many amazing memories and that was just the first year. He was such a clown. He should still be here. If I'd done my job, he would be.

 

You did do your job. You loved him and did the best for him you could on the information you had at the time. Sure, plenty of kitties live a long life.. but plenty of them don’t despite their owners doing everything right. I’m sad for you that you didn’t get more time with him. Please don’t beat yourself up over what-ifs

 

Mialia, I am sorry you are in such pain. I need to say this to you about the "why didn't I, I should have, I could have" you are only human. Beating yourself up now unfortunately doesn't change anything. We all screw up, each and every one of us, in various ways. It also could be that if you "had" done things differently, the outcome might not be different. My dear, you gave Carbon a home, love and cared for him, and at the end of his journey, gave him the ultimate gift of love. What you can do now is apply what you have learned through this experience to better care for the kitties you still have at home, and educate others along the way if the opportunity arises. And, care for yourself, so you can care for others. Please don't let this eat you alive, that does no good for anyone.
Yes, you are going to grieve and you should allow yourself to do just that. This is a part of your life's journey that is very rough and brutal, so be gentle with yourself, and recognize that Carbon in your life was a gift to him and to yourself.

 

Oh, my heart hurts for you. I feel the same guilt about my Potter, who ran over the rainbow bridge when he was only 2.5 years old. His liver failed him, and I did too. I knew something was wrong, ignored my instincts (I was young, inexperienced with pet ownership, and...just dumb), didn’t take him in. By the time we took him in, he was pretty far gone. We tried with meds, and syringe feeding, and it wasn’t enough. He wouldn’t come near me on his own—the stress of the feedings and meds was enough to make him steer clear of me those last weeks.

He was such a loveable goof, fat, and fluffy, and wonderful. He died 14 years ago, I still miss him, I still feel the guilt.

What I’ve learned in that time, tho, is that I did the best I could with what i knew at the time. When they can’t tell us what is wrong, it’s hard to know what to do, how to figure out the puzzle that these little beings are. I loved him, and I’m sure he knew it. The pain and grief gets easier to bear with time.

I also know that I might have done everything right, moved every mountain in his path, given every treatment to get him healthy...and yet he still could have died when he did simply because it was his time to go. That is a mystery we will never be able to solve. His flame burned so bright that it burned out fast. I’m grateful for the time I had with him, for the things he taught me, for the joy he brought. I will carry those things with me forever, as you will for Carbon. Find joy in your memories of him, remember that you loved each other well, and give yourself time. You did what you could, and he knows it.

 

Hi Mialia,

I know _exactly_ where you are at. My Thos passed away last week. Like Carbon, 14 y.o. and with me for 13. I, too, feel like I didn't do my job. Essentially, an untreated tumor burst, and at several points along the way I should have known something wasn't right with my guy. A bit soon for me to talk about all this. And perhaps the Grief forum would be the better place to go.

Short answer: It's so inescapably horrible and searing. But you will never know for sure whether any better outcomes were possible. And maybe the passing was actually a mercy. At some point you will have to just live with this, and not have it overshadow all that was good through the years. I don't yet know when or how I will get there.

Tom

 

Don’t blame yourself, you did a lot and you can’t know every possible thing that may or may not have changed anything. It is obvious you loved your kitty and that is the most important thing you ever could have done.

 

Thank you everyone and I apologize for not posting in the grief forum. I didn't see it but I do now. I'm going to write a follow-up post there. Hugs to all of you because we have all loved and suffered loss. And I hate this disease more than anything. Please hug all of your fur babies for me. I still have three and I'm trying to focus my energy more on them. They were certainly neglected over the last several months after he was diagnosed. Time to make up for that.

 

(((Mialia))). Please be gentle with yourself. Cats are experts at hiding things until it’s too late. Sometimes even doing the tests doesn’t indicate exactly what is wrong.

No matter how we lose our babies, every single one of us who has lost one or more feels we could have/should have done something more or different. We always question ourselves and that’s part of the grieving.

I learned when my baby girl very suddenly passed that grief isn’t about just the stages. The stages come and go...sometimes all at once, sometimes one at a time. Sometimes you think you are through anger but then it comes back with a vengeance. Always, you are sad. I learned that acceptance didn’t mean accepting my baby was gone but that grief would always be a part of me.

Memorialize him in every way that brings your heart peace. I bought a journal and wrote down every single thing I could think of that she did. I wrote down the songs I sang to her. I wrote her letters at 1 month, 3 months, 6 months, 9 months, a year, 2 years, 3 years. Honor your grief and share it here where we understand. Forgive yourself. Carbon does and has.

My very deepest condolences.