Life as of Late

I've been holding so much in lately, and it's truly overwhelming me. I thought it was time to start a new blog to share my thoughts, feelings, experiences. I'm told that keeping them in isn't the best idea. :P

This year has been a true struggle for survival - emotionally and physically. 

When the first vet who saw Lita told us she had cancer that had "started somewhere else in her body and spread to the lungs," last October, I was devastated. I couldn't imagine my life without her. She was one of my closest and dearest friends. With few exceptions, she is one of the longest friendships I've had - 14 years. Other friends have come and gone, but she was always there. Always loving me. 

To try to make a long story short, it was a friend of mine who convinced me to at least take Lita to an IM vet to see what they had to say. So, reluctantly, I made the appointment and took her. The IM vet was incredibly thorough, taking a full and detailed history of Lita's severe asthma, past bout of pneumonia, what worked, what didn't, etc. After an in-depth discussion about Lita's respiratory issues, she suggested we try the Convenia injection to help her. She suspected Lita had chronic pneumonia because the amoxicillin had helped her significantly. We had to take her off the amoxicillin almost immediately because she absolutely refused to eat while on it. She wouldn't have survived the two-week course that was prescribed.

Knowing what I did about the Convenia injection, I was very hesitant to try it. It had killed a friend's cat and nearly killed another friend's cat. BUT, we were at the point of life and death, and there was nothing else to try (we'd tried other classes of antibiotics with no success). 

She ended up having 12 injections of Convenia over five months. She beat the pneumonia despite all the odds. 

Once her pneumonia cleared, her asthma began to get worse again. Despite being on 10mg Prednisolone, doxycycline (for it's anti-inflammatory properties), and Flovent, she was still having asthma attacks. Things quickly spiraled out of control around August of this year. She developed pancreatitis and wasn't eating well. 

On our second to last vet visit, the vet noticed a small skin infection on Lita's heel. She wanted to give Convenia. My gut told me not to. I had a bad feeling. I told myself I was being stupid because she'd been fine with the 12 injections she'd already gotten. So I told them to go ahead and give it to her.

A week later, she developed neurotoxicity - a "rare" adverse reaction to Convenia. Our vet agreed that she had developed neurotoxicity. Our research indicated that most cats survive it and completely recover, so we did our best to get Lita over the bump. 

A week later, she was gone.

The guilt I feel over this is completely overwhelming. People keep telling it's not my fault, and it DOES help to hear that. But I cannot convince my heart to believe it, to forgive myself for allowing them to give her that injection. 

I lost Lita on September 12. Her death was incredibly traumatic for me to witness. She died in my arms while I held her, helpless. All I could do was tell her it was okay, even though it clearly wasn't. I miss her beyond what words can express. 

I haven't seen her around like I have seen Jewel. It makes me wonder if she's angry with me. I wish I could speak to her to get some kind of closure.

Tonight a wise friend who's known me since college (and knows me way too well sometimes) said:

I'm going to be honest with you. I think the reason you feel Lita is your fault is because it's incredibly hard for you to escape the trap of feeling like things are your fault period, especially when something bad happens to you. Your mother made sure of that when she taught you to believe that your blindness was your own fault. I'll never forget when you defended it to me by claiming you were a noisy baby. That you cried a lot. You were taught that being raped was your fault. That being blind was your own fault. That pretty much every bad thing that ever happened to you was your fault. And I suspect that part of your brain wants very much for this to be your fault because everything bad is.

And:

You know what grief is. You also know what guilt is. Every time you guilt yourself over Lita's death - which is NOT the same thing as grieving her death, even if they look somewhat similar - you are inflicting upon yourself exactly the kind of damage Lita wanted to prevent. Every time she came to comfort you when you cried. Every time she played to try and raise your spirits. Every time she sat on your lap and purred. She was doing her best to lift the demons and ghosts that have haunted you. Don't think for a second that she didn't know when you were hurting. And she would not want this. 

You loved Lita. You cared about Lita. You valued Lita. If you want to keep doing that now that she is gone, you have to let go of the misplaced guilt over her death. You did not kill her. You gave her months of life she would have never had otherwise. And she would never, ever approve of you treating yourself this way. And you know it. 

I'm not being blunt because I want to be mean, but because you have to make a binary choice. You can choose to honor Lita and begin to forgive yourself. Or you can choose to honor your mother and refuse to. You cannot do both. But I'll tell you right f***ing now, that I'd listen to the cat over the toxic nuclear waste heap you happen to be related to. 

I love how blunt he is. He's blunt in a way that's still compassionate. I find comfort in his honesty.

A couple of weeks later, I lost another one of my closest (human) friends. Though some tell me he wasn't a friend because he only comes around when he needs me, he has been a fairly consistent part of my life for the past several years. He was one of my only local friends. I love and adore my friends in other states and countries. But I find I need local friends, too, and it's so difficult to make friends as an adult, especially when you work from home.

I'm now absolutely terrified of losing Carmine. 

All of this has really triggered my fear of losing people and of being abandoned. I have a long history of various people from my mother to friends abandoning me. It's difficult to trust that new people won't do the same. When problems arise, I tend to want to run - let me leave the relationship before the other person does. At least then it's my decision. I've been challenging myself the past few years to not run. It's difficult - it's scary. I think a lot of my codependency comes from my fear of abandonment. If I can make the people in my life happy. If I can manage not to rock the boat too much. If I can be good enough, then they won't leave. 

I spent so much time caring for Lita this year that I lost most of my life. I'd do i all again in a heartbeat for her to be here with us again. I had no social life to speak of. 

Sometimes I feel like life is passing me by. There are things I want to do without the means with which to do them. I still want to create an anthology around Jewel. People need to hear her story and the stories of other cats that have overcome adversity. They can teach us so much if we are open to receiving the lessons.

I'd love to get more involved with cat rescue but am terrified after my experience with the last shelter. I volunteered there for a year and was constantly getting a verbal beating from the head of the committee I was serving on. I had had enough of the put-downs and attacks, but I stayed on because it was for the cats. We parted ways in the end, and I was pretty upset that not one person stood up for me during the whole ordeal. 

I miss working with the elderly as well, but we have a similar situation there. My internship ended up being a nightmare, and now I'm scared of setting foot in a nursing home, let alone volunteering in one. I volunteered from the time I was a child, so it's sad that the experience became one that provokes fear instead of joy the way it did when I was young.

Lately, I feel very alone in all of this. It's a difficult balance to strike. I feel overwhelmed with the grief, the guilt, the fear, but I know friends only want to hear so much (if anything) about it. With most, I feel like I need to be/appear positive so they don't get sick of me, sick of my feelings, sick of the Lita stories, sick of the tears - and leave.