2:06 p.m. - 2004-12-25
Lucy
This morning at about 2AM, I was opening presents with Jamie at his house when the phone rang. It was my dad, phoning to say that the cat wasn't very well and I'd better come home. Now.
So I rush home, and I spend the whole drive home blaming myself for not being at home with her - I thought she was going to die without me with her. It's not very far, thank god, but I can't believe I could drive at all. I was crying, and talking to Lucy the whole way, telling her to wait for me, telling her to hold on and I'd be there right away, just hold on.
I ran into the house and flew down the stairs, and my sister was waiting for me at the door to Lucy's room crying and crying. I pushed past her and I saw the cat, sprawled out on the floor, yowling occasionally and barely moving. Her limbs were splayed in all directions, and she looked like a rag doll.
I couldn't control my sobs - they wracked my body in a way I have never, ever experienced before, and I had to leave to control myself so I wouldn't frighten her. My whole body was heaving, and I was absolutely terrified. The sight of her on the floor was the worst thing I've ever seen in my life. I figured she wasn't going to live for more than another few minutes.
I pulled myself together enough to go back into her. I have been her favourite person since the day we brought her home, and when I lay down next to her and started talking to her, she stopped howling. I ran my hand across her body and begged her to hold on.
Lucy is diabetic, and my family had tried giving her corn syrup to perk her up, but they hadn't managed to get her to eat any of it. Thank God, my sister was staying at home in my old room, right next to the kitty's room, and she heard the yowling that was obviously a cry for help. My sister moved incredibly fast, apparently, and woke up both my parents. Dad called me, and I was there in five minutes, with Jamie close on my heels.
And it was Jamie who saved the day. When he heard that the corn syrup hadn't worked, he suggested ice cream, since cats actually like it and they are more inclined to eat it. So my sister went running for the ice cream and returned with it, offering it to me. I stuck my finger straight into the box (ruining a perfectly good full box of fancy ice cream), and stuck it under her face, begging her to take it. I rubbed it on her face and stuck it into her mouth, desperately trying to find any sign of life.
And then I felt her little pink tongue sneak out and lick a few pitiful licks off my fingers. I was talking and talking, telling her that we loved her and she was a good kitty and just keep on licking the ice cream! She loves ice cream, and when she was younger I used to sneak her little tastes out of my bowl. She hasn't had any since she became diabetic, so I was figuring that even if she died, at least she'd die eating her favourite food.
Jamie then suggested a syringe full of sugar water, which he ran off to get. Lucy kept licking little lickfuls of ice cream off my finger, barely moving except for the little tongue sneaking out. I gave her more and more of it, begging her to eat it. Jamie returned with the syringe, and I filled it over and over with the sugary water, shooting it into her mouth and hoping that some of it got into her stomach.
And then she had some kind of convulsion. She rolled over and got rigid, and let out this awful miaow, and it was the most horrible sound I've ever heard. But she was moving, and looking a little less awful than when I'd arrived, so we wrapped her up in a towel and ran for the car.
Jamie and I went ahead, me in the backseat of his car, him driving. She was lying in my arms, and after a few minutes, her head lolled back in my arms and her eyes stayed wide open. Then, suddenly, her paws started twitching uncontrollably, and she looked like she was running for something. I was talking to her and patting her and trying to keep her awake, but her paws just kept going and going and I couldn't keep her head facing forward. I was sure she was running away from me, and then suddenly, she went limp. Stopped moving entirely - even her tail, which had been twitching up until that point, stopped completely.
I lifted her up and leaned forward and breathed into her mouth, just one breath. And then she miaowed, and moved a little bit, and her tail started to twitch again. And then, suddenly, we were at the emergency vet's and I was trying to get my seatbelt off and get out of the backseat of a two door with a limp cat in my arms.
I ran in the door and started screaming "Hello" into the empty room. We'd called ahead and they knew we were coming, so they came out and took her from me, and I told her I loved her and I let them take her and I was sure it was the last time I would see her alive. They took her into the back, and I went to the bathroom because I'd had to go for almost an hour, and then I came out and I cried and I cried and I couldn't breathe and I was so scared that my kitty was going to die on Christmas Day. And Jamie sat me down and put his arm around me and he just rubbed my back while I cried and cried and yelled at my family to hurry up. The nurse came out and took some information from me and asked me if I wanted them to do the IV and stuff which would be a couple of hundred dollars right off the bat, and I said I didn't care and they could do whatever they had to do to make my kitty ok.
My family arrived a few minutes later, and I told my parents that I said to do whatever they had to do, and they said that was fine. So we all waited, and cried, and freaked out, until the nurse came out again and told us she was sitting up and meowing a bit, and they were giving her an IV with sugar in it, and she was very cold so they were warming her up.
And a few minutes later, the vet came out, and it was the vet from Lucy's regular office, the one who'd seen her just a few days before and had given her the antibiotics that made her throw up, so Lucy knew her, and she knew Lucy, and suddenly we all felt a lot better knowing it wasn't a total stranger. She was very nice and told us that Lucy was already doing a lot better, and she was getting chattier as Lucy is wont to do (she is a very personable cat and tends to have a lot of conversations with people), and in a few minutes we could come in and see her.
The nurse came back out and told us how ridiculously expensive this was all going to be, and my parents, God Bless Them, said they didn't care how much it cost and she didn't have to explain what all the costs were, that they could just go ahead and do it. (The emergency vet is expensive at best, but on Christmas there's also double pay for everything.) So she went back in, and a few minutes later came out again and said that Lucy was in an incubator to warm her up, but we could come and say hi before we left her there for the night.
So we practically ran into the back, past an extremely cute black kitten who had head trauma, poor thing, and there was Lucy, sitting like she always sits, her paws tucked in, in an incubator with a blow dryer on her. She looked rather disgruntled with the indignity of her nice fur being all blown around, but she was awake and alert and let us all pat her and pat her and tell her we loved her. And I wanted to hug the vet, the wonderful vet who saved my kitty, and I wanted to hug Lucy until she was almost squished, but I just patted her a few times and told her I loved her and then I left her there to get fluffed up with the blow dryer.
And I can't stop thinking about all the what ifs. What if I hadn't driven my sister home before I'd gone over to Jamie's? What if I'd insisted on having my old room and my sister had been sleeping upstairs where she wouldn't have heard Lucy crying for help? What if we'd come home half an hour later? What if Jamie hadn't been there to know what to do? What if Jamie's old cat hadn't been diabetic and had an insulin shock coma before, so Jamie had done all this before? What if I hadn't made it home in time and my kitty had died without me?
But she didn't. She's at the vet now, and doing extremely well - better than they expected - and she might get to come home this afternoon. They're doing some blood work just to be sure there isn't a bigger issue at work, but we got her there in time. They said her blood sugar was so low it didn't even register, and she was three degrees colder than normal, but she got there in time. My sister found her in time, and Jamie knew what to do, and we got her to the hospital and she is going to be ok.
And that is the only Christmas present I want.
