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Tuesday morning, March 23rd, we got up and hung around the hotel room and sat on the terrace overlooking the ocean. Everything was looking pretty good. We were finally in Charleston, SC after a long drive. The weather had gotten warmer. I was dealing with a slight cold, but it was getting better as well. Around 11:00 CST we decided to go see some sights. As we went to the car, Gina's phone started showing a message. She retrieved the message, which was from my Mom. Evidently Ben had started acting very strange so they had rushed him to the hospital around 7:00am. We called them back and found out for some unknown reason his insulin had gotten out of normal but had stabilized. The plan was to keep him for 24 hours for observation. We then called the hospital. Since Mom had last talked with the vet, Ben had taken a turn for the worse. The hospital said he was up and down on his sugar count and they were having trouble regulating it. They didn't yet have an explanation for the wild fluctuations and why it had came on so suddenly. We asked the vet to call us back as soon as anything changed. We grabbed our bags and headed home. Around 2:30 the vet called and said he was having seizures every couple of hours but he was sleeping peacefully since they were giving him Valium. He said the best thing to do is to wait 24 hours and see if his count stabilizes. Meanwhile, he was consulting with 2 specialists. Around 7:30 Tuesday night, we were just leaving a fuel stop in eastern TN when the phone rang. The doctor informed us that Ben had taken a very bad turn. He was now having seizures every 10 to 20 minutes and they couldn't increase his Valium or stabilize him. He told us that there was little to no hope of him coming out of this. We told him we were still around 7 hours from home and asked if there was anything that could be done to hold him over? He said the only other option was to put him in a drug induced coma. Even in doing this, he may pass away during this time anyway and once we got there, even if they could bring him out, he was so far gone that he wouldn't recognize us. After a lot of discussion and pleading for more options, we agreed to the euthanasia. Ben passed from this world a little before 8:00pm CST. Rest in peace little man. |
