This is a photo of Lainee taken on a ferry trip we went on together with friends a couple of years ago. Somehow its the right photo for the start of this post, because it makes me think of rainbow bridges and travels to another place.

I lost Lainee about 3 weeks ago now, which is why I haven’t posted in ages. It has been very hard to lose her and the house feels empty and I constantly feel like something is missing.

Lainee had been having issues since about Christmas but the vets couldn’t find anything wrong with her. Still, she would be up and down, having diarhhea one moment, vomitting the next, but tests showed nothing. We were in Athens at the time so I took her to a specialist for an ultrasound and he said she had some sludge in her gall bladder but that shouldn’t be a problem…

On returning to Paros, more tests, the vet said her white blood cell count was very high, and kept getting higher, and thought it was a problem with her liver. So she went on antibiotics and pills for her liver, as well as daily doses of IV fluids for a while but continued to get worse.

I had originally tried a different diet for gastro issues, that helped, but then she lost her appetite. She ate boiled chicken and rice for a while, then stopped eating that. She was eating roast chicken ravenously when we decided to take her to Athens for another specialist ultrasound.

The second ultrasound, only a month after the first, showed her she had a cystocelle gallbladder and it had to be removed asap or she would die. I took her to the animal hospital that evening and they monitored her for 24 hours before surgery. I had googled it and there was a decent chance she would make it… however the first 72 hours were the most dangerous. However, they said that when they opened her up things were way worse than they expected. Her gallbladder was stone hard and stuck to her diaphragm and liver, and there were abnormalities on her spleen so they removed that as well. It was a HUGE operation.

She made it through the surgery and seemed to be recovering. Unfortunately, she went downhill and died 3 days after surgery.

Here are some memories of my baby girl.

The above is one of the last photos I took of Lainee, the afternoon I dropped her off for surgery. I was sure I would have her back and that she would live another 2 years or so.

I have had her cremated and she is now close to me, where she always wanted to be. I couldn’t bear to leave her in a grave somewhere far away.

I try to remember the good times as much as I can.

z