Diary Entry #10 - 01/08/2010 - Sammie Crashes

We picked Sammie up from the clinic and she was drooling from her mouth and eyes. She also smells like urine. The tech that brought her out did not know how to hold a dog and her legs were dangling. My 12 year old son basically grabbed her immediately. She is not responsive to anything. Also she has a deep lung cough which scares the heck out of us. When we got her home she would not eat for the first time ever. I fear that the reduction in the Pyridostigmine may have been a dramatic mistake. Desperate to get her medication I crushed up 20mg and put it in water and used a turkey baster to get it in mouth. We then elevated her for 20 minutues. The drooling stopped but she is still breathing very hard with a deep cough. She walked out of her bed and urinated on her self which she did in bed several times. I called the 24 hour clinic and brought her in. The Physician is sure that she has aspirated over the last 24 hour and now has pneumonia. On top of that she is down to 17 pounds and very sick. Unfortunately, the only thing left to do was have her put to sleep. We were all there when she died. My 8 year old daughter took this particularly hard. For the past 3 days, after feeding she would read doggie books to Sammie in her Bailey chair. Our family is devastated. We fought for 3 months and when things started looking as if remission could be close, we lost her. This disease is the worst.