Chubs

I’ve been preparing myself for about a year for my old man, Potter, to reach the end of his life. He’s 16, after all. Pretty elderly for a big dog. And it’s going to rip my heart out when it happens. Because we all know it’ll happen.

I wasn’t, though, prepared for the sudden end of my baby boy, Chubs, just a few days after his fifth birthday. Have you ever heard of Pythium insidiosum? I haven’t. I wish I had ages ago. I wish I’d known that there’s a vaccine available for it. I wish I’d known. If I had, maybe my Chubs would still be here.

About the end of September, I noticed Chubs started losing weight. And if you’ll remember from my first post, he didn’t have much to lose. We’d recently brought home a stray kitten who was infested with parasites. I assumed he’d picked some up from her, and I took him to Doc Harvey, our gigantic teddy bear of a vet who I’ve known since I was in middle school. He frowned as he looked at Chubs’ fecal test results. “Well,” he said through his salt and pepper beard, “I’m not seeing any evidence of parasites. But let’s go ahead and treat him with an antibiotic and for parasites. Easy solutions first.”

I didn’t want to ask what the hard ones were. I gave Chubs the medicine religiously (which if you know me at all is a huge deal. . . I barely take my own). We finished the meds and I waited a week, as directed, but no change. In fact, he looked thinner than before. Back to Doc Harvey.

You know when you’ve known someone a really long time? And you know that slight wrinkle between the eyes, that nearly imperceptible turn of the mouth? Those things that signal worry? When he saw me in that exam room he had that look. That, “I’m worried but I’m going to hide it” look. My heart fell a little. But still, my worst-case scenario was that things were about to get expensive. He suggested that I leave him at the clinic for some further diagnostics. Blood panel, X-rays, the works.

Later that afternoon, I get a phone call. “Chubs is ready. Doc needs to talk to you about the results.” Aaahh ok.

I went in to meet with Doc and I knew. I knew before he said anything that whatever it was, it was bad. The tears started coming. I tried to swallow them back. Doc gets stressed with tears.

He showed me everything. His X-rays, that showed a hugely enlarged intestine. His blood work, which showed that he wasn’t absorbing nutrients, hence the weight loss. His cytology, which showed abnormalities. Everything pointed to one of two things: lymphoma or pythium insidiosum. “Whichever one it is, it’s advanced. I’m sorry, but there’s not much we can do.”

No. Uh-uh. I couldn’t accept that. And I made a decision that made me feel awful. I decided to get a second opinion. I’ve never been to another vet. Doc has seen my horses, my dogs, my pigs, my cat, the chickens. Hell, he’s even looked at my son’s guinea pig. But I wasn’t going to accept that prognosis.

Doc, being the great guy he is, says, “Do it. I could be wrong. I hope I am.” He recommended a few local vets, and I made an appointment.

Chubs went to two more vets. He had a number of exams, including a biopsy. The result? Pythium insidiosum. One of the vets told me, “If he were my dog, I’d put him to sleep now. It’s the humane thing to do. He can’t absorb his food. He’s going to be hungry all the time. He’s going to waste away till he dies.”

See, pythium is commonly called a fungus, but it’s really a plant parasite. That is, a plant that is a parasite. It lives in stagnant water and normally animals can ingest it and it passes on through. But, if an animal has a small injury to the intestinal wall, say from eating a stick or a bone, the opportunistic parasite can get into the injury and begin to grow. As it grows, it kind of looks like a tree, putting out stalky feelers into tissue. As it spreads out, the body red flags it and tries to encapsulate it. But that won’t hold it, no. It just keeps spreading into healthy tissue. More and more, bigger and bigger, creating a wake of ulcerous, hemorrhaging tissue. It can get anywhere. Wounds. Internal organs. Its aka is “swamp cancer” for a reason. It’s exactly what it’s name says it is. Pythium insidiosum: insidious. And if it’s not caught early, without a bowel resection, without treatment, it’s deadly.

In Chubs’ case, it was in his duodenum where the liver and pancreas dumped in, so it was inoperable. He had no early symptoms because it was gastrointestinal, so it was very advanced. “The perfect storm,” one of the vets said. “Literally, it couldn’t be worse.”

This stuff is like a nightmare. Something Hollywood might dream up. I couldn’t imagine anything this horrible in my wildest imagination.

I would’ve done anything to help him. But I had no power to do anything except wait. Wait for that awful moment when I’d have to make the humane call. I wouldn’t let him waste away.

He wasn’t himself, but he still followed me everywhere I went. He still kept the cows off the levee, his self-appointed duty, and put up the chickens in the evening, his me-appointed job. He still seemed like Chubs.

About two weeks went by, and one morning he started vomiting. And it all happened very fast after that. My husband and I stayed up all night with him, as he paced and flopped and grew increasingly uncomfortable. At about 4 am I texted Doc. “I think it’s time.”

We met him at the barn where he treats horses, and I explained the situation. He sadly told me that Chubs’ thickened bowel had finally closed entirely and that he was blocked. Nothing could get through from his stomach into his intestine, which was why he was vomiting. Yes. It was time.

Chubs died in my arms, with the people who loved him most around him: me, my husband, and his first mom and our neighbor, Janell. We got him from her as a puppy. He died peacefully and was finally able to be freed from the pain wrought by the insidious plant-monster.

I’m writing this hoping that someone reads it, and hoping that Chubs won’t have died in vain. I hope other animal owners see this and will talk to their vets about the risk of pythium in their areas. I hope no one will ever have to watch this horrible, ugly thing take their pet, as I watched it take mine. I hope to bring awareness. And maybe someone will vaccinate their dog, or take some other preventative measures, and maybe that life will be saved. And maybe Chubs will live on in hearts other than ours.