Thats when I realised and in a way intuitively knew that my dear friend, my big love, Mister was not well at all.
I had seen him scratching his belly but had thought it was probably to do with his skin healing from the infection he got during our little trip to Coffs Harbour. He had been eaten by sand flies which had given him big nasty infected hotspots.
I had noticed a blood spot in the outer corner of his eye but had put that down to maybe a tress point, a burst blood vain. He seemed a lot less energetic but again I had linked that to the skin problems and the medication he had been given for it.
BUT
when I rolled him on his back to check his belly, his usually pink skin was red, blood red, and black as if he had blood right under the surface of his skin.
This did not look good at all.
The spot ran from mid chest to belly button. I was gravely worried and raced to the weekend clinic with him.
It only took the vet one look at him to tell me he had massive internal bleedings and they would have to run some test to find out why.
The blood test told us that is was not caused by poisoning and we knew he had not suffered a trauma nor had been in an accident. They decided to keep him to run more test and give him a blood transfusion if needed. He was severely anemic by that stage from the massive amount of blood loss.
The vet rang around 23.30: the bleeding had been caused by ruptered tumors!! Hemangiosarcoma, a very aggressive cancer that spreads through the blood system, forming an ever increasing net work, attacking everything. Plus it goes on pretty much undetectable.
They had found massive amounts of tumors almost everywhere in his body: his spleen, liver, heart and lungs, they were ruptering one after the other. Operating on him was out of the question. There was absolutely nothing they could do for him anymore.
So we brought him around 01.00 in the morning and looked after him as good as we possibly could.
He died a few days later, 3 months short of his 11th birthday.
The day before my own birthday.
I love him so much. I miss him so much.
The house is so quiet without him.
He was my biggest friend, my great, sweet love and my wisest teacher.
