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[quote=Anonymous]It could be in pets, but since this is more about my guilt, I thought off topic would receive more responses.

I had my older male cat for 12 years, we got him when he was 3.
3 years ago he was diagnosed with IBD, on steroids and doing good, except for gradual weight loss that vet said was expected.
I switched practices in Sept, since the old one was far and my other 11 year old younger female cat needed monthly checkups for her thyroid.

In the shuffle, I missed to take him for weigh ins since Oct, I dont think the old vet asked for it either, since his bloodwork in Sept was healthy and no issues.
I switched to wet food in Dec, but after few weeks they refused to eat, so switched back to dry food.
In Feb, my female cat also got diagnosed with heart failure, and I was working to start medications and followup.

Meanwhile my boy had been declining, he had lost 4 lbs somehow, got callus, was getting weak, and likely eating less etc, and somehow I missed all the subtle signs. He would still run around, use litter box etc. I noticed some of these in mid Feb, and planned a vet visit in March once I got my other cat in control.
However he collapsed last Sat Feb 19th, vet looked at this weight loss and said he might not recover. She did bloodwork and found multiple issues like anemia, pancreatitis, kidney etc. on Wed. On the Thu visit, he had lost another pound and the Thu vet also talked about letting him go. She did some supportive care that did not take effect. They recommended a scan to find tumors, so I took him to ER past Fri, where they ended up giving him more drugs and antibiotics, after which he lost use of his limbs and was comatose on Sat and Sun. I rushed him to ER again on Sun and we lost him and had to euthanize in 15 mins.

The whole 1 week experience is traumatic. Not only am I guilty about not catching his weight loss, but I missed the urgency of the whole diagnosis and took precious days to decide treatment options. Which made me rush to ER on Fri, causing him stress, instead of getting scan at primary vet. I waited to schedule a vet visit on Sat, hoping he will recover with my assisted feeding and again had to take him to dreaded ER on Sun where he died with strangers. Another part says I should have hospitalized him at ER, so he could have recovered and I could have spent few more weeks atleast with him. I followed some online advice as well on my own which complicated things further.
And so on and so forth, I am guilty of some kind of inaction/neglect/overaction every day of last week. I was not thinking straight and I had conflicting info from vets vs ER vs online. I dont think he needed to be in ER at all. I did not even know about home vet services and euthanasia, which I could have done on Sun instead of the ER. Also I did not get time to fit in quality time with him knowing that his end was near.

I am not able to eat or sleep, no food since sat. Max 4 hrs of sleep with Benadryl yesterday night. Is this how people feel after they lose a pet, nerve wracking second guesses? Is it such a big loss and appears to me that each small misstep I did had devastating consequences.[/quote]

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