Life continues

Raini's does, for now. Thankfully June 2nd came and went without her passing.

I'm working on keeping her social. She's taken to sleeping in my office, in a space between a cabinet and the closet door. The last couple nights I've hauled her out to sit with me for a while, first in the office, then out in the living room. When she wanted down, she went to her crate to snooze for a while. When she cried out this morning at 1am, I hauled her into bed with Shadow and me. Took her a while to settle down, she did stay for a couple hours. Meditation this morning was all about Raini - she was on my lap and wanted attention, so she got it. Now I'm typing this with my left hand because my right hand is keeping her steady on my right leg.

I'll take slow and unusual typing if it keeps her happy. It must, she's being a purr monster.
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Spent some time with P today. We worked on some tight muscles, trying to figure out what was causing them to not let go. In between we talked about Good Calories, Bad Calories and how it applies to our lives and food intake.

I am coming to realize how carb sensitive I am, and how sugar addicted I am. When I was grocery shopping yesterday, I bought a package of sugar wafers. One part of me knew that was a bad thing to do on two fronts: wheat and sugar, both of which make the blood sugar spike and insulin spike. Yet another part of me, that I chose to honor, put the package in my cart and proceeded in less than 24 hours to down the whole package.

That was after I read and know to be true that insulin spikes are the root of all metabolic evil in the body. Guess what causes insulin spikes? Carbs, and even the thought of eating can cause insulin spikes. How to control insulin spikes? Lots of protein and fat, little to no carbs. No carbs in the diet, no blood sugar spikes, no insulin spikes.

I'm not going to try to summarize GC, BC here, because my head is still working through the details. I will in the next couple days, because I think it's really important.
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After I finished GC, BC, I picked up 'When Everything Changes, Change Everything' by Neale Donald Walsh. I'm not that far into it, only a couple pages. One of his first things to change is to stop going it alone. He points out that we share our wins and hide our losses. When we most need help, we turn away from it.

Yep, I'll own up to that one. Done it before, several times. I've even bounced people out of my life to not have to deal with their brand of 'help-full-ness'. Logical levels - you can't solve a problem on the same level it was created on. It's hard to get new answers and new perspective from the same old source. You need other people's perspectives and insight to point out new things. That was really evident in our conversation today, and how one piece of info sparked another piece of insight.
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I need to do two things tomorrow, or yet tonight. I need to talk to the animal communicator I worked with previously for Raini and Shad, and find out what's going on in Raini's head and heart. Then I need to find the number for the Echo crematorium and see if they do pet cremations directly, and how much they are.

I really don't want to make the decision to put Raini down. My heart breaks the way it is, when she misses a jump or cries when I pick her up because she's either frightened or in pain. I want her to go out her heart when she's ready, not because she thinks she needs to stay for me.

Losing the furry body that is Raini will be one of the worst heartaches I've experienced, moreso than losing my parents or anyone else in my life. She's been the one source of unconditional love in my life for 19 years, and there is no way to replace that. I'm grateful for everyday she is here, every time I look to make sure she's still breathing, because I want to be holding her when she does go. I want her to know how much I love her and that I was with her at the end.

In some ways, it was easier dealing with Mom's death because I knew what she wanted. It was easy to pull the plug because I knew when I got to her bedside her spirit was already long gone from her body. When her body gave up 12 hours later, it was easy to shut the machines off and help the nurses take the monitors and other equipment off. It was easy to walk away from her body, because her spirit already walked beside me.
Dad was easy, because at the time I still hated him and didn't care what happened. He went relatively quickly, one heart attack on June 16, the second that killed him on September 7.

Raini's not so easy. I don't know what she wants, what she's thinking, how she's feeling. I've told her she can go home at any time, just to go out of her heart so it's quick. It's the lingering that makes it hard.