On the night of Saturday, September 25, 2010, Billye was in the midst of putting Tommy back in his cage. Just as he was hovering over the cage in Billye's hands, he suddenly and without warning leaped at full force and smashed his face into the wire wall of his cage, giving a pained cry and sliding the rest of the way down. Billye panicked and scolded him; he promptly fed Tommy a baby carrot to calm him down. He took the offering, gobbled it up and everything seemed perfectly normal.
Neither I nor Billye can recall Tommy behaving out of the ordinary in the couple of days following that incident. I fed all the piglets watermelon the next day and do remember Tommy eating it. Little did we know that everything was unraveling before our eyes.
Fast-forward to the morning of Wednesday, September 29. Billye pointed out that Tommy had all but stopped eating and drinking. We knew something was not right here. We tried to narrow down the possible causes to just a select few. That evening, we came home with a pack of feeding syringes, intent on making Tommy some self-concocted "poop soup" (a watery poop mash with fresh poop donated by his good friend Truffle). Poop from a healthy guinea pig (like Truffle) is supposed to act as a probiotic, helping to support the gut flora in guinea pigs. Allegedly, it's also supposed to whet their appetite (?!). I do not think Tommy enjoyed his poop soup at all, but all of us had little choice. The only things he ate that whole night going into the wee hours of the next morning were about 85-90 percent of a baby carrot and some small leaves of kale. Tommy usually had a voracious appetite, especially for fresh produce. It was heart-wrenching to see him behave this way. This was not the Tommy we knew.
Around 4:15AM the following day (Thursday, September 30), Billye made a call to the 24-hour emergency animal hospital in a nearby neighborhood. For seemingly the umpteenth time the receptionist once again said they did not have any exotic vet/guinea pig specialist on staff. Tommy at this point outright refused to eat anything, even his beloved baby carrots or watermelon.
We rushed him early that morning to an exotics hospital on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. The vet who examined him could not tell what was wrong with him just by checking his vitals and palpating his stomach. So the next step, she advised, was to do an x-ray. She also highly recommended an overnight stay because she stated that we would not be able to care for him in the dire condition that he was in. We consented.
The x-rays (of his body) came back later that afternoon and it managed to capture part of his face. It showed a good deal of soft tissue swelling in his right jaw. This was the reason Tommy had stopped eating. The vet had tried to imply that Tommy had some kind of latent or underlying health problems that accounted for the total food stoppage, but even just one week prior to this whole situation unfolding, he was as healthy, vibrant and energetic as could be. After our experience with that avian and exotics place on the UWS, I started having my doubts about their competence, but I think the end result (i.e., Tommy's passing) might have colored my perspective, so I should reserve judgment for now.
We brought him back home the following day (Friday, October 1). I did get a phone update from the nurse and vet on duty that day (not the one Tommy had originally seen). The nurse didn't sound overly optimistic, saying Tommy was "doing OK." I asked the vet how long in general it should take for a situation like Tommy's to start improving and for us to see him start eating again on his own. She said, "I would say by early next week," which would have put him at Monday/Tuesday. This prognosis buoyed my spirits a bit. The entire weekend following his discharge was extremely stressful and difficult, however. Billye had no choice but to work over the next two days and it was up to me during those hours to try my hardest to nurse Tommy back to health.
I will always remember Tommy's reaction upon being reunited with his home. He kept vibrating and doing his characteristic territorial roaming when he saw Truffle. In fact, he would not go inside his pigloo for the first hour and a half after coming home! I put some hay in his hay basket and a small handful of pellets into his food bowl to see if he would want to eat. He was not at all interested in the hay, but when I filled his food bowl with the pellets, he actually went over and picked a pellet up and chewed for a good five minutes (I think it required absolutely painstaking effort to chew even just one pellet). His determination brought me to tears. I thought he was possibly on the mend. But this determination was short-lived - false hope, if you will. Throughout that weekend, we gave him his pain and promotility meds, syringe-fed him round the clock, hand-fed him water and baby food, all in vain, it would soon turn out.
When we went to bed that Sunday night, we didn't know those next handful of hours would be Tommy's very last. I got up at about 2:15AM on Monday, October 4, because of some acid reflux. At 2:30AM, I nudged Billye awake to see if he wanted to give Tommy some more of his syringe feed. He looked exhausted, but managed to nod a yes. I got the syringe ready and Billye went to Tommy's cage to pick him up. He placed him on his chest. At that point, Tommy collapsed over and fell to one side. We were both in shock. We sensed the end was near for Tommy. Then Billye put Tommy on my blanket, something Tommy has always loved for its softness and cuddle potential. :) He tried to walk further up the blanket, but his back legs had completely given out and all he could do was drag himself by his front paws. His breathing, I noticed, had become more intense and labored than ever. Each breath he took was a heavy one. I made a couple calls at that point, one to leave a voicemail for the vet to let them know what was going on and then the next to the same 24-hour emergency animal hospital that we already knew did not staff regular exotic vets. The receptionist said their general doc would be happy to take a look and I told her that I did not think our guinea pig would be able to survive the stress of the bus commute, so what should I do? She simply replied, "I cannot help you over the phone." A short while later, about 3:20AM, Tommy passed away.
We buried Tommy near Pepper, Billye's hamster, in a remote part of Forest Park, somewhere out in the vastness of Queens. (That park is HUGE. I don't even know what area of Queens that park is, it runs through so many parts!) It was a very hard and heart-breaking final farewell. I never thought Tommy would be leaving us so soon. His death was an instant reminder that life is indeed fragile and fleeting. In my mind, Tommy would progress through the various stages of life, growing from a baby piggy into a grandpa pig at perhaps the ripe old age of 5, 6, or maybe even 7! And yet he left before he was able to make it to his second birthday. However, we were very blessed to have been part of his life. We tried our best always to give him a loving and warm home. Billye and Tommy were inseparable. Their love for each other was too obvious and genuine. I miss Tommy very much and could not have foreseen this at all.
I love you, Tommy. I think about you every day and wish you could be here again.
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