Yesterday was on the plan as a good day: spectacular weather, tickets to the big Maryland-Navy game. Instead of spending the day outside, though, I spent it watching one of the rats die.
She was eight days shy of her third birthday, which is quite old for a rat. I knew it was close...as recently as Wednesday, she was still launching herself out of the cage when I came in with dinner, but by Thursday night I was having to entice her to eat yogurt and baby food. Saturday morning I couldn't even get her to drink Pedisure.
She started what I would assume were the death throes around 4:30 with a seizure. I held her, and for the next two and a half hours she had convulsions...some where her whole body jerked, some where just her front paws trembled. In retrospect, if we'd known it was going to take so long, we might have taken her to the emergency vet, but it seemed like it was about to happen the next moment.
She was a tough rat, surviving illnesses and injury for nearly three years, and I wonder if that strength was what kept her raging against the dying of the light.
You know where I'm going with this, I'm sure...my ongoing struggle with acceptance of death and my ache for something that will transcend it.
I don't believe she was in pain or panic...I saw both just over a month ago when she broke her leg after catching her foot in the cage bars. This was different.
I read an article (in Discover, I think) recently about the brain activity in and after near-death experiences, and it touched on the way people who were, briefly, clinically dead did have a memory of "seeing" what was going on, but seeing it from above. And it had the classic "go toward the light" motif. And it had an explaination for the phenomonon...hypoxia or something. I may be misremembering, but I believe one theory was that the chemical flood going on near death was giving the subject a bit of a trip, as it were.
As I held my little girl I did wonder what she was seeing. It wasn't me, I don't think...her eyes were glassy and she didn't track my finger. She did move her legs like running a few times, which reminded me of the death scene in Watership Down, where Hazel runs off with El-ahrairah and leaves his body behind.
I could tell the moment that she did die, or so I thought. It wasn't dramatic, but something stopped besides her breathing...I just knew she was no longer aware. But then Victor took the stethoscope and listened another minute as the heatbeat faded away.
But again, I didn't learn anything.
Posted by Nic at September 4, 2005 08:07 AM | TrackBackI'm so sorry Nic. Leather (I assume it was Leather) had a wonderful life, especially because she had friends like you and Victor.
Posted by: Ted at September 4, 2005 09:24 AM