I need someone to talk to. :(

[coastergirl946]

It has been over a month since Curt passed away, and his horrible death still makes me cry.
For those of you who don't know, Curt had been on calci-sand. At one point he became severely impacted to where he collapsed in my hands and stopped breathing with a black beard and horrible stress marks after he pooped. Even after we removed the sand, got him the proper lighting, raised his temps, and changed his diet.. he still strained and struggled to poop, and each time he pooped there was sand in it, long after we had removed the sand from his enclosure. Even vet visits and taking all advice from everyone on this forum didn't show much improvement.. he would improve and then he would be impacted again. It got to the point where couldn't poop without baths and babyfood prunes, and even so, he was in excruciating pain.. once he even prolapsed.

Fast forward to his fifth impaction and this is where it went horribly wrong.. he was lethargic all day with a black beard and stress marks, and threw up his food. My boyfriend rushed him to the vet only to find him dead because he had aspirated on his own vomit.

I can't get past the fact that he died in such a horrible way. He was a good dragon and never bit anyone.. he shouldn't have had to suffer like that. I wish every day that he would have died peacefully, like on my chest in a blankie while being cuddled or something.. not choking to death.

Please someone get me through this. I can't do this alone.

 

[Jess]

I'm so sorry about Curt. I know how you feel though. My first beardie, Wink, I rescued from being euthanized because he had a really bad eye infection and an abscess in his eye, but with some antibiotics and TLC he ended up being just fine. When he was about 8 or 9 months old, I found out he had liver and pancreas failure and kindey problems, and there was nothing I could do for him. It is SO hard to watch your little baby suffer and know that you are powerless to help him!
I had to hald feed him baby food for the last 2 months of his life, and he ended up dieing while I was at school on my 16th birthday. He didn't want his babyfood the night before, and he threw up in the morning, but he had a creamy white belly and beard, and such happy colors that I thought he would at least be OK until I got home so I could take him to the vet.

Wink's issues were caused by the stupidity of Petco, and it really makes me mad, because he did not deserve any of that. If some people had just taken better care of him when he was little, I could still have him right now.

But then again, if I stilll had Wink I would have never met Dudley. And if Wink had been perfectly cared for as a baby, I would never have discovered what amazing pets beardies can be... I probably wouldn't even know what one is!

As sad and horrible it is that Curt died, I think that everything happens for a reason. I'm sure he knows that there is some other little beardie out there who needs you even more than he did, and that Curt will make sure that the two of you meet when you are ready.

 

[beardie parents]

I'm sorry. I do understand. Let me tell you a story of how we lost Redrock. She fell of my shoulder on Labor day of 2008. That was September 1st that year. I could tell she was in a bad way. I had hope then that she would survive. She didn't. You would think that wasn't my fault but it was. Before this happened, my husband told me to put her on the ground. I picked her up from my shoulder to feel her clinging to me like velcro, new velcro not used velcro. I was hanging clothes and a few minutes later she was turning around on the back of my left side (I still remember after 2.5 years) then before I could react, she was on the ground. I figured out later that she must have hit her head resulting in a head injury.

I said all that to let you know, sometimes things happen. In your situation, you believed in what pet stores told you, based on what they were told. Recently there was a letter reposted on a Yahoo group called Pogona. This was written by the man who developed this calci sand. We call it death sand on here and you found out why. unfortunately. This man believed the sand was good for beardies, even tho he admitted that the sand could cause problems if ingested he still said it's good for beardies because of the calcium in it. I don't see why he would believe this as even on beardies that don't ingest the sand, it has stained the beardies the color of the sand that was put in their tank. It takes several sheds for beardies to shed it off and for adult beardies that can be a long time as they don't shed as often as babies do because they are done growing.

Don't feel bad. Everyone makes mistakes. What happened to your beardie was a result of your lack of knowledge. We lost our first two beardies (Miss O and Miss Y) because of our lack of knowledge about beardies. Unfortunately at that time we hadn't found this site. We didn't find this site until Redrock was almost one year old. We got her on October 7th of 2006 and we found this site on April 20th, 2007, after we lost Sandstone. We got her/him the same day as Redrock. She disappeared the February before that because we didn't have a leash on her. We never found her, we'd only had her for about 4 months. She was only about 8 months old, this is based on what the petstore told us as there age when we got them. As you can see, a lot of us go through what you did, maybe not the exact same situation but a lot of people have lost beardies as a direct result of their lack of knowledge. I have refused to beat myself up for the loss of wonderful friends/scaley children. I am thankful that I had them and I will always miss them but I realize that if I still had Miss O and Miss Y or even just one of them, I would never have had Redrock. If I hadn't lost Redrock, I would have Rosie Zoom zoom. We would have had Goldie as she was a gift from God and a nice lady that realized she needed to give her to someone who could take care of her. She saw her about a year after she gave her to us and she realizes that Goldie Speedy wouldn't be alive if she hadn't given her to us.

I hope this "novel" will help you through this. I know every one is different but is it possible that if you had another beardie to love, it would help you to keep your mind on him/her instead of beating yourself up over the loss of something you couldn't have helped, because of your lack of knowledge.

 

[ocrage]

I'm so sorry about Curt. I know how you feel though. My first beardie, Wink, I rescued from being euthanized because he had a really bad eye infection and an abscess in his eye, but with some antibiotics and TLC he ended up being just fine. When he was about 8 or 9 months old, I found out he had liver and pancreas failure and kindey problems, and there was nothing I could do for him. It is SO hard to watch your little baby suffer and know that you are powerless to help him!
I had to hald feed him baby food for the last 2 months of his life, and he ended up dieing while I was at school on my 16th birthday. He didn't want his babyfood the night before, and he threw up in the morning, but he had a creamy white belly and beard, and such happy colors that I thought he would at least be OK until I got home so I could take him to the vet.

Wink's issues were caused by the stupidity of Petco, and it really makes me mad, because he did not deserve any of that. If some people had just taken better care of him when he was little, I could still have him right now.

But then again, if I stilll had Wink I would have never met Dudley. And if Wink had been perfectly cared for as a baby, I would never have discovered what amazing pets beardies can be... I probably wouldn't even know what one is!

As sad and horrible it is that Curt died, I think that everything happens for a reason. I'm sure he knows that there is some other little beardie out there who needs you even more than he did, and that Curt will make sure that the two of you meet when you are ready.

great post. sorta ot, but the last part made me feel better about my dog having to be put down.

to the OP, im terribly sorry for your loss. I know how it feels to have something so sweet and innocent get ripped away from you practically out of no where. it hurts every day, but like Jess said, all you can do is move on and try to focus that love and attention to something else that needs it and just know that you did everything you could to make him as happy as he could be, and that he loved you with all his heart and appreciated what you did for him every day.


hope you feel a bit better soon.

 

[zeppy123]

I'm also still struggling with a loss. On Zeppy's last night, he didn't recognize me and was reflexively thrashing around attacking me and he couldn't walk. In the process of thrashing, he fell and this further altered his consciousness. It was a very hard evening. I will always have haunting memories of this.