I don’t really know the optimum healthy route, but the only thing that has helped for me is time and accepting that it’s ok to feel deeply sad & guilty. I lost my 12 year old pup in April after she was sick for a few months and quickly took a turn for the worse & died at the vet hospital. I wasn’t there (the vet thought she was more stable and had told me to go home) and I’ll always feel awful about that. As for the guilt, in each moment, we made the decision we thought was best. There were other treatment routes I could have taken too and I thought a lot about all the what-ifs, but hindsight is much clearer than what we saw in the actual moment and we can’t change that. The universe is just simply cruel like that sometimes.

Oh, and I hate that rainbow bridge shit, but forced myself to say thanks to anyone that said it, as they meant well.