A Story of Bunny Ends

I’ve been a bunny mom for more than half my life. Vash the Stampede, named by Scott for how noisy his thumps and binkies were as a baby, was the most recent. He and his brother, Cameron, who passed over three years ago, were the fourth and fifth bunnies I’ve had my life. As anyone who has pets as part of their family knows, every animal has its own personality. Each family pet weaves their own story into the family tapestry.

Vash and Cameron were part of a litter left at Whip-O-Will Stables, where Calico lives. Cameron was an orange bunny who I named after a character I played in an RPG and who was in the first short story I had published, co-written with my friend Christy Tohara, in the second Bad-Ass Faeries anthology. When I brought them home about six months after my Loki-bun passed (at the tenacious age of 13), Scott had just gotten back from Taiwan and wasn’t particularly thrilled about more rabbits. But I invited him to name the black one.



There was a fair amount of drama between the two boys loving and hating each other, getting neutered and having to get re-introduced and bonded. By the last year of Cameron’s life, they were bonded again and living as most of my rabbits did—wandering around the house free during the evening, living in a double-decker bunny condo full of hay and water and toys when we weren’t home to keep an eye on them. Nylis the Cat tolerated them, and they her.

I found Cameron dead in the litter box, curled up as if he’d just taken a nap, one evening after I’d gotten home from work. His eyes were closed and everything. Vash was sitting, hunched up, on the same floor. All the other orange bunnies from the litter had passed; they all had some heart issue.

Vash actually seemed to bloom more after Cameron died. He seemed to prefer being the only bunny. He loved attention. He loved pets. He loved stretching his whole body along the table legs, blocking the path from the den to the living room, next to the marble the wood stove is on. He would occasionally tease the cat by running at her and zooming under her or hopping over her with a proud thump—a thunderous affair that resonated his name. Occasionally, they would lay down near each other and play the “I’m comfier than you” game, where they luxuriously cleaned themselves to let each other know they felt the other posed no threat.

When Sue Lahna moved in for six months, he found an extra special friend. He’d run to her whenever she was downstairs and he was out. He’d demand more pets from her, grabbing at her pant legs and head-butting her ankles full force until she would pet him. Sue totally got him and would crouch on the floor and pet him for a long time.




In the past few months, Vash started demanding even more pets—and actually being cool with getting picked up and snuggled on my chest. I remember Loki and Rhetta buns also began to want actual snuggles as they got older. And when I took him to the vet, the vet told me he was showing quite a bit of aging—which was normal. Most of the larger-breed bunnies live to only 5 or 6 years old. And we were pretty sure he was part “meat rabbit”, which also have shorter lifespans—they’re bred to be slaughtered; they’re bodies aren’t meant to sustain their size for a long time.

The thing with rabbits—and most pets—is they work very hard to hide illness. It’s part of their natural instincts. In the wild, they don’t want to draw prey to warrens, they don’t want to be driven out, either, until they are ready to die on their own.

When I put Vash to bed after my pre-Thanksgiving prep, I noticed his food bowl hidden under the hay, untouched from breakfast. That worried me, but he’d just snagged a bunch of craisins I’d dropped while making bread and stuffing, and he quickly took the treats I offered, so left him some broccoli, his favorite, and figured I’d see how he was doing in the morning. In the morning, the broccoli was untouched, as were the pellets and the rest of the hay. We took him out to check him over. His bum was clean, his stomach was soft (no impaction) and we couldn’t feel anything petting him. So, we put him on the ground and noticed he was hopping awkwardly. His head was at kind of an angle, but didn’t look like head tilt. It just looked…off. We picked him back up again and checked his face and neck and head even closer. We found a hard lump under his jaw.

Of course… it was Thanksgiving. No vet place was open and people were coming over. I gave him a head massage in case it was a sinus infection—Loki had a lot of sinus issues—and that seemed to help. He ate a bunch of craisins and a couple of treats. We took note of his water and more craisins in his food bowl, and figured we’d check him after people left. We even decided to let him wander around while people were here because the rug was comfy and under the kitchen table was his favorite place. He asked for pets a few times, then retreated back to the far side of the table. Normal behavior.

I left our vet a message that day, hoping they could squeeze him in the next.

After people left, we checked him again. He hadn’t had any water, and we knew that water was the most important thing, so we used a clean animal medicine syringe and gave him a few ounces of water. After I brought my mom back home, I picked up bananas—another favorite of his and something soft that we figured wouldn’t irritate that hard “whatever it is” in his mouth. He ate about half a banana that night, and we gave him more water via syringe.

The vet called at 7:30 AM and couldn’t fit Vash in until 5:00 PM. I took the appointment and spent the day trying to get him to eat soft foods and drink more water. He was rather feisty for getting into his crate, a good sign.

We were the last patients of the vet that night. Our vet, Dr. Trom said she could see puss in the back of his mouth, and it looked angry read, so it was most likely an infected abscess. With rabbits, the abscesses often also held Pasteurella, a virus that can kill in a very short time. Most rabbits are carriers of Pasteurella; it kills about 25% of bunnies right out (Lady Anne, my second bunny, died from it), about 50 % spend the later years of their lives with mild symptoms (both Rhetta and Loki were like that); and 25% never get it or never show any symptoms of being carriers of it. And they can be carriers of it for years, and then tiny cut or abscess or anything can cause it to flare up. We’d caught the abscess early, so the doctor scheduled surgery to remove it for the next Thursday.

Dr. Trom stayed late showing Scott and me how to feed Vash Critical Care formula for rabbits (a liquefied vitamin- and calorie-heavy mush) via syringe and how to administer water subcutaneously. She also gave us pain medicine to be fed via syringe. She said if he stopped eating or anything got worse, to call the office and insist we speak to her directly, and she’d fit us in for emergency surgery.

That night, Vash ate his entire serving and more with the syringe easily, and he was doing well. The next morning, he wasn’t as excited about the food…and with just the two of us, it took about an hour to coax him. (And here I give my thanks to all the Small Business Saturday folks and the bookstore for giving me some leeway as I was running super late.)

That evening, we gave him some food with his pain medicine. He didn’t eat much, but we figured it had been 24 hours since the vet had given it to him yesterday, so he was likely hurting. We let him rest and then later gave him his IV measure of water… a somewhat scary endeavor that requires a needle to be injected just right into the scruff. He was super patient for that and then hung out with Scott and I watching TV for about an hour. Then he started getting antsy, so we put him in front of his cage in case he needed to use the litter box. He hobbled slowly to the dining room, instead, and lay against the kitchen table leg, his favorite place. We figured the water was not comfortable, so we let him relax for a little over another hours before we tried to feed him.

When we went to feed him, we started getting more of an idea things were wrong. He really didn’t want to eat. He made soft little whines and kept spitting the food back out. When the vet had fed him, it had been before the IV, so we figured maybe he was still uncomfortable and sore from the water. So, we let him rest another hour.

He hadn’t moved from the spot we put him down. But we knew he needed food. Bunny digestive systems require food moving through them regularly; that’s why bunny families are told to always, always, always have hay available.

When I picked him up, his eye didn’t look very focused and he made more soft whining sounds.
Bunnies, as a rule, don’t vocalize. They grunt when they’re angry, occasionally chirp with the grunt if they’re particularly annoyed, but otherwise most of their communication is non-vocal. Thumps, ear position, posture are their main ways to “talk.” They also scream when they are terrified.
When we tried to feed him, he whined more and kept spitting out the food or letting it dribble. He swallowed a few times, which gave me some hope, but he didn’t come close to eating what he should. And he was clacking his teeth—another sign that bunnies are in pain or distressed.

By this time, it was a little after midnight. We put him on the floor and petted him, which seemed to calm him more.  Occasionally I’d try to offer the syringe, but he really didn’t want it. The vet’s office was long closed. And the nearest emergency options were each about an hour away—and one, Angel, had not been particularly great about dealing with my other rabbits. (In fact, we completely ignored the advice of one doctor for Miss Rhetta about surgery and she lived three years longer than he said she would.)

Of course, picking him up again, shoving him in a carrier or even carrying him would add stress and a lot more pain. Car rides are terrifying for all animals, and so is being restrained as you have to do for their protection. And it was cold outside.

It’s a tough choice. Do you take that chance of making their last hours even more miserable for the potential of saving their lives…or do you just wait and be with them to comfort? And I’d be lying if I said it was entirely a choice; part of the “decision” was also feeling paralyzed with the pain and fear that whatever we did, it could be the wrong choice.

When rabbits reach critical condition, there is little time for anything. If they’re going to die, it’s a matter of a few short hours…if even that…from the time they start showing signs of severe pain or lethargy.  For Lady Anne, the first rabbit who died, I didn’t know. We'd admitted her to the ER (also Angel), they'd sent us home, and we'd gotten the call that she had passed before we even got home. (We didn’t even get to claim her body…) For Miss Rhetta, she'd shown signs of lethargy that morning, I'd called the vet, brought her in immediately, Dr. Trom had taken her to weigh, and she'd died on the scale. Dr. Trom had handed her back to me and let me hold her quietly in a secluded corner, crying, till someone could bring us home.

Loki had been a somewhat exception to the rule. He'd given us a few scares with lethargy for months, and then would come back. He’d been “back” and at regular energy, eating, drinking, pooping, and peeing levels when I'd left for a very long convention trip. Morning after my arrival at the house of my friend, where I'd been staying, I'd gotten the call from my then-housemate that she'd found him dead that morning. That’s only somewhat of an exception because, as mentioned above, animals often wait till their alone to finally pass.

Vash, that last night, from 1:00 AM onward, would alternately snuggle next to my foot and writhe forward and backward, not quite in control of his body. He would cry, grind his teeth, and then settle as I stroked his face, his ears, and his side. He was a people bunny. He loved the carpet. He loved being touched. Scott was alternately stroking my head and back and looking things up as I would spit them out, searching for any straws we could find that might let us help him. Finally, a little after 2:00 AM, he had another set of the forward-backward spasms, then flopped, nose first (as rabbits would normally do when they are happy/relaxed) against my foot. He wasn’t crying, he wasn’t tooth-chattering, but he wasn’t well. I could tell. I knew. I knew that was it. So I just kept petting and petting and petting until I couldn’t feel him breathing any more. And then I probably petted him another good fifteen or twenty minutes because I didn’t know what else to do...

Rather, I knew, but I couldn’t do anything else. Back of my mind was bury him now or in the morning, if morning what to do with the body, remember a layer of stones to keep animals from digging him up, shroud him in the shirt in the cage… But that was a dull buzz. Forefront of my mind was the soft fur beneath my hand and how still he was.

Scott, earning his Husband-of-Awesome title for the millionth time over, actually dug the grave for me despite being exhausted and sore from fixing the water heater earlier in the day. I helped some, but he’s still far stronger than I am. We did bury Vash that night. I did wrap him in the shirt I’d put into the cage to perhaps make him more comfortable, and we did remember the layer of stones. Scott actually gathered some extras. While I was wrapping him, I tried to close his eyes—like you see people do to corpses on TV and in movies. Apparently that doesn’t work the same for animals, so he was “looking” at me while I wrapped him. I don’t know if it’s writers brain or just my own hyper-analytical means of dealing with grief that made me notice that.

I spent today…well, mostly sleeping. And then cleaning out the cage, the carriers, and whatnot. I’m not ready for another bunny, definitely not any time soon. I lit a stick of temple incense Scott brought back from Taiwan where his cage was. The cage will go in the shed or the attic. I’ll pick one of the carriers to keep handy for Nylis. I’ll ask around my other local bunny friends if they need pellets, toys, and wood pellets (for litter).

And I wrote this blog. I wanted to remember all the bits. I received so many kind words when I posted about Vash’s death on Facebook… and I know three other of my friends who lost pets this weekend.  Maybe it will help others. Maybe the information about the symptoms and bunny health will help others. Maybe I just want to make a record of it. Or all of that.

In any case, Scott and I love you, Vash the Stampede, Giant Bunny of Chill, and King of the Cardboard and Wood Pile. And everyone you met loved you. You touched a lot of hearts and are a special story strand in our family tapestry.

"Controlling" Emotions

I’m at a Broad Universe writers retreat this weekend with a bunch of friends, among them the fabulous Rona Gofstein, who also writes as Rachel Kenley. And in my all-important “procrastination before writing” time, where I was glancing through Facebook, I saw her recent blog post, “Emotions Don’t Need to Be Controlled.”

I gave a “quick” (i.e. 4 paragraphs long) response on the post here, but that only dealt with one aspect that I think is important in this discussion.

She said in the blog that it was probably an unpopular topic, but I don’t think it should be. It’s a many-faceted topic that I had about ten different replies to flying around in my head. In summary, I think our relationship with emotions needs to be more openly and readily discussed. Not just if we should and should not repress them or control them, but how they affect us, how we create emotions, the physiological and psychological importance of a good relationship with emotions…

Our relationship status with emotion, of course, is best filed under “it’s complicated,” but I also think all good relationships are. And as a writer, I love exploring those complicated relationships… and a good blog response should pick one particular aspect and discuss it. And perhaps save other aspects for future blogs.

Having had my surgery and a long history of period / hormone issues, though, what’s foremost in my mind and has been for the past year is physiological causes for uncontrollable emotions. (Basically, almost the opposite of what I ended up responding on Facebook.)

Our current culture in modern America, and many other places across the world, takes the stand that we should “control our emotions,” as Rona puts forward in her post.

I agree with her that we shouldn’t control our emotions and that it is a problematic, if not dangerous, thing to do so. (She has a great example of following her instinctual emotions on her blog.)

Emotions cause physiological effects in the body that we cannot control—blood pressure, heart rate, temperature, tears or laughter are some examples. (Breathing, too,  but we have some control over that, at least.) These are part of your autonomic nervous system—the things your body does that you don’t have to think about, and in essence, can only marginally affect even when you do think about them.

Because emotions have such a major physiological component attached to the autonomic nervous system, as well as the endocrine system (your hormones) and neurotransmitters, that means you can have physical triggers for emotions that you also cannot control. The science of psychiatry and psychology deal with those quite a bit. But consider when you have a health problem that affects your body’s chemistry—you’re not able to control your body chemistry, so you simply cannot control the emotions caused by these symptoms.

Many women suffer this dissociation with regular PMS—the butt of far too many jokes. However, consider how society pressures people (particularly women) to “get it together” and “control your emotions,” when she literally, physically CANNOT DO SO. Not only is there this awful feeling of intense anger, sadness, happiness, or what not because estrogen or progestin is doing its thing, but there is this logical awareness that the emotion being felt is not associated with any actions or events currently happening around us. And we’re regularly told that THIS IS WRONG; YOU ARE WRONG.

And it’s not wrong. And it’s not controllable. And no one should be punished for going through this.

It’s bad enough to be standing in the kitchen, filled with rage and a physical illness of dissociation because there is no good reason for there to be rage. Thought processes and thinking about the situation aren’t going to un-flush our system with the chemicals causing rage (or grief, or elation). In fact, the discomfort or panic of that dissociation can enhance and exacerbate the unwanted emotion. Add in feeling like a failure or like you ought to be able to control this emotion, and you’ve added even more chemicals interacting in the body.

What to do?

Change starts within us. Within individuals. I’d love to magically change society and society’s dangerious and poisonous views, but that isn’t something any individual can do. But we can learn to create a better relationship with our own emotions—and to forge more healthy relationships with the emotions of others by our own reactions.

For each individual, admit and surrender to the idea that emotions are not a thing to be controlled.

That’s a lot of work on its own.

Next, each of us should pay attention to your body during emotions. How do I feel? What is my natural inclination for action while experiencing those emotions? Is there a situational cause for the emotion? If so, what? If not, that’s okay too; I  notice and appreciate your body is going through something physical and physiological that creates this emotion.

This is also a lot of work. We need to give ourselves permission to take our time with this.

Then, then, after we’ve acknowledged these things, we can look for the things we can control.

For me, the first thing is to learn how to communicate about emotions. Let the ones I love know when I’m angry, that I need to do something physical—walk, yell, punch or throw inanimate objects. Anyone I’m in a relationship with—my hubby, my friends, my family—are people I could potentially act out upon due to emotions, and none of us have psychic powers, so it’s important to tell them why I’m acting out—what I’m feeling, what I need, and so on. Of course, it’s important that if the emotion was caused by an action that, once the uncontrollable need is met (time alone, being hugged, pillows beaten up), the cause needs to be addressed.  I’ve seen people (and it’s often shown in literature, television, movies, etc) take care of the emotional need, but then never address the issue—so it continues to fester and cause the uncomfortable emotion—and that discomfort will grow, requiring the physical response to be stronger and stronger. Communication is the most important thing in any healthy relationship. Communicating with ourselves and others is key when it comes to our shared relation with emotions.

Once we get communication moving, we can look at other things that are within our control. Especially when emotions come at inconvenient times. Rather than try to control the emotion, however, we can control how we handle the symptoms of emotions. Rather than saying, “I can’t be angry right now,” we can think, “I can’t tell my boss to self-copulate painfully right now.” We can take time to pay attention to breathing and work at controlling that to an extent. We can take time with responses, crafting them so as not to damage other relationships. We can remove ourselves from situations when we realize we are at a place where the physiology of the emotions is not appropriate.

I don’t think I can say enough times that this is not easy, and I, for one, am far from perfection in this practice.

But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try. And try again. And try again. (And apologize, communicate, and try again.)

The last thing regarding “control” over emotions is how we respect and appreciate others’ physiological-emotional needs. Telling someone to “get control” is, as mentioned above, not only likely impossible but damaging, potentially making the situation worse. Find out what they need in the moment to deal with the emotion, and later discuss the situation. Be forgiving when someone lashes out; it may be a thing they physically can’t control at the moment…

That said, suffering regular abuse from someone who “can’t control their emotions” is a relationship not worth keeping. That is an entirely different—but still very important—conversation that needs to be had. Physical attacks, deep emotional attacks, any abuse is wrong.

Outside of abusive behaviors, however, it’s worth being flexible, honoring the physiological aspects of emotion, and opening a channel of communication. For ourselves, and for the ones we care about.

I hope this isn’t an unpopular topic, and that more of us do start healthy discussions about what emotions are and what makes for good emotional relationships.

Surgery Prep

It’s been over a year since my last blog post that was part of #HoldOntoTheLight...

This one probably could be too, but I just want to get it out there because I’m going into surgery tomorrow and I’ve been procrastinating on writing it for a while.

The surgery is fairly minor, though I do get anesthesia.

The short, less-icky version:

I’ve got a good-sized fibroid in my uterus that’s also on my cervix that’s been making my life miserable for a while now. They’re going to remove it via hysteriscopic surgery (i.e. no incision, using my own openings). And then they’re going to put in a IUD that’s supposed to help out with the other misery-causing issues that led to the fibroid being there in the first place.

Most urgent information... I’m going to be mostly offline / resting for the next week. I expect the procedure to be fairly easy.

The long and icky version of this is part of an ongoing medical condition that I only had doctors take seriously in 2014, though it has likely been an issue since I started having periods.

Yes, we’re getting into periods. Turn back if you’re scared; here there be woman dragons.

(I say that dripping with sarcasm, because I think everyone really ought to be educated about how half our population’s bodies work... and because I think this “ew” factor and ignorance that comes up with women’s health is a part of why I suffered as I have for over 20 some odd years...)

It took me having to go to the ER and nearly getting admitted due to a kidney infection that developed due to a bladder infection due to a uterine track infection that I neglected symptoms to because I couldn’t differentiate them from the symptoms I was already suffering due to a 6-week long period.

Short version of THAT: About six months’ worth of tests from a specialist OB-GYN and a urinary gynecologist, and I learn I produce too much estrogen, likely have produced too much estrogen my whole adolescent and adult life, because of that likely couldn’t have kids if I wanted, oh and my uterus is actually tilted and twisted (also affecting the “kid breeding potential”) and THAT contributed to my life-long war with my bladder that has led me to more embarrassment and pain than I want to get into with this blog post.

Yeah. All that.

After a few failed procedures (posted on FB and maybe I’ll do a blog post on them later... it’s almost time for The Walking Dead)... my OB-GYN gave me an arm implant that was supposed to even out my hormones and potentially make my periods go a way for almost three blessed years!

Less than a year and a half after said implant... I’m bleeding again. I was bleeding and in pain at...

Every. Single. Convention. I attended in 2017. All of them. Every month.

And it was going from five days to six days, to seven days...

And the time between periods was getting less and less and less...

It wasn’t until I spent more than half of Necon in July in my hotel room, in bed, puking and bleeding and exhausted, that I demanded another appointment with the OB-GYN.

I then had to go home and record three more months of my cycles for something to be done. (Despite the fact I had very clearly recorded the prior six months in red marker on my calendar for her to see already.)

I cheated and called her in two and a half months because I was on my third bleeding cycle. It fucked with my DragonCon.

More tests, more visits, and A REASON!

I had a fibroid.  A big one. Oh, and it was also on top of my cervix.

If you didn’t follow the link above for what a fibroid is, here is another one to the Mayo Clinic. I include that one because it has a handy list of symptoms, which I’ll copy here:

• Heavy menstrual bleeding
• Menstrual periods lasting more than a week
• Pelvic pressure or pain
• Frequent urination
• Difficulty emptying the bladder
• Constipation
• Backache or leg pains

I have Every. Single. One. Oh, and also anemia. I need to sleep all the time, and I have no energy. Everything, everything I do and have been doing takes two to three times the effort.

So, add in depression, feeling like a failure, and all the emotional baggage that goes with that.

Thing is, I get most of those symptoms with my messed-up estrogen and twisty-tilty uterus anyway...  This fibroid was just exacerbating a regular level of misery I live with each month. Hopefully, this IUD will help with the hormones.

But seeing as the arm implant failed after a little over a year, I’m not all that hopeful.  I’m just glad to get the fibroid that’s making things worse out...

What I want is a full hysterectomy. Kids aren’t in the planning, and there’s always adoption and fostering if we do change our minds.  I have no need for these parts.

But I got a hard “no” on that from the doc. That’s its own blog post.

I plan on returning to blogging. I’ll talk about that as things continue.

But, for now, I’m going into surgery.

And I have a medical affirmation for at least part of my suffering, for many of the failures I’ve felt over the past year, for not being as productive and being more “flaky,” for the exhaustion and the anger and uncontrolled emotions, for the pain...

Having a name for it, having a cause does matter. Having a plan and having power over it... that’s in progress.

For now, I will take well wishes, hope, prayers, and whatever anyone wants to send.