I’m on pins and needles while my Bonnie gets her surgery today. The doctor just reconfirmed she is blind in both eyes and we are not going to stay ahead of the glaucoma pain, so they are indeed doing a bilateral enucleation and it’s proceeding now.

It pained me to leave her there, but I should be able to pick her up in a few hours. Recovery is going to be psychologically tough for me since I won’t see her eyes again. I made sure to take lots of pictures of them this past week.

The pictures below are of Bonnie and me this morning before I dropped her off, including a growly moment of hers.

Although I didn’t know it at the time, Bonnie, who came matted, blind, and emaciated at the HSNB shelter I’m on the Board of, also came with this haircut. As you can see the hair grew over her eyes when she was found as a stray and before all of the medical appointments to determine what was going on with her two permanent forms of vision impairment before she went completely blind.

I’m thinking I’ll let her bangs go long like this after her double enucleation so that it will look more sheepdog-ish, even though she’s a lot smaller than a typical sheepdog. The eye doctor said that sewn up prosthetics will prevent the eye sockets from being sunken like they were with my poor Tucker years ago in his one eye.

Bonnie’s surgery for a double enucleation will happen right after this trip to Guerneville, so I’m doubly glad that she is enjoying the travel, not that she can see anything. The quality of her life will be in sounds, feelings and smells henceforth. In one of these pictures, we are at the ophthalmologist yesterday for a last-minute pre-vacation check on the 22 drops a day and 3 oral medications that I currently have to put in her at three different times of the day. None of those will be needed when she has the surgery and will be out of pain from the eye pressure. The other picture is a screenshot from the video from today which best shows the condition of her eyes. You cannot tell that she is completely blind in both eyes when you look at her. The blueness that was in both eyes caused by the glaucoma (which everyone assumes are cataracts) is now overtaken by the blood in the left eye. This is exactly what I saw in my dachshund Tucker years ago when he injured one of his eyes and became a candidate for enucleation in that one eye. It’s a mindfuck to think that she’s not really looking at me when she’s jumping up on my legs like this every day, but I’ve processed what’s best for the dogs when they already have no function to the eyes except to manage the unnecessary pain in them.

I’m taking a bunch of pictures of Bonnie with her eyes in the condition that they are in. She does appear to have zero vision, but with the current intense regimen of pills and drops, she is not squinting, so she is hopefully not in any pain. Tomorrow I find out if the surgery to remove the eyes is imminent. I gave her an intense bath and a little trim before the appointment and a trip to Guerneville with Shea and Snoopy.

This is documenting Bonnie’s progress in her history of eye irritation with her glaucoma and dislocated lenses, I thought I’d take some video as we plan to return to the ophthalmologist.

Today I received daunting news from a veterinarian ophthalmologist on the condition of my beloved Bonnie’s eyes (she’s in the foreground in the picture below taken earlier this month). She may have already lost her vision completely, so enucleation (removal of the eyes) may be imminent and the most humane thing to do to keep her out of pain given the futility of the eyes remaining. The procedure would mean she wouldn’t have to endure the 22 drops a day I currently put in her eyes plus an oral medication. Moreover, she’d be completely pain-free after the procedure because the eye pressure from the glaucoma is what causes the pain. She also came to me with the other permanent vision loss condition of dislocated lenses. Over the last week or so I noticed her irritation with one and then both of her eyes. At her eye doctor appointment about a month ago, I had been warned that removal of the eyes was projected for the future, but that she was stable. I therefore hoped that anything of this nature wouldn’t manifest until she was much older, since she is only seven. I am broken-hearted that it might be only weeks away if the regimen doesn’t work well. It might just be inevitable, but I still intend to give her the highest quality of life possible and I’ll still look for the silver lining in this, as my whole mission since the tragedy of the fire in January has been about finding silver linings in life.

She’s very sleepy in these pictures, but you can sort of see some clear liquid wetting under her eyes and some redness where it should be the whites of her eyes.

It was probably the first time Snoopy ever encountered this praying mantis, which was shaking in the breeze like a leaf to try to avoid detection.