Last month, Meaghan Van Koll had to watch helplessly as her Rottweiler, Buddy, convulsed in seizures. The 10-year-old dog had been ill; this downturn meant it was time for him to go.
But VanKoll couldn't move the large dog to take him on his final trip to the vet. ("He was a big boy," she'd later say about him, fondly.)
And so she spent hours on the phone, trying to find someone who would come to her home. Hours she really wanted to spend being with her companion one last time.
Finally, someone pointed her to Lori Gibson.
Gibson provides a necessary and grim service to pet owners in the greater Portland area: on-call euthanasia, performed in the pet's home.
The small woman with the open, calm demeanor of a yoga instructor hasn't always exclusively dealt with the end of pets' lives. In 1999, right out of vet school, she worked in a West Linn veterinary clinic. The work in the busy clinic was stressful.
Then she took a job in research, working on human clinical trials for cutting-edge defibrillators and pacemakers. The work was interesting and rewarding: many people would benefit from the devices. But it was also hands-off; she never saw the patients she helped.
And she was away from animals.
In March 2009, Gibson returned to veterinary medicine, filling a need she'd seen in her time at the clinic. Operating a one-woman business under the name Compassionate Care, she offers one service only: in-home pet euthanasia.
The response from pet owners has been overwhelming.
Many scenarios lead her clients to call her (or, more often, be referred to her by their veterinarian). Some have very large dogs they cannot move. Others have maybe waited a little too long to make this tough decision, and now the animal is too sick to be moved. Some want their privacy, rather than pass through a clinic's waiting room on their way in or out.
And very few pets go to a veterinary office willingly, and many pet owners feel they don't want their pet's last moment to be in a place it so disliked.
This last one is at least part of the reason Gibson was called to a Northeast Portland home last Wednesday. She rings the doorbell, carrying a small case. A woman with red-rimmed eyes opens.
The woman's 16-year-old cat has hardly eaten a thing in two weeks. The animal is now slowly losing control over its bodily functions. It's time, the woman finally decided.
Gibson suggests they get the necessary paperwork out of the way first. She talks to the woman about the cat's symptoms in professional, but soft tones. Gibson asks if the woman needs some more time.
Then she draws up a mix of four different sedatives, one that will make the cat sleep and feel no pain. Tears roll down the woman's face in a slow, steady stream.
The cat sits on top of her perch. Gibson asks the woman again if she's ready, then administers the sedative in one swift, almost imperceptible motion. The cat reacts to the prick of the needle and moves to another room.
Gibson tells the woman that the sedative will take effect in less than a minute and that she can get as much time as she wants with her sleeping animal before Gibson will give her the other injection.
After a moment, the woman comes back into the living room, cradling her sleeping cat. Her right hand softly strokes the cat's back, a motion that will not cease until she places the animal in Gibson's car almost an hour later.
The woman settles down in a comfortable chair by the window. Gibson sits on the floor in front of her and begins explaining the next steps: the tourniquet to get blood pressure in a vein, the injection, and that some animals show involuntary muscle movements after the heart stops beating. But despite Gibson's soothing demeanor, the woman isn't listening; she's sobbing now.
Gibson lays a hand on the woman's knee, gives her a light, assuring rub and says she'll give her some time. After she steps outside, Gibson's face betrays the emotional toll her job takes. She takes a deep breath and briefly talks about the incessant rain, a tangible reality that has nothing to do with the act waiting to be performed inside.
She goes back to check with the woman, who says she's ready. Gibson lays out stethoscope and tourniquet. She shaves a small spot on the cat's leg, leaves a little bushel of hair on the coffee table at the woman's request, and gives the cat a shot of sodium pentobarbital.
She gently sets down the syringe, waits a few moments, checks the cat's chest with her stethoscope and quietly, but firmly says: "Her heart has stopped beating."
The woman sinks into herself a little. The cat looks exactly the same as it has since being sedated: asleep with its eyes open.
After a few minutes of silence and another light touch of Gibson's hand, the woman carries her cat out to Gibson's car. Gibson tucks the cat into a fuzzy pet bed and covers it with a blanket.
Until now, the interactions between Gibson and the woman have been kind, albeit with an ever-so-slight detachment, like any doctor-client exchange. But when the cat is tucked under the blanket, the woman turns to Gibson and hugs her tightly.
The woman disappears into the house and Gibson stands in the driveway, silently.
A day before, talking about her work over coffee, Gibson's eyes welled up when she talked about her own cat's slow death when she was in vet school.
"I've been there," she'd said. "I know what it's like to not want to let go."
-- Jacques Von Lunen
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