Necropsy findings

After three weeks of waiting, the pathologist called (while I was at work, of course) and offered to go over her findings. Dad played phone tag (I cried too much to be understood on the phone.) and last Friday morning I spoke with the pathologist (mostly Dad asked questions I had written down while I cried). Given the lack of anything in Keeper's health history (they talked to our vet because they weren't finding anything obvious), how healthy everything looked on necropsy exam, that she had turned blue, and the swiftness with which she passed (let out to potty while I prepped her breakfast, still had a full bladder when I found her body- she released her bladder in the back of the truck), the pathologist thinks it's most likely Keeper had a fatal arrhythmia.

She used an analogy of the athletes who collapse and die while playing sports. Her guess is that Keeper's heart wasn't beating right that morning, but being asleep or laying on her bed was compensating for the reduced blood flow somewhat. Getting up and going out overwhelmed her heart's ability to move blood, and she collapsed and died. The CPR we tried was the only thing we could have done, and that would not have brought her back, even if I had seen her fall over and started it immediately instead of a couple minutes later once Keeper's breakfast was ready.

I told Dad on the trip to the veterinary college that I never thought a heart that full of love would ever stop beating, but that appears to be exactly what happened.

From what I can find on the human side of things:
"The principal cause of sudden death is the occurrence of malignant cardiac arrhythmias, which result in the loss of contraction of the heart with subsequent lack of blood supply to vital organs like the brain. The immediate consequence is loss of conscience, and if the arrhythmia persists for more than 5 minutes, the patient dies.

The only way to avoid the fatal outcome is to restore the normal cardiac rhythm by means of an electrical cardioversion or in some cases by using a pacemaker."

Since we wouldn't have been able to shock her heart, there would have been no difference to me having eyes on Keeper when she collapsed.

The silver lining is that she most likely wasn't in any pain, and probably wasn't scared or upset in any way, she just lost consciousness, fell over, and died.

It's been just over a month since she died, and I still miss her like crazy. I had spent so long working to appreciate Keeper for the great dog she was and stop comparing her to Duncan. I'm glad I was able to get there before she was gone, but I'm still so sad I didn't get to retire her, pamper and spoil her and feed her everything and wreck her automatic leave-it. I wish I could have given her those years.

I'm glad I didn't miss anything. I'm glad she wasn't hiding an illness. I'm glad she didn't have cancer. I still wish I'd known her death was coming so I could have told her I loved her and said my final goodbye to her smiling face.