cancer – day 336

I almost euthanized Snow on Sunday. She has this thing that’s pretty common to ryukins called swim bladder (disease?), and it makes her stomach too buoyant and she floats upside down. Not all the time, just mostly after she eats. She started doing it every time I fed the fish, so I moved her to her own tank so I could manage her food a little more carefully without starving ReRun and Opie, who are still in the aquarium (omg, did I blog about Mizzou jumping in the aquarium? It was utterly, ridiculously funny, he was so shocked to land completely in water and he was out just as fast as he got in, soaking wet. Hilarious!)

She was doing better, she’s been on a frozen shrimp diet for the last three months or so, but when I put her in her own tank it was easier to tell how much she ate. Then a few weeks ago she started being upside down but in the bottom of her tank. I thought that was really strange, but when I looked closely her gills were still moving. She would swim a little when I coaxed her and talked to her, but mostly she just let herself go belly up because it was too tiring to stay right side up, I guess. She started being upside down almost all the time, and I really thought she was close to the end. She wasn’t eating, she wasn’t swimming, and she looked miserable. I swear instead of being snow white she’s gotten a little yellowish.

So on Sunday I did some more research about swim bladder, and it’s not curable and it’s progressive. And honestly, it was getting to the point that every time I walked in the living room I was surprised to still see her gills moving. So I started doing research on how to euthanize fish. I don’t want her to suffer, you know? She’s my fish! There was an entire website on the various methods for euthanizing fish, from flushing them (totally cruel) to chopping their heads off to, well, we’ll get to that. Basically this website says that anything where you have to handle the fish is going to be traumatic for it, and of course the more you handle it the worse it is for them. So apparently the most humane way to euthanize a fish is to drop it in freezing cold water, which shocks it’s heart and it dies pretty much instantly. Dropping them into boiling water is equally effective, but a little more difficult to stomach. I mean, that would seem an awful lot like I was boiling her for dinner, you know?

So I got a big bowl and put super cold water in it (not a problem with a 250-ft well when there’s snow on the ground). Then I put that in the freezer for a little while, so that there was a little layer of ice on the top (another tip from the fish euthanasia website). But here’s the kicker . . . when I took the bowl out of the freezer and set it on the counter next to Snow’s tank, she started swimming again!

After that miracle, she was fine Sunday and Monday, swimming and eating like a normal goldfish. Then Tuesday she started getting upside down again, and then yesterday and today she’s pretty much been upside down at the bottom of her tank looking miserable. The bowl for the freezing water is still on the counter, ready to be used . . . poor Snow. She’s so beautifully white too, and really big (I guess she’s had a nice long life already). I hate the idea of euthanizing her, but ach, she’s really, really sick.