Poor sleep & accelerating the schedule

Gizmo isn’t sleeping through the night, which means we aren’t sleeping through the night. He tosses and turns and makes a racket when he tried to get up to reposition or get water. The rug on the floor isn’t much padding for his joints, but he won’t sleep on a comfy dog bed. We’ve started pulling him up to sleep with us on the bed, but even then he wakes up and needs us to bring him some water and help him get into other positions. Colin has been sleeping on the couch a few nights to be able to get a full night’s sleep. Even if we have a good day, we’re not having good nights and we’re all getting worn down. Colin and I continue to have nightly quality of life conversations and score him, and we are confident that we won’t be able to stick to the original goal of November for saying goodbye. We just don’t know how much sooner it’s going to be. Early October? Or do we need to be talking about as early as in September now? Should we stop chemo? He absolutely hates going there and resists walking into the appointment, and chemo days are always counted as bad days since he’d just groggy and doesn’t eat much after. I’m comfortable with the decision moving up since I know it’s the right thing to do for him even though I know it’s going to hurt like hell and I’m not really ready to lose him. I’ve always known that a Berner’s life is shorter than other breeds and I chose him anyway. Knowing that he lived past expectations, and that letting him go means letting him be free of pain still doesn’t make the knot in my stomach ease up when I think about actually making the phone call to schedule it. But it’s starting to feel like we’re being selfish by setting some date in the distant future. We bought him some Ezelle’s fried chicken and fed it to him through one of the days so his nausea wouldn’t come back, and he was pretty darn excited about that plus all the extra cuddles and time on the bed he’s been getting with us. I put his pen and crate away in the garage. We haven’t been using them in the past couple of weeks and I thought it would be easier to do now while he’s still around.