The Trials of Persephone

You know my fish, Persephone? Whom I love dearly? Who is my favorite fish that I've ever had, which is good because she's by far had the coolest name? Yeah, it's been a rough few weeks with her.

It all started one lovely Sunday where I was already beyond stressed. Sammy had had a cold for a week, and it showed no signs of getting better. Here's the thing about when Sammy has a cold- instead of being a nice loving caring person, I get inexplicably annoyed. I think part of it is that it's a reminder that he's mortal and so I start panicking that he's going to cough so hard he'll never catch his breath and die, and the other part is that it gets annoying to not be able to have a conversation because he can't stop coughing after every word. Anyways, he pointed out to me that Persephone was acting weird. I watched her, and she was doing what all my other fish have done right before they died. So I put on my pants and told Sammy we were breaking the sabbath to save our fish. 

We drove to two different pet stores to try and find medicine for her, and I cried the whole way there. The medicine they gave us they weren't very hopeful it would do anything, and it could kill her. So yay. I gave her a few drops, and hoped that wasn't too much. Sammy did some research, and Persephone was matching all the symptoms of a constipated fish, which can be deadly. So we decided to take the steps for a constipated fish. I spent an hour with her trying to get her to poop, then went to bed hoping for the best. 

In the morning she was acting fine and I was so grateful. But at night, she was acting weird again. We fasted her for three days, and gave her one bite of food. She immediately blew up again at that, even worse than the first time. She was so bloated she couldn't even swim properly, it was so sad to see. I did more research and decided I was going to give her an epsom salt bath which can help, but the salt we had was flavored and the stores were closed. By the time I got off work the next day, Persephone had gone down in her swelling, so we decided to feed her a pea which is a laxative. Even though we cut it the tiniest we could, it was way too big for Persephone and she swam around for a good twenty minutes just holding it in her mouth. She ended up eating it someone, and she swelled up again. However, she was back to normal the next morning. 

It's been a weird two weeks with Persephone, and I honestly have no idea what's going to happen to her next. At this moment, she's doing alright, but who even knows. I'm just so grateful that she made it past those first two scary nights. We really love her, no matter how small she is.