A Tale of Two Leias

December 23rd, 2016 was a tough day for Leias.

Carrie Fisher had just finished a brief tour in Europe to promote her new book, appearing on talk shows and the like. Near the end of her commercial flight from London to LA, she apparently stopped breathing.

A nurse who was on board performed CPR until the paramedics could arrive, and by the time she arrived at UCLA Medical Center, she was placed on a ventilator. She died the morning of December 27th at the tender age of 60.

When Carrie Fisher’s heart stopped, the Star Wars universe skipped at least a few beats. This was devastating not only for Fisher’s family and close friends, but millions of kids who had seen The Empire Strikes Back dozens of times would be affected by this in some way.

December 23rd, 2016 was also the day we started fostering this lovely little lady, also named (by us) Leia:

She was an instant hit around our home.

Leia may well have been the sweetest dog we’ve ever fostered, and we’ve probably fostered more than a dozen dogs by now—sometimes a dog will live with us for a few months while they are waiting to find their forever (or furever) home. Fostering can be really tough since you eventually have to let your new friend go somewhere else, and there are loads of foster fails every year, where the foster family just adopts the dog.

Unfortunately, the very first day we got her to our home to take care of her, there was a major medical issue. Thankfully, Alley is an awful lot more attentive than I am about certain things, and she noticed that Leia’s… um… nether regions were puffy, and there was a pus-like discharge apparently oozing from down there.

This necessitated quick action with the rescue coordinator. Leia had not been spayed, so she had recently been in heat. It turns out that there’s a life-threatening condition called pyometra, where the reproductive system of a dog can get infected—this is yet another very good reason to spay or neuter your pet, as Bob Barker used to remind us.

The moment she was diagnosed—I think it might have been the next morning—we had to rush to surgery. This was no easy feat, since it was Christmas eve—only emergency rooms and specialists would even be open, if we were lucky. The ER was going to be wildly expensive—the more a rescue spends, the less money it has to save other dogs—so we found a local vet who was able and willing to help us out.

It worked! Leia survived the surgery, and we kept her safe and healthy during her recovery. She even became friends with Molly, who liked to use her as a pillow:

This was an eerie time for us. It was a coincidence, but it was stark: Princess Leia left our world, but our Leia had survived.

Our Leia had been given a new hope.

Was this the universe’s way of balancing the scales? Nah, probably not. But Leia was even more special to us during her time, and she was successfully adopted just a few months after her ordeal.

Carrie Fisher left the world just as Leia got to stay.