Due to the overwhelming support for my comment on @cryotosensei post about the last time I felt unbridled joy when buying something I wanted to take the time to share photos and explain the process. For those of you who do not know when I was a junior in high school at a Boy Scout meeting of all places, I suffered an extreme and life-changing concussion. The incident that caused it is more embarrassing than anything because I tried to kick a ball and ended up knocking myself off the Rubbermaid crate I was sitting on and bam concussion.
Recovery was rough, to say the least, and this was 12 years ago so emotional support animals were not a big thing like they are now. It was under the recommendation of one of my doctors who had read about recent research into the idea of emotional support animals who recommended that my parents get Rusty to help me out and be there for me.
As you can see he also loved his fur sibling so much as well! Who would have imagined a cat letting a dog lay his head on her! To me that photo encompasses how sweet of a boy he was!
After I recovered from the concussion I had a lot of health issues which my doctors misdiagnosed as just the side effects of the concussion. After three years though and pretty much out of sheer luck through some friends of the family a doctor realized what was wrong with me and offered to help. The treatment wasn't a cure but what it would fix would give me a second chance at living a pretty normal life. Naturally Rusty was here as a I recovered being the gentlest boy in the entire world!
Over time I recovered, and was able to finish college right as the pandemic kicked off. At the end of 2019 though Rusty got really really sick and to this day no one knows for sure what happened to him but he ended up in the Animal Hospital ICU for 4 days. It was rough on me and I remember being so scared of losing him before I graduated college. Rusty was given two weeks tops but well I think the doctors forgot to tell him about that as he left the ICU in pretty good shape. Now we could tell he wasn't 100% and he wasn't going to be but he was so happy and able to do almost everything he wanted (we did not let him jump up on things like he used to just to keep him safe). Well, 5 months after the two-week diagnosis I graduated from Texas A&M and since it was the pandemic and everything was locked down at that point my mom took photos of Rusty and I just on our street.
He continued to defy the odds and continued to live his best-spoiled life! My mom would cook for him and my brother's dog and to be honest they often ate better than me! When I decided to move to DC and work for Congress it was a really hard decision to leave Rusty at home but I could in good conscious bring him. He was a boy who had a backyard and who had his brother Mardi there plus his doctors and my parents. So when I left almost every night I would FaceTime my mom to see him and talk to him. I am pretty sure she was not the biggest fan because she would want to talk about something and well I just wanted to see Rusty and talk to him!
Slowly over time, he slowed down and the last photo taken of him was a beauty of him in a field of bluebonnets by our house.
When he passed away in April 2021 I knew I wanted to do something special and something that would always keep him with me. However, being a broke Congressional staffer at the time kinda ruined my ability to do anything. Once I was hired to the Committee I work at now, while I was still broke I could start to plan something and that is where I found out about Eterneva a company that extracts Carbon from ashes or hair and uses that Carbon to create a diamond.
The staff at Eterneva was fantastic and extremely helpful with all the questions I had. You set up a call beforehand to go over everything and if you want to move forward you get sent a welcome kit further showing some example sizes, cuts, and colors. This is also when you transfer your animal's ashes or hair into a double-sealed container to begin the process. I did this in December of 2022 and received emails from them as he moved through the various stages and whenever I wanted updates they were quick to be able to reply and let me know what was going on.
Finally on my birthday actually he came home.
Rusty always loved the color blue so it was fitting that he became a blue diamond. In the end, he came out to be a 0.55 karat, round cut, pale blue diamond set in a 10k hammer textured band. I couldn't be happier with the result and with how well the team at Eterneva communicated with me. Now I will always have my baby boy with me and that to me is priceless.