losing sight

My beloved doggie, Shasta, is going blind.
She's terrified and behaves oddly. Not unlike before, when jumping onto invisible curbs or missing the real ones and tripping over them, or walking down the hallway looking for me, pausing at each room entrance and missing the one in which I was sitting with my pants down...no. She's terrified of her foodbowl and is wincing and jumping back from it as if it was waving an invisible hand in her face. She doesn't eat out of her bowl, not without me sitting next to her, taking bits of food out and holding it in my palm for her to sniff, or dropping it on the ground and waiting for her to sniff around for a long time to find it and gingerly grab it off the floor with her teeth, testing it, dropping it back off, looking for it again, and...eventually, abandoning the hunt out of frustration. She will eat little pieces of buttered sourdough toast that I share off my breakfast plate, or bits of chips and cheese nips (she loves cheese nips), but it takes her a long time to acknowledge food and work up the courage to take it, and master the art of eating, again and again, each time with fear.
My ownership of this little dog may have crossed lines of animal/humna relationship, but my intuition and awareness of her "being" cannot be questioned. No, I don't need to scoop her up and hold her to my chest every chance I get, but I do. No, I don't need to rejoice every instance she produces a poopy, but I do. I don't much mind cleaning up her pee spots either. All 132 of them in fact. But I do need to recognize signs of change and distress, may they come in the most subtle way. And I do, for the most part. Aside from selfdiagnosing problems of itchiness: if it's fleas, allergies or a need for bath: I do know my puppy. And I'm scared too...
I'm scared of her faiding away and becoming less functional, maybe even depressed and unable to enjoy her otherwise beautiful life. The rides in the car have turned into shake sessions with whimpering and agitation that is unstoppable. WHat happened, I wonder? She used to just LOVE having her nose in the wind, standing on the arm rest and leaning against my arm, her seatbelt. Now our trips require Zanax (right now for her only). She's frightened.
Food just sits there and I throw out enough of it to feed two strays on the block. I don't know what to do. How do I make the spots she sees that keep popping into her eyes go away when there's nothing there? How do I make her smell her food and dip her head into her bowl with gusto? How do I make her not afraid?
I don't know. When the routine of life becomes chore-like, the FUN of life goes away. I want to help her adapt to her new condition, even if it's blindness. I can carry her, handfeed her, and make sure she doesn't have to jump or miss curbs, but would she like it? I'm gonna try, silently crying inside...
This awful property of life that balances the miracle of growth and development of a being is so painful to witness: the demolition of all. When you couldn't see, talk, walk, and fend for yourself, you may be again.
I abandoned my preplanned medical carrier due to my unsilencable compassion. I feel what I see, and I hate powerlessness. I don't accept it. If I was slowly going blind I would deal with it and have another full life in darkness. Let me go blind. Give me control, give me power, give me pain. But not like this...