Can I Keep It?

Little Dog

For something that was so long in coming, it all went down very fast.  

Zoe had been doing great.  A stellar patient. When originally diagnosed, she was given thirty days.  That was almost nine months ago.  Performing way beyond the challenges facing her.  She chased the ball every morning.  Ate her meals with vigor.  When she was given new foods, she always gave a satisfying moan, "Mmmmmmmm!"

She was happy.

Then, on Saturday, for the first time since she was diagnosed with cancer, she acted like she didn't feel well.  On Sunday, she did what she was asked.  We took her for ice cream, a habit we began as "Make-A-Wish-For-Zoe".  But it was clear, she did it for us.  She had given up.

On Monday morning, we already had an appointment with Dr. Michener, her oncologist.  I asked her get up one last time.  I begged her.  And dutiful dog that she was, struggled to her feet.  I helped her get as far as the side door.  She collapsed.  It was the last time Zoe ever got up.

We got to the office and had to carry her in on a liter. And Kathy came into the room.  She had told me when we started this journey that she never knew how long they had to live, but they would let us know.  Zoe was making it plainly clear.  She was done.

Hud's tears rained down on Zoe's sweet head as we said goodbye.  It was the kindest passing that I have ever had the privledge of witnessing.  Even Dr. Michener was in tears.  We had all done our best, but no one more than Zoe.

We got Zoe at the agricenter, eleven years ago as we went out to get beans on a Saturday morning.  She was bred to be a goose hunter.  Her litter was large with robust eight week old puppies of fifteen and sixteen pounds. She weighed eight.  The runt of the litter.  And a red head to boot.  I had fallen in love. The breeder asked Hud what he hunted.  He said that the dog was for me.  He asked me what I hunted.  I told him, "Designer shoes at fabulous prices!"  I thought he would snatch the dog from my arms.

But oh, was she a bad puppy.  A terrible chewer, she removed the dashboard from my car, ate the hard knob of the gearshift, demolished a couch and could crack a golf ball in half.  Hud said that if she ever caught a cold, he was going to put her down. 

At four years old, a switch flipped.  Suddenly, she was the gentlest, sweet, well behaved spirit in the whole house.  Hud trained her to catch the ball.  She began running with him in the mornings.  Finally, Hud fell in love.

She always thought she was a little dog.  Smaller than Simone even.  There was a chihuahua in the park that could flip her onto her back. Zali dominated her. She never knew what a great big beast she was.  At one of the Rhodes College games, a small boy asked me if he could pet my horse.

Farewell, my sweet tiny girl.  Safe trip and so much love to guide your way.  We miss you.

Feeling Better

Zoe's been doing fantastic on the new med, so we went in for a second drip on Tuesday.

Hud got to come sit and read with us.  He took an extra couple of days off to have a five day weekend.  Now he's staring down a vicious two day work week.  The horror!

Hud got a little hungry as we waited for the medication to drip into her system.  Or maybe he got bored.  It takes a little over two hours to complete a treatment.  He hopped down to the Sonic and got a breakfast burrito and some tater tots.  Zoe, who was sound asleep under sedation, awakened immediately and was rewarded with a tater tot or two.  Then? She crashed again.  

She won't ever be well, but she is feeling better.  And that is what makes us happy for now.

Happy Birthday

Sunday was your birthday.  You would have turned fifty.  Happy birthday, Ev.

I thought about you all day.  You know, I still have your texts on my phone.  If I use my best magical thinking, I can pretend you're still here when I read them.  The first texts I ever got.  They're at the top, so sometimes I scroll and run into them.  A warm, sweet surprise. So happy birthday, Evie.

And hey.  I miss you.

Life's a Box of Chocolates

And I just got the icky maple cream one.

It's official.  Zoe has cancer.

A couple of weeks ago, we took her to Park Avenue Animal Hospital for a bone biopsy.  Carolyn McCutcheon has been taking care of my mongrel hoard for many, many years.  I trust her and respect her.  She's a bit of a House character in that she can diagnose anything on instinct.  But without the freaky addiction and angry bedside manner.

The pathology came back Monday.  Carolyn rushed it because when she got in there, she said it wasn't pretty.  The news is not good.  Zoe has a particularly aggressive form of sarcoma.  This particular kind sets up the mother ship in the bone somewhere.  In this case, it's the extreme upper femur next to the ball joint. A bad place for breakage.  After it sets up camp, it immediately sends out ninjas to the various organs of the body.  And they wait.  Quietly.  The mother ship is a selfish sarcoma.  It likes to eat its fill of bone first.  If it is removed, a chemical it sends out to the ninjas telling them to stay put, will be removed also.  And they will know it's time to attack. 

My friend, Kathy Mitchener, is one of the best veterinary oncologists in the well, just about anywhere.  She works at Angelcare.  Kathy has a new drug with high results for prolonging life, bone strength and pain management.

So that's where Zoe and I went on Tuesday.  She was so frightened, they had to sedate her.  While my big sweet dog napped peacefully to the drip of her IV, I sat on the floor with her heavy head on my lap, reading Cesar Milan and Cat Fancy magazines for two hours.

But Zoe does feel better.  So much so, I can't keep her from running.  Although at this point it's more of a hop/skip!  We're going to keep her comfortable.  Give her all the lacrosse balls she wants to tear up.  Take her out for ice cream and give her the Carmen Cone.

When Carmen was alive, Hud and I would take her out for ice cream on a hot summer day.  When one of us got to the bottom, about a four inch cone, we'd give it to her.  Whenever we go out for ice cream at The Michoacana, we still call who gets the Carmen Cone.

Only now beautiful Zoe will get the Carmen Cone. And all of the empty peanut butter jars, too.

Reunion

 

Me and Ev, October 15, 2010

*This great shot was taken by the talented Hud Andrews!*

Messages

When Evelyn first started on her brief journey with pancreatic cancer last May, my friend Nay Nay in Maryland, contacted me to tell me about the strangest thing that happened to her.  She set her GPS and followed the directions, only to wind up in the parking lot of Johns Hopkins on the other side of town from where she wanted to be.  On the same day that Evelyn started chemo.  She suggested I come up and we could go out on their boat, get pedicures.  Have some fun.  Evie nixed it, saying she had good days and bad.  So I dutifully told Nay about Ev's desire to get through the chemo and do it on the other side.

Several weeks ago, Hud was learning to text.  We were sitting on the couch, sending messages to one another. (Modern life!) All of the sudden, a small robot rabbit, Evelyn had given me for my birthday six years ago while I was in Richmond for a visit, jumped from the bookcase where it has resided all these years.  I picked it up and replaced it.  Fifteen minutes later, it threw itself to the floor again.  No other object (and there are MANY) had moved a silly milimeter.  I looked at Hud.  "Something's wrong with Ev," I said flatly.  I emailed her in the morning with queries of news.  She replied, "No, no news, it must have been a cosmic boom."

*That's her, the robot rabbit, snuggled between the legs of the doll

my Aunt Boo made me when I was born.*

The next day Evie was admitted to Johns Hopkins as an inpatient.  They explained the cancer was advancing at a phenominal rate.  She made the brave decision to stop treatment.  And go home.

Yesterday, I texted our mutual friend, Nancy, to see if she had any news.  I texted Evelyn that I loved her.  I texted Hud about making plans.

At 4:15 in the afternoon, I made mysef a glass of ice water, went to the sink to wash a spoon.  When I turned around, the refrigerator was dark.  No lights, sounds, dead.  I looked at the back of it for some reason.  It had come unplugged.  The cord lay on the floor for no apparent reason.  The refrigerator had not been moved for weeks.  I do not know how it happened.

Hud wasn't feeling well and went to bed at 8:00.  I was in the den, watching some stupid reality TV to make myself sleepy.  At 8:45, the robot bunny starts lighting up and moving its ears.  I tried to shut it off, but by 8:50, it was still talking.  Its cheeks burned bright red.  It said something unintelligible.  Which is odd in and of itself because you used to be able to understand its language.  I tried to shut it off.  Thought I had.  Put it back in the box and placed it on the bookshelf.  8:52: the right cheek lights up.  Then both cheeks.  It chirps.  By 8:54, I was sobbing.  I knew she was gone.  I told her goodbye.  The robot rabbit made a laughing sound.  And then it stopped.  It hasn't moved since. 

At 8:24 that same evening, a mutual friend had emailed to tell me that Evelyn had passed peacefully, surrounded by her family in the afternoon.  I didn't get it until the next day.

*That's the robot rabbit in the middle by the star Ev made me for my high school locker with pictures of her and a letter she wrote me from my scrapbook.*

As a child, I had an imaginary friend named Charlie.  I got my mother in trouble one day when I was two, by telling my father who had asked me about my day, "Charlie was here."  I had the uncanny ability to know when the phone was ringing before it actually made a sound.  Once, I told my mother, "Aren't you goinng to get that?"  She looked quizically at me and said, "But the phone isn't..."  BRRRINNNGGG!  And there is a story about me and a book that made a believer out of my grade school librarian.  But that's for another day.

Sometimes I wonder if Charlie's still out there.  Telling me things I need to know.  About my real friends when they can't tell me.

Evelyn would have been forty-nine in ten days.  I will miss her every day of the rest of my life.

On Going Home

No matter how many years have passed (thirty-two) since I moved away from Richmond,  I have always considered it to be my home.  Despite the fact that I have no dwelling to call my own there, it is the place that holds my heart.  I grew up with some of the nicest people I have ever met in all of my wanderings.  They are the family that resides in my spirit.

I was supposed to spend the day, furiously packing my bags for home.Tying up loose ends.  Making apologies to the dogs.  Instead, I am wandering around in circles like a dog looking for a good spot to lie down.

My oldest and dearest friend --the one who made my teen years fun and exciting --the one who forged gallantly through the wilderness of our youth to adulthood --is leaving for a place that won't allow her to come back.

I thought I could get to her in time, but her husband called me yesterday.  She is slipping away quicker than first thought.  Visitors (and the medications she has to take for pain) make her nervous.  Not wanting to add to her distress, I cancelled my trip.She needs to do this in her own brave way.

Going home will never be the same again.

Mean Girl

I don't know why I was mean to this girl.  I called her ugly.  Agreed with her family that she was stupid.  Didn't find her amusing in the slightest.

 

I threw her at the world, looking for a place for her to stick.  And the world was mean to her as well.  The world broke her arm three times, her foot, her collar bone, all of her fingers and her nose.  It gave her four car accidents, tearing up her face and premanently damaging her drawing arm.  It attracted an abusive man for her to marry when she was young.  It gave her a schizophrenic grandmother who named her, "whore" and beat her every chance she got because of the antics of a soap opera star.  The world bestowed her with an alchoholic grandfather who enabled the grandmother in every way.  Called her names.  Said she was unworthy of any kind of love.

It gave her cancer.

Lately, I've been feeling that the universe dislikes me.  Maybe because of the way I treated her back then.  I've been dealing with random acts of meaness.  A vendor at the TACA show stormed my booth three times, damaging a print and screaming at me.  I don't even know her name or what she does.  The show coordinator apologized.  It was not her fault.  She cannot control the mental stability of her vendors.  But I have to ask, "Why me?"  A commentor on a blog I frequent is consistantly rude to the point of being a bully to me despite the fact that I am saying what several other people are expressing.  I have to ask, "Why me?"  A random stranger in another car gave me the finger and I was not even changing lanes or driving below the speed limit.  And yet again, "Why me?"

When she turned thirty, I started to be kinder to her, but I have never really forgiven myself for what I did to her.   Maybe now is that time. 

For finally loving me.

*This beautiful photograph of my twenty year old self was taken by my dear and talented friend, Vickie Johnson Bradshaw on a trip we took to Panama City.*

Chasing Rabbits

On Tuesday, we got the greatest news!  I got a reprieve from all these cancer screenings.  Six whole months of freedom.  The longest spell yet.

But for some reason, on Wednesday, I tumbled down the rabbit's hole.  My soul carried me to a dark, mouldy warren of sadness, anxiety and pain.  I suffered dreams from my past about the abuse my grandparents shaped me with.  I was tortured by fears of my ex-husband.  I checked every mole for signs of betrayal.

I was profoundly lost.

 

The caul is slowly lifting.  It started yesterday afternoon.  I'm clawing my way back to the open air.

Perhaps when the weight lifted off from all the cancer screenings, I collapsed from sheer exhaustion.  The pappies have been quietly waiting for me, leaning over the edge, wagging their tails and hoping for my return.

Tomorrow is my forty-ninth birthday.  Time to surface.  Hang on kids, I'm almost there.

Gratuitous Simone Shot

At long last I have figured out what it takes to get people to view my blog...

Gratuitous shots of Simone.

I've been lying in bed with the flu since yesterday.  It's given me a lot of time to think.  I awoke from a four hour nap thinking of Sean Swarner's talk.  We were telling funny stories on ourselves.  I told the room about when I awakend after the surgery.  The recovery nurse immediately shoved a mirror in my face.  Groggy and still drugged, I looked at the six inch scar encircling my neck and scoffed, "Great.  All I need now is some green skin dye and a couple of neck bolts."  Hud snickered and chimed in, "There's my girl!"  The nurse was horrified.  Panicked, she tried to issue reassuring comments that the doctor did a wonderful job.  I just looked at her and said, "Of course he did.  I know I'm going to be fine."

The real question is, Why in the heck do they do that?  You know, shove a mirror in your face to expose the damage?

It wasn't the first time that had happened to me.  When I was twenty, I was a passenger in a car that went over a guard rail on an off ramp and onto the highway below.  My face and shoulder went through the windshield.  The right side of my face was torn to shreds.  The doctor patiently reattached my ear and stitched together the quarter size hole in my cheek you could see my teeth through.

In the morning, the first nurse came in and asked me how much morphine I needed.  She couldn't believe that I didn't have a massive headache.  I felt sore, but I was fine, really.  Spare me the addictive medications.  Thanks for thinking of me though.  The next nurse entered the room and shoved a giant mirror in my face.  I snatched down.  She tried to put it back up.  "Stop!" I cried, "What are you doing?"  "Showing you the surgery to your face," she replied, puzzled and raised the mirror again.  "Cut it out, will you?" Again I smacked it away.  "Don't you want to see it?"  I looked at her as if she had three heads.  "I figured out this wasn't my look when my father passed out when he saw me..."  She did the same thing every day for a week until my discharge.

I asked one of the operating room nurses at the talk about the mirror.  She replied that most people want to see.  I said, "Nope!  Not the least bit curious.  I figure it's mine whether I like it or not.  I'll have plenty of time to make peace with it when it looks better."

The doctor had done a great job on my face.  Only a scar on my cheek remained into my thirties. It about the circumfrence of my thumb and half the depth.  Laser surgery has removed any lasting effects of it. 

I fingered the six inch scar on my neck this morning as I looked in the mirror. 

And I am at peace with it.