Cancer Is Not a Death Sentence

Just back from Kilburn and 2 hours with the excellent Dr Han, the inscrutable Chinese accupuncturist. Her speciality is to spear your head with small needles which are wired together and attached to an electrical machine to give you tiny electric shocks. It's meant to help with `nerves' and I will let you know if it works tomorrow. I am not feeling very nervy as such but very wired, like my brain could run a marathon. Not a good thing late at night when you are trying to get to sleep.

Nutty is still progressing well. I bought a good chicken for him in Kilburn from a local butcher. I made sure it was British, went to a good school and was not the dreaded halal, these days you just never know. Though who knows if the butcher was telling me what I wanted to hear.... if I had been wearing a headscarf would his reply have been different?)

I was very interested to listen to the latest update from Dr Dressler, the dog cancer expert. He was discussing grief and how when we first have a cancer diagnosis for our dog we immediately think `that's it' and prepare for imminent death. He says;

`You know, it’s interesting when you look at the grieving process: there’s a different form of grief. And there’s interesting form of grief that happens before the event even is experienced. That means that we are anticipating something bad coming up and we start to become sad about it. And this form of grief can be completely overwhelming and incapacitating and many, many times when a guardian receives a dog cancer diagnosis from a Veterinarian, they will start to experience anticipatory grief before anything bad has really happened or anything that’s really significant in terms of the well-being of the dog. So it’s important to realize that in many, many cases we are experiencing grief for something that hasn’t even happened yet. We have abundant time and many cases were we can do so much good, where we can take proactive steps, where we can improve our life quality, where we can get increases in life span, and increases in life quality of our special family member and we don’t yet have to be experiencing the grief that accompanies with the departure of a pet.'

This was exactly my experience. I went into complete meltdown for weeks after Nutty's diagnosis and was a hysterical mess. I cried so much I have no tears left. Raw grief is an emotion I'd never felt before but in a way I'm grateful I've experienced it. It has made me more understanding of what most of us will go through but I hope I never have to go to that dark place again.

Nutty Soldiers On

Both Boyfriend on a Short Fuse and I are still floored with bad colds (bad colds mind, not flu, people often upgrade colds to flu but flu means one is bed-ridden and we are still able to totter about, just).

I am feeling knackered though, and am ignoring my admin mountain in favour of watching old documentaries of Rod Stewart and Britt Ekland on You Tube. Britt was on Piers Morgan last night, still looking good if slightly altered by surgery, but my God she was so beautiful.

Excerpts of a documentary filmed of them both in 1976 takes me back to that blazing hot summer when I was twelve and the misery of surviving a childhood with my own Britt Ekland lookalike Mother. Heavens, no child wants a glamorous mother, it really is a terrible fate. I was studious and skinny, still am, plus ca change.

I never understand people saying that childhood is the best time of your life. I’m much happier at fifty than I was at twelve.

Some things remain unaltered, we had a beautiful fluffy sheltie then too called Tiffany (very seventies name), I don’t remember how she died but I don’t think any of our shelties lived past about twelve, which is why Nutty is doing so well to get to fifteen.

He is soldiering on, brave stoic little chap that he is. He is very doddery and forgetful and even if I have just stroked him he quickly forgets where I am and starts wandering around the flat looking for me. His mouth tumour means he still cannot drink and eating is difficult for him too. I spoon feed him his chicken into his mouth’s good side, it’s not that easy, bits of food fall out onto the floor (quickly hoovered up by the tiny dogs). He dribbles blood, pus and saliva and we have to regularly mop him up. It is undignified for such a clean little dog and he just doesn’t deserve it.

Yet he does not appear to be in pain, he wags his tail when we stroke him and he enjoys his walks at a slow pace, hanging out with and sometimes barking at other dogs.

I am keeping up with his pills and potions – a teaspoon of colloidal silver and seven drops of Dr Regweg homeopathic anti-tumour mix twice a day, a homeopathic pill three times a day, acopops anti cancer pills twice a day (formulated by Dr Dressler, the dog cancer expert), lastly, a shitake mushroom excerpt twice a day. Some of them I can mix in his food, but if he won’t take them that way I open the capsules and mix it up with water that is syringed into his mouth.

It takes time, but I have plenty of time and even more love for my old boy. I will do whatever it takes to keep him going.