Nutty is Fading and my Heart is Breaking

We spent the weekend in a woodland eco-lodge in the Yorkshire Dales with a new friend who runs a wonderful organic fruit and veg delivery company called Farmaround. I took my pal C along as she is so good with Boyfriend on a Short Fuse and manages his moods very well.

Nutty was in good spirits. I dreaded the long 5 hour car journey as he hates being in the car but it was worth it as he was full of beans on arrival, sniffing around the grass and lying in the sun on the deck.

But he has gone down hill since we returned to London. His tail is down and he seems low-spirited and down-hearted. He is eating well enough which is something, but he is fed-up. His tumour remains bulbous and bleeds heavily at intervals....we follow him around with a cloth or tissues mopping up red droplets, thank goodness for wooden floors.

Today I took him to the homeopathic vet to see if he thought Nutty was in pain. Perhaps pain medication might help? Richard was fairly certain that he wasn't suffering, maybe there was some discomfort for which he prescribed Hypericum, a homeopathic remedy for nerve pain plus some royal jelly, then he gave Nutty a shot of vitamin B12 to give him a boost (wish he'd given me a shot, I'm knackered).

Nutty and I took a cab home and stopped off in Hyde Park for a bit. Being in nature with grass under his little old paws always rejuvenates him, and he did seem to enjoy staggering about in the milky sunshine.

But it's evening now and he is still slow and his tail is low. What I would give to see him scratch on the rug, follow me round and round the sitting room and watch me in the kitchen as I'm pottering about.

Boyfriend on a Short Fuse took him out for his late evening walk and Nutty is now lying in the downstairs loo. He doesn't want to come up. I've just been down to see him and have a chat, told him how much I love him and how much happiness he has brought to us all.

What else can I do?

It will be a lonely old world without my greatest pal.

Nutty's tumour grows bigger

I haven't written for quite a while as my beloved Sheltie Nutty's mouth tumour (it's full horrible title is squamous cell carcinoma) shrank considerably and I was lulled into a sense of security about his long-term prognosis.

But I am sad to report that over the last few weeks the tumour started to grow again, though fortunately outside his mouth instead of inside, as it had previously done. At least he can still drink and he's enjoying his food and his walks. But the tumour is swollen and bulbous and he drips blood everywhere. I carry tissue around, stuffed in my bra, all the time to mop up after him. Yet the vets and my psychic insist he is not in pain. He doesn't seem to be suffering, so I will take their word for it as there is no point pumping him with pain killers unless he needs them.

Talking of medications, Boyfriend-on-a-Short-Fuse has been quite up and down of late. This morning he was in a terrible mood. Was it very dreadful of me to slip half a Valium into his porridge? It seemed to work a treat and today he has been calm and happy. But I wonder if it is illegal to foster drugs on people without their knowledge? The last time I was involved in this sort of terrible activity was 30 years ago in Verbier when some bad men in our skiing party slipped dope into a very dull girl's soup. It cheered her up no end. Do not try this at home, etc etc.

But back to my beloved Nutty. I'll never give up and I'm keeping up with all his treatments. C recommended he see her healer, who has really helped her, so I'm making an appointment as soon as he can tear himself away from his stall at the Mind Body and Spirit Exhibition. Why someone of his calibre wants to exhibit at that pulsating hell-hole of spiritual shoppers and desperadoes, I have no idea. I speak as a reformed spiritual shopper you understand.

We had a terrible moment in the park with Nutty today. I am trying to exercise a bit as the less exercise I do, the more weight I lose, I'm getting far too skinny. So I was doing a hand stand against a tree and as I kicked up I knocked Nutty's jaw. He was right behind me but I had not seen him. He cried out, a terrible whimpering, all the more terrible as he is so stoic and that is the first time I have ever heard him cry. I came down straightaway and to my horror, he was shying away, his mouth a mass of blood. His tumour had split open and a piece of it was hanging from his mouth....

Can anything be more terrible than hurting an innocent creature? Why didn't I look behind me? If only I could have gone back in time and checked. We all walked home feeling dreadful but Nutty, tough little soldier that he is, seemed to buck up. When we got home he polished off a plate of fresh chicken and seemed no worse for his ordeal.

10 hours later the wound now looks as it did before, a black and bloody mess, but it is not bleeding and he seems in good spirits. Click clacking around the flat on his little white fluffy paws as he follows me around.

And so we all soldier on. Please pray for my lovely old boy who has never had a bad thought in his life and is so kind to all dogs and people. Even when the Bichons gobble his food he is easy-going and equable. `C'est la vie', he seems to say as he staggers away and leaves them to it.

A Long Lost Aunt Invites Me to the Savoy For a Drink

It was quite a surprise to get a call from Teflon Dad yesterday, to tell me that he is staying at the Savoy with my stepmother and his sister Pam, who is on a flying visit from Vancouver. Would I, together with Eco Brother like to join them for a drink at the American Bar at 5pm sharp?

Well of course!

I know very little about aunt Pam, or New Aunt, as I shall call her from now on, as my father, being historically Teflon coated has never been very keen on his sisters (he has loads and they are all quite mad). Over the years I have pieced together various bits of information to get a vague picture of them all. He has always been slightly keener on New Aunt than any of the others and as my stepmother has forged a close friendship with her, they have become quite close.

Eco Brother and I both convene in the lobby, agreeing that we usually prefer to avoid the West End on a Saturday evening. I would have added, `it's a bit too tunnel and bridges for me', but Eco Brother is an anarchist and might find that a bit too snobbish. But somewhere in his water I know he agrees with me.

It is certainly very hectic in the American bar, it's packed with all sorts, mainly tourists I imagine. Who else could face paying 30 quid for a glass of fizz? There is a choice of 27 champagnes served by the glass but mindful of Teflon Dad's horrendous bill I went for the house fizz, Louis Roederer.

New Aunt was a delight. She was celebrating her 70th birthday and like Teflon Dad looks very good for her age and is blessed with good, unlined skin. She was very easy to chat to and I could see was excited to meet her new niece and nephew for the first time. It's always so lovely to discover an amenable new rello, especially as you get older.

I was eagerly looking for familial similarities and she and Teflon Dad did look quite similar. They both had large square heads, steely blue eyes and strong jaws. Teflon Dad is as strong as an ox and New Aunt had the same robust quality. But they are essentially good eggs, decent and kind people.

My family are quite puritanical (they are Roundheads not Cavaliers) so I was disappointed they did not choose something from the famous cocktail list, which looked incredibly tempting. Eco Brother (definitely a Digger, to continue with the Civil War analogies) said he had a glass of wine the night before so didn't think he should have anothe one quite so soon afterwards so instead opted for a cup of tea, as did New Aunt. Teflon Dad had several G and T's (with Bombay Gin) and Stepmother had several glasses of white wine.

We all had a very jolly time indeed, despite fierce rows about Lady Thatcher (Eco Brother typically anti, Teflon Dad and me pro and New Aunt and Stepmother pretty keen too). What did poor Eco Brother do to be born into such a family of right wing capitalists?

As we were leaving the bar, Eco Brother gets into conversation with the waiter about the olives on the table. `Will you be able to give them to another customer or will they be thrown away?' The waiter predictably says they will be thrown away, at which Eco Brother and I shudder with the horror of Food Waste. I hastily pack up the biscuits that came with the tea and he pulls out an old plastic bag from his grubby rucksack and politely but firmly suggests that the waiter to tip the olives into it. The waiter looks quite aghast, but there is nothing he can really do. Eco Brother, for all his anarchist ways, is it must be remembered, son of Teflon Dad and a long line of Alpha people who are used to getting their way.

Afterwards, Eco Brother zoomed back to Notting Hill on his bike with his olives, and I went upstairs to check out the family's luxurious suite. Oh what heaven. I stayed at the Savoy years ago when it was rather moth-eaten, but the rooms are so much more comfortable now. Huge beds, elegant parquet flooring and a stunning view over the misty grey river and the London Eye. Truly I was a pig in clover.

We stayed up, chatting away till about 9pm before I called it a day. The emphasis is more on alcohol than food in my family so I was pretty starved. Poor stepmother has no appetite because of this wretched cancer. The morphine keeps her going and relieves the pain but she is so weak and hugging her goodbye was like hugging a bag of bones. Her mind is razor sharp and if you didn't know, you might well think there was nothing wrong at all.

But poor Teflon Dad is quietly devastated. But what can you do? What can you say? We talked about how she was feeling, how good the Macmillan nurses are... I'm glad we can discuss her cancer quite openly. It would be worse to push it under the table.

Life is so fleeting and so much time is spent worrying about stuff that in the long run is of no importance. She has loved my father for 35 years but they have only been married 3 years, when he finally realised how much he cared for her. Until then he had been busy at work and taking her for granted and playing the field.

It's ironic that it is only when he finally realises how much he loves her that he must face up to losing her.

A Mini-Break In Deepest Darkest Norfolk

We are currently in deepest north Norfolk, renting a lovely cottage in Cley on Sea. I usually go for ultra modern houses, (in my dreams I would inhabit a bright white cube with nothing in it but  a bed and a table for my laptop, my only other essential, a kettle, would be hidden in a secret cupboard).

So this 17th century cottage is a departure from the norm as it has quite small rooms and low ceilings, but it has been sympathetically modernised, as they say, and is painted in a daring Farrow and Ball palette.

I once painted my flat red on the advice of my feng shui consultant and occasional boyfriend, in an attempt to boost my career and everything else. It may have worked, I certainly had more commissions and was busier, but I am not a red person at all. I like misty blues and white and that's about it. This cottage has dark grey floorboards and daring mauve and dark brown walls, which sounds absolutely dreadful but is actually rather chic. It also has an updated 50's kitchen with marmoleum lino flooring which is an exact replica of kitchen flooring from the Festival of Britain.

Why do these sort of details lodge themselves in my holey brain when so much else of real value is forgotten?

Of course the dogs absolutely love being in the country (this is real country unlike Guildford, which as a surburban gel is my usual idea of country). As soon as they leapt out of the car they were rolling around the garden. I feel bad for keeping them cooped up in London. Yes they are walked by long-suffering Boyfriend on a Short Fuse 3 times a day, but it's not the same as being able to go outside through an open door from the kitchen at any time.

It is so peaceful. No traffic noise, no planes, no shouty people (apart from Boyfriend on a Short Fuse of course). Our little garden is quite secluded and overlooks a church. It is so serene.

Nutty goes from strength to strength. His tumour continues to shrink and he is able to eat and drink by himself. Truly it is a miracle.

Boyfriend on a Short Fuse absolutely loves it here too. He is researching PrimeLocation, as I write for cottages in the area. But I don't know.... though I love it here he is not at his best away from home as the change of scene can stress him out. He veers between being calm and relaxed to being irrascible and shouty.
He has enough Valium for a few more days, but what will he do when it runs out? His doctor refuses to give him anymore so I shall just have to resort to Dodgy Davey from EasyMedz on the Internet.

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This is an excerpt from my new book, Letting Go of the Glitz, one woman's struggle to live the simple life in Chelsea, just out in paperback and available from Amazon and about 3 bookshops.

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's Tumour Is Getting Smaller!

I hardly dare think, say or write this, but Boyfriend on a Short Fuse and I have both noticed that Nutty's tumour has shrunk by half.

Am I hallucinating?

But it really is smaller! It isn't bleeding any more and the horrible pus/mucus surrounding it has disappeared. He has a great appetite, eats as much poached chicken as I can feed him and has just polished off some lightly-cooked Alaskan salmon.

I am a great believer in miracles, in `making the impossible possible' (as our latest Buddhist campaign puts it), and now, it seems, I have proof of this.

After all, the word miracle wouldn't exist if humanity hadn't witnessed a few of them.

But I am determined not to get too effusive and Pollyanna-like about it all. As always, I take it day by day.

When Nutty was looking bad last week I was so desperate I prayed to Archangel Ariel (the archangel who heals and protects animals). The next day I noticed an improvement.

So the whole household now has a spring in it's step.

It's been a good day on all fronts. I finished editing an article for the Sunday Telegraph magazine, Stella, which should be out in a few weeks.
Then I bought a perfect dress that I'd been slathering over when it was in a shop window round the corner. Most unusually, I put it on and it fitted like a glove. It is a knee length, mid/navy blue woolen dress with a fitted top and a flared skirt. I am thinking it will be a perfect ensemble for funerals as well as drinks parties (I go to more of the former these days).

A good funeral outfit is so important. As a femme du certain age one can't reveal too much flesh or wear anything too bright or tight. However this dress is tight but because it is in demure navy blue it looks modest without being very modest at all.

I Love My Dog and my Dog Loves Me

I have just fed Nutty his dinner of lightly poached organic chicken (from M and S, I pray it is not halal - fifty percent of lamb is now halal in the UK, so under the cosh of Muslims have we become).

Talking of beastly halal, listen to this. At Christmas I met up with an old flatmate who I hadn't seen for over twenty years and we hit it off straight away, it was just like old times. We were chalet girls together in Crans Montana and had a wonderful time. We were both too lazy to ski and spent all day (after finishing our very cursory domestic duties) in the local patisserie, gorging on cakes and endless creamy cappuchinos. Result was we both staggered back to Blighty having put on a stone and bursting out of our cords. She married an old Etonian Welsh sheepfarmer and disappeared to a place called Mould in North Wales and I never saw her again. Neither of us were great at staying in touch, besides she disapproved of my decidely non-Etonian fiance (a good natured but socially insecure Geordie). But it was lovely, none the less, to reconnect with her and her lovely husband.

Now I have nothing against farming, but when her hitherto lovely husband said with a cold shrill laugh that he sold off his old ewes (knackered presumably after enduring endless births and having their lambs stripped away from them, again and again) to the halal abbatoir "they pay us really well", haw haw, " so why bloody not!" I inwardly shuddered.

My pal had insisted Boyfriend on a Short Fuse and I stay with them on the halal farm in Mould but I knew I never would. I mean, where is his loyalty to his stock? I guess I am very bourgeois, but where is the common decency it it? How desperate can they be for money that they sell these old girls off to some wretched abbatoir where they do not even get stunned before having their throats cut?

Poor old Teflon-dad is completely gutted because he has to close one of his factories in Surrey (which his father opened in the 1930's) because it has been losing two million pounds a year. But he has kept the place open for years, solely out of loyalty to his hard-working workforce who have stuck with him through thick and thin. Many other bosses would, and have, relocated to China or wherever the running costs are cheaper, but he refused to do this.

I am so proud to have him as a father, just imagine having my pal's husband as a rello? Thank God for great mercies, is all I can say.

I prayed to Francis of Assisi and Archangel Ariel, the patron saint of animals last week, and I must report that Nutty has been doing very well ever since. Part of me still holds out for a spectacular remission, or just for his mouth tumour to shrink a bit or not get any bigger. As it is, he is in fine fettle, eating like a trouper, taking his medicines and being his usual loving, sweet-natured, stoic self. We are so lucky to have this extra time with him to spoil him and show him our love.

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