Marley -n- Me

May 14, 2017

I would love to tell you that I was a beacon of strength and hope at this precise moment in time.  The reality is that this was me at my worst.  This was my darkest moment on this journey so far.

I decided to lay in bed all day on Mother’s Day and binge watch the new Anne of Green Gables series on Netflix/Hulu.  Not kidding.  Marley laid with me, of course.  I kept looking at her and crying.  Her tail would start quickly wagging and she would flatten her ears against her head.  She gave me the eyes of “Momma, don’t cry.  It’s OK.  We’re OK.  This is OK.”  She didn’t know that this was NOT OK.  This is not even CLOSE to being OK.  This is bullshit.  This was not fair.  This was not at all what I envisioned for her.  I tried to sleep.  I tried to not think about it.  I tried to just turn off my brain.  It didn’t work.

She has cancer.  Yay, us.  Yay, her.

Fuck this.  Fuck that.  Fuck the world.  Fuck everything.  Everything sucks.  Why didn’t I fight harder or find another vet who would have amputated her leg instead of FHO?  This is all my fault.  She has cancer left inside her and now she is going to die.  Like now.  More internal struggles and whining and crying ensued.  I questioned everything.  I questioned my abilities and my strength.  I questioned if I was over-doing it…under-doing it.  I questioned if this is what insanity felt like.  Everything whirled around like a tornado in my brain.  Everything just hurts.

My son brought my Mother’s Day present into the bedroom.  Gosh, how pathetic that made me feel.  Not only was my dog dieing of cancer but now I am a shitty Mother who can’t even get out of bed on Mother’s Day to go be with her family.  It was a beautiful heart-shaped ruby necklace, package of double-stuff Oreos and a bag of Haribo gummy bears.  I am only completely embarrassed to admit that after accepting the gift from my son, giving him as much of a heartfelt hug and kiss as I could muster and he ran out of the room to go back outside, I tore into those Oreos and polished off the gummy bears in no time flat.  Stress eating.  Yeah, it always makes you feel worse.

About 9PM that night, I had enough with myself.   I decided to go into work.  I downloaded Dr. Dressler’s Dog Cancer Survival Guide.  I had been feeding Marley a completely ketogenic diet since April and had her on a few supplements.  I printed out the book and put it into four different binders and began to study it.  I evaluated the supplements that I had versus what Dressler recommended.  I purchased more supplements.  I purchased more supplies.  I read more studies and forums (this is where I first found Tri-pawds forums.)  I sent out the emails to a Holistic Vet for consult.  I also sent out an email to Laps of Love in-home Vet in our area to setup a consult for hospice care/pain management but most importantly for her to meet Marley so that she wasn’t a stranger the day we would be making our final loving decision for her. And I went to the store to make Marley a new batch of food.

I was done feeling sorry about this diagnosis.  Either we are kicking cancer’s ass or we are going down swinging.  But regardless, Marley is going to have every fighting chance.

The next week was filled with consults with various vets including Dr. Matt at Integrative Veterinary Services in Howell, Michigan whom I highly recommend.  We went through the regimen Marley was on and he recommended the addition and deletion of a few things.  We discussed her diet and how she was tolerating the supplements.  We had a week post-op check at MSU that week that went good.  No chest mets on her rads.  Her bloodwork was continuing to improve.  Her pneumonia was still there but smaller so we extended the antibiotic a bit further.  We met with Dr. C of Laps of Love and spent a couple hours with her getting to know us.  And I had my cranial sacral/healing touch friend over who taught me how to do basic healing touch therapies on Marley.  All of the pieces were starting to fall into place.

More importantly, Marley started using her leg again!  She was actually weight bearing on it.  Wow, were we all surprised.

I see you smiling!

We decided to take Marley on vacation with us over Memorial Day to go visit my family in Virginia.  This was a trip that we originally were not going on because of Marley, her prognosis and her recovery.  My brother told me to bring her along.

We decided a trip would probably be good for all of us.