Someone on Facebook posted this photo and I immediately recognized it.
It’s me—on the inside. This is how I’ve been feeling for a week or more. Frustrated, angry, impatient, tired, emotional, fed up, volatile, cranky, stressed, wanting to be alone, needing company—there’s no pleasing me.
While I recognize the need and the benefits of emotional stability, the energies, the sleep-deprivation from worry over Morgan’s lymphoma situation, feeling a cold coming on, (which I thankfully gave the bum’s rush) the frustration of sending out countless résumés month after month and getting next to zero interviews for my efforts… it’s all weighty stuff—and to top it all off, the snowbirds are back in town.
It takes a lot of energy to remain positive and upbeat when negativity clings so closely.
Morgan’s lymph glands swelled up quickly on Sunday so I see he is not responding well to the same chemo drugs that worked so well the first time and has obviously built up a resistance. I whisked him off to the oncologist yesterday. The doctor concurred and she switched to a different protocol.
The blood work was normal so they administered the Asparaginase (Elspar) chemo drug, which is derived from a natural source so as an appetizer they gave him a Benadryl shot to preclude an allergic reaction.
If we had copious amounts of cash we could add accupuncture and massages to the regimen, among other things.
Despite the swollen lymph nodes, however, it’s interesting that Morgan is feeling better than he was. He’s more alert, sleeping through the night, he’s actually agreeing to some short walks, and he enjoyed his stick-fetching in the lake last week.
He’s nabbing his toys out of the pool and teasing me, and has a voracious appetite. He now gets 4 small, high-protein meals of home-made beef-vegetable stew a day loaded with all manner of supplements, oils and detoxifiers like essiac tea and bentonite clay.
Alternately each morning we add beef heart/liver or sardines to the stew. Making stew in the slow cooker every week and shopping for food and supplements keeps me busier than it once did. Vet visits take a good 4 hours including driving to and from the city.
Several times a day, on an empty stomach he’s getting MSM water and colloidal silver with a little organic beef broth. I’m convinced dogs don’t have taste buds, just an acute sense of smell because this MSM water is a sulfur solution and tastes bloody awful, but he slurps it all down with gusto every time because the beef broth smells so good. I give him as much as he’ll drink, which is still much less than the recommended human dosage.
We’re down to one Prednisone a day for two more days so I’m hoping the muscle atrophy in his hind legs will at least partially reverse soon. We’re sliding a rubber mat under his hind feet while lying down so that when he gets up he can get a grip on the tile floor. Otherwise his legs go in all directions and it’s most upsetting to me when he can’t get up. Morgan usually has to be lifted in and out of the truck, however, as he won’t attempt a leap because he knows he could fall.
Swimming is supposed to be good therapy for muscle wasting so we’ll keep up the thirty minute workouts, throwing the stick fairly close to shore so he doesn’t get too tired.
The lakes, at their coldest in the ‘winter’ months here are 60-ish degrees F and since Morgan is a hunting dog with partially webbed feet, he also has the undercoat to protect him from chilly water. If he starts to shiver he gets toweled off and it’s home we go.
His puffy coat belies the fact that his muscles are diminished and it’s soft and thick so that’s a good thing. Although he has lost weight with that muscle mass, he is not thin in the sense that his ribs are prominent, so the feeding regimen will stay.
On every visit to the vet we see dogs in worse shape than Morgan, so we’re not in such a bad place. All I ask for is time until the new energies burst forth and we can eradicate disease and suffering.
Morgan thinks life is pretty darn good. With four meals a day and snacks and a lot of love—that’s really all it takes to make a Golden Retriever happy in middle age, and I now know why I couldn’t get a job. THIS is my job—for the time being.