When I first met my wife she warned me
that she had dogs. No problem, I like animals. ..but I may have been
too distracted to focus on the operative word, 'warn'.
Then I was introduced to Tasha and
Nakita. My experience with pets up to this point had been a revolving
door of disposable hamsters and a couple of chubby cats, and now I'm
facing down two very big, very scary Huskies who are staring me down while trying to figure
out exactly why this skinny little white boy was in their home.
I had to learn fast how to handle big
dogs and made some very notable mistakes along the way, but I quickly
came to love the both of them. Soon I wrestling them
into snowbanks and had persuaded them, for the most part, not to
feast upon my pale, soft flesh. Nakita was even the first dog to ever smile at me, which is a hard thing to describe unless you've seen it.
Tasha died a month before my doctor noticed a problem on the x-ray and scheduled a biopsy.
She was sixteen and it was simply her time. A fighter until the
end it took four people and three muzzles to keep her from taking a
chunk out of vet, all while under heavy sedation. Also, my wife
wrecked the car that month. Suddenly our lives had become a country song.
By this time, Natika was pushing
fourteen. A little grayer around the nose and definitely slowing
down, but still going strong.
The hardest time of the
whole cancer ordeal was those first few months. The first biopsy took
place at the beginning of December, but came back inconclusive so
they scheduled another one. It being the Holiday Season, that didn't
happen until just after New Years. Then during the second procedure
some idiot radiologist assistant offhandedly tells me, 'its probably
lymphoma'. We were left with that dangling over our heads for a month until the beginning of February when I finally got to see an
oncologist. I started chemotherapy the very next day.
Needless to say, January was pretty
bleak, but I do have one good memory We live at the end of a
cul-du-sac and beyond us is a sliver of woods that spreads out,
leading down to a network of creeks. Those all eventually spill into a two small lakes, the closest of which with the imaginative name of, 'Second Lake'. Now in a straight line,
Second Lake is maybe only a couple of miles from the house, but if
you go down into the woods and follow the creeks it can take hours.
There are lots of different trails, thickets for the dogs to crawl
around in, even train tracks and a horse farm if you know where to
look. Over the years, we spent hundreds of
hours exploring down there. It gave the dogs a chance to be let off their
leads to roam and run around. They got to chase squirrels, rabbits
and deer, but the only animal they ever seemed to catch
were porcupines. The one thing we could never seem
to do was reach Second Lake.
One weekend that January it
was nice and cold, with a fresh layer of snow on the ground. Nakita needed a
good walk and I needed a distraction, so we set out with the express
purpose of getting to Second Lake by going the long way. I think
round trip took us close to five hours, but we did it.
During that hike, I spent a lot of time thinking about possibilities, procedures and
prognosis, but right then, right there in those woods none of it
mattered. Nothing was going to kill me in the next five hours, so I
could concentrate on the walk, the snow the sun and Nakita.
I can't remember which one said it, but
early on one nurse or another asked if we had pets. When I eagerly
started talking about Nakita and the cats, grateful to be talking
about anything else, she responded with, 'oh, you'll have to get rid
of those. They'll bring infections into the house.”
I'd seen similar statements in the
occasional pamphlets and literature I'd read, but bless them all,
none of the other nurses or doctors ever brought it up, even after I
did get a couple of bad fevers. There are certainly some
cancers where any chance of infection is critically dangerous, and I
have no doubt that my parents in-law would have taken in the fuzzy
brood if it had come to that, but in all due respect to that first
nurse ... what an utterly asinine thing to say to a patient.
My wife was in school while I was sick
and I absolutely refused to let her quit, so there were many days
when I was alone in the house. Having the cats and Naktia around gave
me company. They didn't care if I wanted to talk, or not, which is helps
avoid some of those awkward conversations you have with people when
you're seriously ill. The pets were someone to watch TV with, take
naps with, to give a cuddle when I needed it and the cats would even
play board games with me, as long as I was okay playing by their
rules.
What I came to realize was that, sick
or not, they still needed me. I was the guy with the opposable thumbs
who got them their food, stuffed them with treats, played with their toys and scratched their ears. And Nakita still needed her walks.
Around this time, Nakita was starting
into that inevitable decline familiar to anyone with an older dog;
walking a little slower and sleeping longer. She was getting too old
to run away, was never that interested in other dogs and completely
ignored cats and kids. All she really wanted to do was sniff at
things. This made her the perfect dog for someone in my condition and
between February and April we wore a groove into the neighborhood sidewalks, getting the exercise and fresh air I desperately needed
between the long stints stuck in the hospital. She got so
good at the route that I stopped holding her lead most of the time.
I'd just drape it over her back so I could grab it to cross the
street or if we were near a strange dog.
That year, all my interactions with friends
or family had a constant undertone of concern; the closer they were
to me, the more pronounced the feeling. And being alone just gave me too
much time to think. Being with Nakita gave me something that absolutely nobody else could have. She never asked how I was feeling and gave
me something mundane, but necessary to focus on. What she ended up giving me were a few blessed minutes a week when I wasn't sick.
Just like that day in the woods back in
January, I was just some guy taking his dog for a walk.
Last Thursday night, we took Nakita for
her regular walk around the neighborhood. Then after supper she
got a pork-chop bone to chew on and she went to sleep. When she
woke up the next morning, her back hips had completely given out and
she couldn't stand anymore. We took her to the vet for the last time
that evening.
It was almost one year to the day of
my last chemotherapy session.
Goodbye my Nakita. I am going to miss that smile.
