Get a dog, they'll break your heart.
but that's the price of love.
Last Sunday Beesly shits blood, and my adrenaline spikes, certain something is terribly wrong. “I’ll call the vet tomorrow,” I say, petting Halpert’s neck and feeling a lump near his throat, add, “for both of them actually. Feel this, does it feel swollen to you?”
Monday afternoon we pile into the Subaru, four anxious bodies, and make our way to the clinic. The doctor determines Beesly’s digestive tract has been stripped of the good bacteria from a recent GI bug and subsequent weeks eating a bland diet. He prescribes a probiotic and special dog food. He tells us that Halpert’s swollen lymph nodes could just be his body reacting to him ingesting something suspicious or foreign—bunny poop, a chunk of wood, a piece of shrapnel from a Nylabone—all things Halpert has definitely consumed in recent weeks. “But just in case it’s something more, we’ll collect a specimen,” he says as he sticks a needle into Halpert’s right lymph node then his left. My gut knows better, knew the minute I felt the lumps that it was something more, and the voicemail we finally receive Friday afternoon confirms it—cancer.
It is a terrible thing to get delivered unfortunate news at the end of a business day, especially on Friday when people have checked out, stopped answering the calls in the final half-hour. I am guilty of this too. I slam my laptop shut just before 4:00 with a TGIF flair, not opening it again until Monday morning. Perhaps it is karma, the reason I am forced to wait an entire weekend to ask my fury of questions.
I do what I can, spring into action, and leave a message with the oncologist the vet had referred us to while my voice is still tight with tears. I break down in sobs as I type a message to the rehab specialist in the Twin Cities, cancelling the series of upcoming appointments that had been made for Halpert’s shoulder and elbow injuries. Who knew I’d be so distraught about the loss of those weekly 5 hour round trip visits, who knew I’d yearn for the time when my main concern was the prospect of my rambunctious Rottweiler sporting a hobble vest for months?
I avoid going down an internet rabbit hole on canine large cell lymphoma, only allow myself to read the article in the e-mail the vet sent. My anxiety is screaming, wants desperately to get caught up in Reddit threads. “There is no sense in getting worked up about the unknown just yet,” my voice of reason says. “But don’t you want to prepare for every outcome,” my anxiety argues back. I look at Halpert and try to determine if anything has changed since last weekend. Does he look bigger? The scale at the vet says he has gained 5 pounds since the fall. Is it from tumors taking over his body? Can you visibly see his swollen lymph nodes hiding in the folds of his neck?
I listen to the vet’s voicemail again and again, trying to glean information from his intonation, the pauses in his breathing—trying to read between the lines. The call starts with a solid two seconds of silence before he deeply inhales and states his name, as if he had to give himself a mental pep talk before saying such sad news. The same silence is repeated before he utters the words unfortunately it is cancer of the lymph nodes—”Did he sound more somber just then,” I ask myself, “or am I reading too far into it?”
He says there is no cure but it is a very treatable cancer. “He emphasized ‘very treatable’, right?”
For best prognosis, we recommend treatment as soon as possible. I nod my head along to the recorded voice. “Yes of course, but what could best prognosis even be when the word preceding best is incurable? How can best and incurable even exist in the same sentence?”
I am distraught, and yet I have dinner planned with a friend. I consider cancelling in the hour between when I listened to the vet’s message and when I am supposed to meet her. I finally decide a distraction might be nice. And it is, briefly, until she tells me of her late Golden Retriever’s throat tumor, the recommendation from the specialist to do chemotherapy then surgery then radiation and then more chemo, how they declined it all but still got nearly 1.5 good years before the end. This would’ve brought more comfort if Halpert was 11 like her dog was when he got his diagnosis and not 5.
Saturday is better because most of the day is already packed with plans made before the diagnosis—a shift at the nursing home, a volunteer event, and an endurance run—and I am too busy to worry much. The weather is beautiful too so we spend the afternoon outdoors. Halpert is happy, romping playfully in the yard, smelling every stick and leaf, and for small moments I can pretend all is fine.
But Sunday brings rain and a dreary, overcast sky. There is nothing to distract my thoughts. I stare at Halpert once again, gauging if anything has changed, if he has new symptoms, trying to glean information from his movements, the pauses in his breathing—trying to read between the lines.
The only way I’ll get through it is if I write through it. It’s too much to handle alone. Thank you for holding space for my grief and for my sweet Halpert.
Thanks for reading! If you would like to support me further, may I suggest sharing Parallel Charts on your social media feeds with the recommendation to subscribe!
❤️