13 months and 3 legs

yesterday was the 13 month anniversary of carver's amputation. it has continued to be a difficult week. carver had seemed to be doing worse after the vet's visit. e called me at work yesterday morning with the idea that maybe it was the new drug that was making him weaker. after many calls with the vet, who did some research and said, sure enough some dogs have a reaction of being weaker on the gabapentin. so we decided to take him off the drug until monday, then put him on a very low dose. in the meantime, carver spent yesterday evening crying. unless I was lying right next to him, and sometimes even then, he would cry. the thing with carver, is crying is the new everything. where he once had a myriad of different expressions and ways of communicating, now it is all the same cry, which equally breaks my heart and puts me into a panic. it is like having a newborn baby. at every cry, I try every possible answer-do you want to go out? I shake the harness. offer him his food bowl, and then the water. sit down next to him and pet him. get angry and start telling him to settle down, after an hour of staring at the closed blinds and crying. go into the kitchen and cry myself for being such a jerk and for feeling overwhelmed. carver and i had always been so linked-i could tell by the way his ears tilted what he was looking for. I have been mourning that loss of communication. anyway, we ended up giving him a 1/2 dose of the gabapentin, fearing it was the lack of the new drug, and that he was in pain. he did settle down, as did we. I woke up at midnight with my heart thumping wildly because I could hear him crying in a panicy way. I ran to the living room where he sleeps and could not find him. he had made his way into my office, where a bed for him is by the door. I think it was the closest he could get to me. I had taken out the runner that leads to our bedroom for a party we had, and had removed the bed-he has not slept in there with us in months, and did not think to replace it. I quickly got dressed and took him out where he peeded, then ran around the yard at a frantic pace until he pooped some. we came in, he to his bed in the living room. I set the alarm on my cell phone and curled up on the couch to be near him in case he needed me again.

I had a longish day today, and had carver's friend l come to just sit with him for a couple of hours. I have grown very protective of him, and am having a difficult time trusting anyone to take care of him, but he loves l and she loves him, and I wanted him to have some company. she left me a message at 4 saying he was doing well, but by the time I got home at 430 he was sitting in my room again, panting like crazy-he really needed to go out. I fed him when we got in, gave him derramaxx & tramadol, and sat next to him on the floor, where I remain. carver, after panting awhile, is now asleep, snoring away, pressed up against me.

we did manage to get an appointment with the pain specialist on friday, which, while I am not exactly looking forward to it, and grateful to have. I am hoping that we both find a way to control carver's pain and make him as comfortable as possible, and to gain some clarity as to where he is at, some sense of how he is feeling, some sense of something. I feel like I know very little and yet have to make all these decisions. I feel totally helpless and desperate to gain some sense of control, which is like trying to put a rope around water. I want to be able to put all of this anxiety and fear aside and just be with him. truth is I want him to get better or I want him to die peacefully in his sleep. thats not to say I don't want him right here, right now, by my side. I am just terrified at having to make any decisions for him.

stress and fear

truth is, carver isn't doing well. I had convinced myself that the new pain meds (gabapentin) that he has been on, along with the tramadol & derramaxx, had been managing his pain, since he seems to be resting comfortably inside. but having spent 3 days at home with him, I cannot deny his total lack of wanting to walk at all, and that that means he remains in pain. he has a tough time getting himself up. he heads to the door with a lot of enthusiasm, but once we get down the stairs he does only what he needs to then wants to go back in. i have spent the last couple of days online, researching other meds, driving my vets crazy with emails, afraid to tell them the whole truth in fear they will say that "it is time", when i feel deep in my gut that it is not. but I am beginning to realize if he stays the way he is now, that that time will be soon. I have been very anti vet office and very anti testing for a while now, but have decided to go see a specialist at Angell memorial, whose specialty is pain management. dr. Moses was recommended by my home visit vets. she has been on here & now, on npr, and is one of the only vets in the country doing this work. and she is right up the street. so, I have a call out to her office (they are closed today) and now that the decision has been made, can't wait to get an appointment. I just want so much much for carver to be comfortable, and to be able to walk some, to enjoy his time outside, to enjoy his final months. I feel a little bit more calmer, having admitted to my vets the whole truth, really to having admitted the whole truth to myself, and to have taken some action, the most I can do today. but still, I am terrified. what if Dr. Moses says there is nothing she can do? what if this appointment, tests & treatments are more than we can afford? I guess I finally came to the realization that the not knowing is killing me, my anxiety levels are so ramped up that i can't concentrate. so knowing, in any light, will be better than this constant worry, the relentless questioning.

happy valentines day!

arthritis

you know the seven stages of dealing with death? I have spent a good part of today in anger, and a better part of it trying to figure out why. the home visit vets came yesterday to look at carver-strong, wonderful doctors who treat both carver, e and i with honesty and kindness. I asked them to come after noticing that carver was experiencing a definite lessening of mobility over the past week or so. I thought it was the cold and ice at first, and maybe that was a part of it. but we began to notice that carver held his tail firmly down and close to his body. and then it became clear that he was having a more difficult time getting up from lying down. he becomes more clingy when in pain, crying unless I am sitting next to him on the ground, with my arm around him. I made the appointment on friday for monday. sunday went o.k., but monday morning when we went out for a walk he got outside, sniffed the air, considered the stairs, then turned around to go back in.

the appointment was good, I guess, in that carver looked in some ways better than the vets had expected. I knew by the questions the vets asked at the beginning that they were looking for signs of carver declining, for signs that the cancer has spread to his lungs, etc. But she said his lungs sounded the same as they did 3 months ago, not perfect, but not worse. she felt along his spine, and when you reach a specific area on his lower back it is clear that he is in serious pain. a new drug, gabapentin was prescribed, along with intermittently upping his derramaxx, and continuing to give him a full 3x daily dose of tramadol, which we had upped from 2x daily when he began to exhibit more pain. the vets talked with e and I about judging his pain level, to help keep track of how he is doing, and how to know when he is having more bad days then good. which, of course, leads to the discussion that i have been having in my own mind for months now, about the end. I first contacted these home visit vets over the summer for the purpose of preparing myself for the possibility of carver'seuthanasia, which i want to be done at home. I wanted to have all the information ready so I did not have to figure it all out in a more difficult time. I feel like for months I have been preparing myself for this reality, all the while secretly praying that carver goes on his own, peacefully, so i am not faced with that decision. but basically there is no preparation for such things. I found the wind knocked out of me as I sat in cvs waiting for carver's new prescription to be filled. there is something about the new drug, which stops the brain from registering pain, rather than actually helping the source, that makes me realize we are really moving towards hospicing carver, rather than healing him. I have never had any delusions about him getting better, knowing that the cancer is usually aggressive, and knowing his age, the statistics etc. we went into this, the surgery, as a way of relieving him of his pain and allowing him to live out his last days with as much joy and grace as he could, and we truly have done that, and have been blessed with so much time. but I think the time has lulled me into a strange complacency, just going from day to day, not really holding the whole truth. I think in some ways this was good, for it allowed me the luxury of being with carver as girl and dog. But I do know that the reason i have not posted much in these past months has been a desperate need to not face this, to avoid being in this pain. and after yesterday, after carver's appointment, the pain of it all seems unavoidable.

so, about the anger. I found myself feeling angry that it is arthritis that is going to probably get him, after his having been able to fight off the cancer. this seems just stupid to me somehow, although when I think of it it is probably something to be grateful for, arthritis hopefully being less painful than cancer. I found myself feeling angry towards the vets, for bringing up the discussion of having to make a decision around his death, even though that is why I brought them there, and they did it with compassion, honesty and a directness that made the discussion possible. I felt strangely angry at e, just for being there and being witness to the whole thing, for being invested, a part of things, having an opinion. I fought off the urge to take carver under my arm (impossible) and run off with him, just the two of us. I realized today that on some level carver's death feels very private to me. e is a wonderful mom to carver, and he loves her with such depth and joy. but for many years it was just c and me. i remember holding him in my arms for the first time in vermont. that first night, when I was sleeping on the floor of corey's moms apartment, carver in my arms because he howled if left alone, i whispered into his ear that i was so happy to have him in my life, that i would do the best I could to take care of him, and to give him the best life that I could. he was my constant companion, taking three hour walks to the arboretum, endless summer evenings at the pond. it was through carver that I healed from both my father's death and from a heartbreak that followed a year later. It was through carver that I made some of my dearest friends, and made jp truly my community, my home. I learned how to talk to strangers through carver, and how to expect the best from people. he dragged me out of the house every morning and gave me something to come home to, long before I had found love of my own. he was my love.

I have learned to share that love with others, and to share him. and now I will learn to share his death. when i lost my father, i was the only member of my family to be alone, without a partner. I felt so alone in grief, but in some ways it seemed easier to me, to not have to worry about someone else's feelings. carver and I began this journey just the two of us, and there is a part of me that feels protective of that closeness, but really I know I am just being protective of myself. it is harder to deny his pain, or my own for that matter, when there is someone to witness it. but the mistake I made in my father's death was that by not sharing my grief with others, I was denying their own in a way. isolating myself in my own grief kept me from feeling anyone else's pain. many people mourned the loss of my father, as they will carver, e especially. carver loves her in a grand way, tail loudly thumping when she comes home. he has come to know peace only when all three of us are together. we will face his death together, and together we will mourn. learning to let others in is one of the greatest gifts that having carver has taught me, among so many others.

snow day

it never stopped snowing this weekend!

carver stuck by me while I shoveled, helping me with his nose.


I shoveled out a path all around the house, but he insists on walking in the snowbank.


the action of carver eating snow is too fast to capture on film!

new year

waking up

the time between thanksgiving and new years went by in a blur. e's family came to our home for both thanksgiving and christmas so we did not have to leave carver's side and he could be apart of the celebration. although my birth family is spread all over the country, my chosen one is close. carver has been such a big part of my sense of family for over 13 years now, so I was very happy to have us all together in our home. now we are enjoying the quiet after the holidays. I am home much more now, work having slowed down, and carver is happy for the company. every evening after our walk I spend some time lying on his bed with the length of him snuggled up close.

we live in boston, and the cold and the snow and the darkness have brought me back to that time after carver's surgery. it was such a scary time for all of us. i will never forget carver crying the whole night through when he first came home from the hospital. the terror of getting him down the stairs for the first time using a towel as a sling. his first shaky steps on three legs in the snow. now days carver can leap through the snow banks like a dolphin, although his arthritis keeps our walks very close to home, most days just walking around ours and our neighbors houses. neighborhood dogs stop by sometimes, which is always a treat. carver still loves to see a pal.

tomorrow is the one year anniversary of carver's surgery. I am blown away at how much time we have had with him, really quality time. his prognosis of surgery with no further treatment was 3-4 months, and I took that to heart. our greatest hope at the time was to have him see the spring. there have been so many times we thought we were close to the end. I remember talking to e about the fact we both felt that he would not see the end of summer. but here we are, a year later, and I can honestly say he is doing well-same old carver, digging for garbage, barking at people on the porch. begging for snacks, occasionally grabbing a branch form the ground and teasing me with it. sweetly liking my hand, sighing when he is lying close. groaning when someone rubs his ears, stretching his legs out when you scratch his feet.

I think the hardest past of this year, other than the fear and the grief of his early diagnosis, was the learning to live with the not knowing. I spent so many months seeing him as dying. it took a long time to really just be able to see him as carver. i still have moments of being overwhelmed by this, but truly none of us really know much of what will happen. If I could offer anything to anyone who is going through this now, or something similar, it would be to remind them that we really do not know, and neither does your vet or the statistics. every dog is different. in that, all we can do is love our dogs as much as possible, enjoy them and your time together.
that and get a second opinion. and listen to your heart and your dog. had we listened to the first vet, who told us we should put carver down within a week or two, we would have lost all of this time with him. I know we have been lucky, that so many other dogs have not. I have a neighbor whose dog died a few weeks after having chemo, who admitted to me that she has moments of asking herself why carver and not her dog. I do not have any answers but know I would feel the same way. we have no way of knowing. I live with the fact that the end is still coming, and that there will be a lot more to face in the coming days, months years? who knows, but it is somewhere out there in the future.

but the one thing that I DO know is that we have today. I took the day off to get caught up with the details of life, laundry, dishes, email, but a big part of the joy of four days off is knowing I have such a good stretch of time with carver. even sitting in the kitchen with carver asleep in the next room I can hear him sigh, and I know a part of his contentment is having me home. and a big part of my contentment is knowing he is in the other room, head on a pillow, body curled up and relaxed.


yawn

thanksgiving

a lot to be thankful for this november, like autumn days sitting on the porch with carver.


carver had his 10 month anniversary of his surgery last week-my miracle pup. right now he is lying asleep on the couch, sandwiched between e and me. We are celebrating thanksgiving at our house this year, so carver can be apart of the festivities. e's family is coming, as well as our friend tracy, and our pals corey & felix from vermont. I got carver from a dog wardon on vermont when I was living with corey in the northeast kingdom. I had come up for the birth of felix, stayed for a month, and came home with a baby of my own. Now felix is 13, taller than me, voice already deepened, and here is carver, 13 as well, old man. he was a fat puppy then, 8 weeks old, his belly big and warm and full of worms, the poor thing. He was the last of his litter, and was being kept alone in a pen in the yard. when we went to see him, the neighbor came by to complain about all the howling. I fell deeply in love at first sight. I was to be in vermont for a couple more days-carver and I moved over to corey's moms house, where dogs were allowed, and slept on the floor with him, curled up. I still have the pictures a friend took the first day I brought him home on my fridge. he was all ears then. I was unemployed, living off the end of my savings and with help from my sister. I loved that fall, spending all day out walking with carver, who would go and go and go until he fell asleep, instantly in a heap, where ever we happened to be. I used to love carrying him home, that warm bundle, those giant ears. our walks are so different now. I was excited just to get up and down parkton today, a good walk, not too many breaks to rest in neighbors yards-carver still resting where ever he sees fit. I still marvel at him. he still lives for a leaf pile, the deeper the better. still full of curiosity. still the determination to grab any and every snack he spots on the road. I marvel at his determination, his willingness to go slow, and to rest. his willingness to keep going, each shaky step. so much to be thankful for. 10 months of gratitude, 13 years of it.

i received a cheery email from a friend today-here is the line that made me smile
"Yesterday morning and this morning, as I was driving along Jamaica Way to the gym, I noticed a bundle of warm clothing walking a magnificent dog. And it was YOU!"