Remembering Steve Jobs

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The menagerie.

I am a neuroendocrine cancer survivor who owes a great debt to the inspiration of Steve Jobs for not being stopped by his diagnosis; showing the rest of us that anything is possible.
I am also in debt to the Apple products he created as you can see, which have served a crucial function in building and supporting my blog about Medical Service Dogs.
I use the I-cloud to keep track of our story, How Babe (the Border collie) selected and trained her replacement (the Lassie collie) while herself dying of cancer…all 17,286 photos of us.
None of this would have been possible without your vision, passion, and commitment.
thank you Steve for never giving up!

Link to Steven Jobs giving the commencement address at Stanford University

Jump Up and Live Again

Margaret and Babe in 2010.

Today commemorates the first anniversary since Babe died.  Margaret takes her place at my side, a veteran of one year as a service dog.   Tonight, we are remembering Babe as we look at a giant moon on the horizon, closest than it’s been for nearly 20 years.
There is a tradition among Native American people that one does not speak of the dead in the first year.   After that time, their names are voiced aloud, together with those who have gone before.  These are moments where grief meets praise.   In the Spring those who once walked the earth are acknowledged in their spirit form and through the bonds that connect all things, they intervene.   It is said our ancestors encourage the rains to come, and the plants to grow. When a voice from the people resonates with the Great Unseen we become a channel for healing and unity.
I can’t imagine a more significant time on this planet, when we all might cease our distractions, and speak in one voice to honor the dead, pray for living, and all that are suffering intolerable conditions with restraint and courage.  Stop for a moment and in our hearts reaffirm our deep connectedness.   Open ourselves to grief and praise, sacrifice a clock tic of our good fortune, honoring the still small voice within that guides us on a different path.

Babe shortly before she died.

I have a story to tell you.
Long before Babe got cancer, before the many struggles that looking back, seemed impossible to endure, we attended a ceremony lead by Martin’ Prechtel.  Babe was recovering from an operation. Border collies are so energetic, they can blow out their own kneecaps in a single leap.  I made such a big deal over this thing.  The Bionic Leg, as we referred to it.   A titanium reinforced right hip and knee built to last a lifetime.  God if I only knew.
So Babe’s bionic leg was on the mend, and I had brought her to be in ceremony with Martin’ Prechtel.  It’s unusual for dogs to be included in ceremony.   I don’t remember what I told Martin’; only that he gave the ok after meeting Babe eye to eye.  Unlike her human companion, she knew when to keep her mouth shut, and where to draw the line.

If you have ever been in ceremony with Martin’ Prechtel, you know it’s going to be a long haul.  We were given a list of materials to bring. A young sapling, flowers, some willow for weaving, beeswax, turquoise, shells, cornmeal, red cloth, string, a pocket knife, a blanket, and “happy” water (Not from the grocery outlet).  We sang and prayed and danced and prayed and stood and prayed. We learned how to make prayer ties and other offerings.   Through all of this we were told stories. We learned about the meaning behind them, but more, Martin’ unwound his story of personal holocaust. The story of what happened when his village in Guatemala was attacked, how he crawled under once lush jungle as the bullets flew.   Many he had come to know as family were slaughtered.  The women, the children, the elders, even the chickens. The dogs. “There is a smell you never forget, a mist that smells like rusted rain. The blood of the dying and the dead.” Martin returned to New Mexico for a time, unable to communicate with anyone through his bitterness and grief.   He was the only one left to carry on spiritual teachings of his mentor, the village shaman.  Sounds woke him in the night, visions plagued him, the faces, the singing.   He was being called and he had to choose.  Martin’ found a way to transform his hatred, his unspeakable grief. His people had a ritual for this too. A ceremony honoring the departed, and this was what he had been teaching us.

Some of the things used in ceremony for Babe on her last day.

So here we were dancing and praying and standing and listening, making prayer ties filled with cornmeal hour after hour.  It goes on for days.   “For you life is easy, you just go out and buy food, you go to the nursery and get yourself a potted plant.   We grew everything, and nothing was consumed without honoring that plant or animal for sustaining us.”  He spoke of grief and praise; that they are two sides of the same coin, that you cannot authentically have one without the other.  Grief and praise genuinely felt are not about you, but the way you experience connection to others even though they may be unseen.
There were some two or three hundred of us packed into a gymnasium set against Forest Park.   By now we had constructed a large cradle on which the shape of a simple house had been built from willow.  On it had been woven flowers so that the walls, floor and roof were covered in a thousand varieties of orchid, rose, and most of all our local Rhododendron which comes in so many scents and colors it’s dizzying.  We had constructed a Flowering Mountain.

Always in charge of the sleeping arrangements.

Martin was praying, making his blessings honoring the ancestors, then suddenly grew quiet.  The room fell silent as people tried to hear.   Was it the beginning of another story?  We were asked to lie on our blankets and let one cover the other like a cadaver, completely enclosed.  This took some time until everyone had been entombed.   We were as the dead. Silence but for the lightest of rains.
Babe really got into it.  She actually saw this as my spiritual death, and while I lay covered with red and blue cloth she crawled up to my body, her paws vibrating, and nuzzled under the covers to reach my hand to see if I was still warm.

Long in the tooth, heart of gold.

Then Martin shouted, “Jump up!  Jump up and live again!” Babe leaped from my side and barked.   “Jump up and Live again!”   We were all confused at first.
“Jump up and live again!”
BARK!
“Jump up and live again!”
BARK!
Babe followed Martin’ into the center of the great room and danced.  He was ecstatic.  “See, the dog understands!   WAKE YOURSELVES!  Jump UP and Live Again!”  Babe showing her most excellent teeth, raised up on her hind legs with each bark.  “Do you understand?  Live again.  Live again!”
Bark. BARK!
Some people laughed.  Others cried.
And then Babe made a leap for my right butt cheek and bit me! Later someone said, “Hey. That’s what Mamma dogs do when they have a pup that isn’t fully alive. They’ll bite on the hind end to get it to take a breath.”
Babe barked so joyously that day. She knew when to take a stand. That was the extraordinary soul she was. She got it. She got suffering; she got compassion, the power of being present and being part of.

The ceremony was over.   We were exhausted, we were hoarse.  I looked around and saw people who had entered this room with slumped shoulders and soft mushy voices, slightly unsure in the correctness of their words.  They all seemed taller now, more dignified, more clear.  Was I taller too?
The Flowering Mountain was carried out as we returned to the many places we had traveled from.   This house of flowers, the labor of days by three hundred souls would be taken to a remote place, some place deep in wilderness and left to decay.  A place you might come upon and be unaware, save for the strange sense that Others are watching, an extraordinary hue in the grasses there.  Put your ear to the ground.  You might hear voices.

Consulting with the managing editor of The Collie Report.

So tonight Margaret and I are Remembering Babe and looking at the full moon.   I go inside and flop on the couch like and old fart, to watch TV.  A repeating ticker tape of floating houses and tsunami flotsam; exploding this and exploding that. Goliath ships where they don’t belong, cracked earth and radioactive spinach.
I watch the TV framed by portraits of Babe.   I grumble something under my breath.  Margaret bounds into the living room, nibbles at the threads of my sweater and barks. Was it something I said?

Today I understand grief and praise in a different way.   It’s deeply physical.  The heart is tempered yet made stronger much as steel is tempered under heat and pounding and cold.   I understand why it’s important to honor the dead, whose presence we struggle to make sense of as we distinguish what is palpable versus what we wish were so. There are no direct answers.  The question of life after life, of missing what you believed was that person or entity.   You may find that in your grief you are walling off your heart to anything new.  We wish to extinguish the struggle, the pain and discomfort and so become locked inside ourselves.  But life embraces it all.   The power of ceremony comes from a singular process.  We are asked to go outside of self.  We are asked attend to our deep relatedness to one another, to all things, everywhere.

On the beach where Babe's ashes were poured.

Margaret has brought me a stuffed goose.   She thrusts him onto my lap and his honker bleats.  Mister Goose is one of many possessions Babe passed on while she was still alive.  His tail feathers are gone and he is missing an eye. Margaret rests her long nose on my knee and sighs.  When this doesn’t work she climbs onto the couch, stands over me with that huge mane of hers, shakes it furiously and barks.
Jump up and live again!
Jump up. And live again.

Visiting the home of our ancestors.

Click on any image for a closer look!

Alert! A Viable Treatment For Canine Malignant Histiocytoma

To All:

I recently discovered the following citation while researching an article on Babe, exploring why she lived so much longer than most dogs with her Cancer.  While reviewing Chemotherapy under google scholar, I found this citation referencing breakthrough research done in 1997!

In the nearly two years we were battling this horrible cancer, the diagnosis was always the same: Canine Malignant Histiosarcoma is 100 per cent fatal, and often kills within months of diagnosis.

We were considered fortunate to keep Babe alive and comfortable for a year and ten months.  Throughout Babe’s illness I had not heard of this treatment protocol, nor found evidence on the web.

It’s heartbreaking.  We worked with reputable, leading researchers and chemotherapists in the field, but somehow this was missed.

Its all over the web now.

Click here to see the original study.

You can also do a google search on:

T-Cell Line Tall-104 chemotherapy for Canine Malignant Histiocytosis

This is a hard lesson.
Be Vigilant on behalf of your companion and the ones you love.
We must not be complacent, or surrender to the prevailing views for what is possible and what is not!
Stand Up to Cancer until there is a cure!

Babe T. Border collie’s star on Stand Up To Cancer

Marge and I posted a story on The Collie Report about StanduptoCancer.org.
Recieved this in honor of Babe today. You can visit the original story by clicking above.
Or Visit Stand up to Cancer by clicking below.
Christopher and Margaret RCC.

Chasing Tail in a Well Furnished Rut

It has been painfully obvious that my blog has been stagnate of late.  Now people could say I have every excuse in the world, I mean I ‘m writing this book about an amazing dog I met just when I needed a wake up call, and this amazing adventure ensues called coming back to the living,  I’m all caught up in it, being a central character and all, the one being minded. This dog comes out of nowhere and saves my life, and then, and then I have a seizure, so that we discover she has certain abilities, (but for the issue of training in other matters), and then, and then, I begin to write in journals, I write stories, this blog, a radio broadcast, audio recordings, and then, and then, she dies.

Here I am putting out all this stuff about working dogs and possibility, how mutual salvage even transformation is possible in the company of dogs, and the prime mover dies.

It’s not like this was a surprise, in fact we knew for nearly two years.  This makes the story even more overwhelming to write and communicate, as with the days going on months now since Babe died, I’ve looked back, as I hope you will, and realized what a gift I’ve been given.  I’m not alone either.  There is Margaret the Rough Coat lassie collie, who is at my side as we speak.  Margaret was hand picked by Babe after months looking for a replacement (a legal requirement the minute Babe was diagnosed with the cancer).  We looked at hundreds of dogs, and finally came across Margie.  But what am I telling you all this for? Go and see for yourself.

The point is, I’ve been grieving, and while keeping a personal journal of the goings on, I’ve not had the stomach to share it.  For one thing in the depths of these places I find myself lost. It’s new territory, I’ve not mourned a single soul in my lifetime the way I miss Babe.  Still cannot explain it, really.  I used to here all this stuff about soul mates, but now I don’t laugh. Babe came from a place I can’t explain, fairly damaged herself at the time, and there was an instant connection.  We first met on the tail end of a dog catchers truck the day my old Danny dog died.  We met for sixty seconds, long enough for her to size me up and crawl back into her crate.  But the animal control people kept calling me.
“We have this border collie, you know the one that Dell showed you to draw the neighbor who was poisoning all the neighborhood dogs?  Well she’s still here.  Sorry for your loss”  I’m doing it again.  This story has also already been told.

What bothers me is seeing people coming to my website for the first time and finding all this stuff about connection and real love and service in action, then Wham they get hit with Babe’s online obituary.

Who wants to read a Dead Dog story?

There is so much more to our experience, then and now.  And I know, there are more adventures ahead.  Babe is still the best dog in the world as far as I’m concerned, but Margaret is a close second.  The former lassie collie trainee is now Number One whether she likes it or not.  And she is already in service.  A little bit shaky on escalators and the like, but coming along.  Sometimes I think she is channelling Babe.  Only because Marge has begun to stand up for herself when the cat takes over her bed, and she no longer runs for the broom closet when I go on a rant. She actually sticks around and on occasion, uses that monster nose of hers to set me straight.  We don’t know about the medical part yet.  This is a discovered, not commonly trained ability; often emerging after a dog is two or three years and has personally witnessed a medical crisis.  But as I said Babe picked her, and we went through one hell of a lot of dogs to get there.  I think Babe regretted her choice from time to time, but don’t we all.  What matters is keeping your Word.

This post will stay on the home page, as a way for those of you new and revisiting to experience our story as it occurs, and not how one chapter ended.

Babe's ashes were poured into a creek under Neahkahnie Mountian, at a place just behind her (click to enlarge). I chased a dachshund with a pastry baster on the same spot when I was two.

I don’t know what’s going to happen next, none of us does.  What I do know is that life is abundant with miracles if we are present to recognize them. Usually they occur right under our noses.  It doesn’t feel that way at the moment, yet Babe taught me by her living example to be In the present.  Trust in the Unseen, to be Fearless even when afraid, Love unconditionally, and most of all to suit up, show up and do your job.  Do the next thing.  Thats was all you had to concern yourself with in Babe’s opinion, and she walked her talk. Do the next thing.  Keep your word. Lets get going.  That’s what Babe would say to me now.

UPDATE 9/12/10

Just since writing this post, I have learned that my sister is having yet another biopsy for breast cancer, and my brother has been diagnosed with bladder cancer, which was discovered only a few days ago.  They are both having medical procedures tomorrow.  That makes five individuals out of a family of six, confronted with cancer in their own lives.

If anyone believes that standing up to cancer is not a personal issue, or will not one day become personal, please get your head out of your ass and get a cololonoscopy (if you are over 50)while you are at it.

Become part of the solution.  You will be glad you did.  The life you save may be your own.

At the Gates of the Animal Kingdom

Things could be more tidy around here.

Miller moths wander the kitchen.  Dishes collect in the sink.

Where there was order, it looks like a three year old has had the run of the place.

I haven’t posted about Babe like I said I would.  Going on four  months, and as far as I am concerned She could have died yesterday.  I’ve filled an 11 by 20 inch black sketchbook and I could have said it all on one page, looking at it now.  What is so must be documented, I thought, but what is so changes and trying to describe this you loose your place and somehow everthing occurs as phony.  You can’t or won’t commit a word  to print.

Missing Babe has been different than I expected.  The extra time we had; it doesn’t matter.  It doesn’t make a difference.  That’s how selfish you become.  You only want more.  You were in the presence of  a bodhisattva.  You witnessed miracles, and that’s not enough.  You only want more.

Do you See Me?

I can’t come up with the right words. I put them down anyway.  In a black sketch book that nobody sees, so I can scream out the syllables like a child who draws giant letters then tiny ones because it’s all about making them, you see.

I’ve been reading Amy Temple.  “At the Gates of the Animal Kingdom” Don’t look for the animals.  They are in your head.  Amy makes plenty of space for them.  Her writing, her absolute reduction of feeling and experience brings me peace.

I think about the story I’m trying to tell.  About salvage from illness and insanity, this invisible quicksand taking me down;  how I get to live  because I happened to cross paths with a dog who was also in the shithouse.   They say two sicks’ do not make one well.  I’m alive today because of meeting an untouchable that became my service dog.

I understand what it must be like to be living on the Gulf right now, because the dog and I were covered in tar and flotsam, doing whatever we could to get out of the wake of more oil.  Just when you think you have seen the last of it, this dark ooze comes ashore and finds you, the smell hangs onto your clothes and onto your skin and leaves scars that don’t go away.

You can’t beat the oil alone.  Nobody can, because the oil will always be waiting.  There is no being fixed.  Whatever relief there is comes from climbing outside your self and paying attention to the next thing. The answer might be right in front of you and you might miss it. This is what I tell myself.

Nothing is the Truth.

All that bullshit about show don’t tell.

I need to find it on the page.  Amy takes you to the Gates of the animal kingdom by making a place for you between the words.

So I am reading her, and filtering through all the bullshit, the story I have not let you see that keeps repeating in my mind like a bad rap song, a weight loss mantra beating me crossways and upside the head, as if just doing that is going to make you loose a couple of pounds.

What do you want to know?

How Babe looked so small afterwards?

We bundled her up in red muslin and cedar and a lock of my hair after I took a lock of hers.  I couldn’t get over how perfect she looked, how nobody would know that she had cancer or anything.  Babe’s fur was immaculate, as if she been washing up to prepare the night before.

Because she did know.

I refuse to let go of  the sight of her elegant body body folded into itself and motionless.  Nobody saying anything.  It was like being in somebody else’s church where you don’t know exactly what’s going on but you know something powerful is happening.

I can’t talk about it.

This is the muslin we wraped Babe in. Each of the animals gave up something for the ceremony.

For the last three months I have been floating in nothing.  Like the calm, the silence that deflates a sail.

And then when something has to be done you snap out of it.

Exhausted between runs of forced labor, I lay  on the bed, still with the same covers from when we put Babe down.  I may sit or stand out on the deck, looking after Margaret who mopes and looks west.  I talk in tounges to the frogs, believing that one day I will come around, but missing Babe really occurs as if I am having an attack of the stomach flu.  For the moment there is no pain.  I am in the quiet eye before the next convulsion.

Do you want to know how I remember the last moments?  I remember the euthanasia as going horribly wrong one moment, then like an opera produced by God.

A new thought rises out of the tar pits telling you that something needs to be wrong.   I go over details that have nothing to do with who Babe was or her extraordinary life or the grace she carried with her to the grave.

The grave part. Only a figure of speech.

I cremated her.

Do you want to know how after we put Babe into the back of Dr. Cain’s Jeep all bundled up like a prayer, Margaret chased the car all the way down the driveway to the mainline?

Margaret still sits at the edge of our property on a high place and waits.  She plays with her sticks and then grows silent and looks out to the west, waiting on Babe’s return even though she knows her mother is not coming back.

Still on the lookout.

Babe was like  a mother even though she adopted Margie and later had second thoughts.

But She took responsibility.

Isn’t that what Mothers do?

My Mother would say,  ”Well, I reared you four kids,”  whenever someone challenged her authority over anything about having to do with being a parent.

“I reared you four kids, didn’t  I?”

That was always her answer.  Mom has been dead for years, yet now I find myself saying these words to myself  and I don’t even know why.

I say the words out loud to nobody in particular.  And other stuff, like,  I need a correction just now. Then the frogs begin to croak.

Souls of the departed.

I feel them mostly at the kitchen window, a sudden sharp blow that also brings release.  An ice pick entering somewhere just to the left of my breast bone.

Babe isn't here but I can still smell her.

Babe has Died.

Babe T. Border collie, notable prize winning author, social activist, former editor (annonynoumously) for the New York Times, minder of me, and the Longest Surviving dog of Histiocytic Sarcoma, died this afternoon in her home.  Her family was in attendance.

True to her species, true to her breed, a Saint.  

She never took her eyes off of me.

Dog Day Afternoon

Things are happening so fast.  In my life and with the Dogs.  I write something everyday.  An insight comes (often while smoking furiously on the back porch), something profound to me at the time scribbled on a notecard or on the back of my hand.  Usually these do not see the light of day.  There are other scribbled words, collected en mass, variously edited and not.  Words on my desktop. words on the walls, words kept tucked away in secret places.

It’s time to let them go.  As Babe’s time to move on draws near, I realize that unless you put it out there, nobody will know.

All the things we do as writers, our personal journals and post it notes,  notes to self in a thousand forms.  Words shamelessly exposed then buried.  Words on the voice recorder at 2AM.  Words on the fridge at 2:35AM.  They don’t count unless we let them fly out into the world.

I will deliver them in reverse chronology, as they are transcribed.

Visit any time at Wordofdogjournal.wordpress

Chris

Walking the Walk

Babe, Margie the cat, all of us went for a walk to the top of the hill above the tree farm, where we could see across our dwarf forest to the coast mountains threading their way west.  We All Seemed Well. Today was a simple uphill walk along a heavily rocked path.  The two dogs  melting into one another going off ahead because I forgot to bring my eyeglasses.  Babe was light on her feet, trotting happily, taking in all the smells, measuring air for evidence of the odd squirrel.  We were contented in spite of the dreary skies not to be soaking wet like the other day when we went exploring among the mature trees.   It was meant to be an arboretum, and for a time the trees were tended to but then they were forgotten, so now they have become a maze of tiny clearings separated by overgrowth.  Cloisters in a church dedicated to treeness. An otherwise out of place ponderosa pine next to sub alpine fir, an incense cedar nearby.  Every variety of spruce.  Trees of minute distinction, all odoriferous and easily defined as far as the dogs are concerned.  You could get lost in the arboretum but for a nose.  And me with no glasses.  Days are melting in to one another too, like giant winged trees against fog.  What tells them apart is a sudden rush of air, the sense of a great weight  about to crash in one’s path, unseen, inevitable.

At night Babe lies at my feet as I work, breathing irregularly.  Around the homestead she follows my every move, her feet unsteady so that she lays down the moment I stop.  Sometimes this accompanied with a groan or a sigh.  Time goes by.  I think I am attentive, and then something happens that tells me otherwise. I notice her raising up and looking at things that are not there, taking in scents from other planes. She is not suffering is she?  No.  She tells me when she is in pain. The looking at nothing.  It’s the looking at nothing that scares me.

It has been raining all day.  In the generous silence I think of going upstairs to the room, the best room in the house that was supposed to be my bedroom but I have never slept three.  There is a hum that radiates throughout the mountains at night.  It is the worst kind of sound.  So faint that it goes unnoticed until you stop being busy.  Stop everything.  The TV the garbage disposal, the radio, the phone.   The Hum is waiting.  It lives in the walls, it vibrates the furniture, it resonates in my skull.  When I put a water glass on the bedside table the Hum shifts.  It throbs ever so slightly so I can feel its pulse as I slide the glass.

I come here to be in wildness.  I come All The Way out to Bumfuck Egypt and there is the The Hum, this sinister  presence whose source somewhere in these mountains we have yet to pin down.   It comes from all directions at once, louder inside of a building than out, it comes at you as if from out of the earth itself, but this is a foreign, unnatural thing.  The Hum is loudest upstairs at night.  So I don’t go up there.  I have never slept up there.

Tonight I think, God, it’s been two months, I should at least try out the bedroom, and mindlessly navigate the old stairs that wind around so that you are directly overhead the living room below.  Before I know it the cat and then the dogs have followed.  I stop Babe mid way up, at the turn and gently tell her, “Not now honey, you don’t have to come up here,” but it’s clear she won’t let me out of her sight, so I go back down.   I notice as she follows, Babe has trouble finding her feet, and once at the bottom she immediately goes to the floor.  She is out of breath.  I smell the odor of defecation, and turning around find that she has lost her bowels on coming down the stairs.  Earlier she had been barking, I though for food, but she probably needed to go out.  I don’t know.   The dogs follow me out every time I need to smoke, especially Babe, who barks at the door the minute I’m out of sight.  She could have gone one of those times.  Something has happened.    I Get down on my knees, stroke her graying fur, saying “It’s ok, really.  It’s ok,” and I go get some paper towels.

I let Babe out, and she disappears into the darkness.  I give her a few moments but she doesn’t return.   From the porch door, I walk around the other side, trying not to be alarmed, and find her lying against a wall on the damp concrete there.  “Don’t you want to come in? “, I say, and she complies wearily.  “Do you want to eat?”  Her ears do not point as they usually do at the mere mention of food, but she follows me into the kitchen.   I realize the water bowl is empty, and fill it.   I pour a cup full of food for each of the dogs.  Babe goes to her bowl and lies down.  She lies there and stares.  Stares at the food, at nothing, then raises her teeth at the cat who comes too close, even though she knows the cat will not eat her food.  It’s just the idea.  This is a good sign.  Babe still has her wits about her.  But she will not start unless I’m nearby, so I sit in the living room rocker and watch.  She eats meagerly, then returns by my side and lies down again.  She is restless, cannot find a comfortable position, yet I know she will in time.

I am thinking of taking us all upstairs tonight.  I am thinking of doing this even with what I saw, because the animals want to be up there, they are curious.  They know about the room.  They have been up there with me making music, they know the views.  Babe may have trouble climbing the stairs; I may even have to carry her back down.  But I am thinking we should not be afraid to go up upstairs for just one night.  We don’t have forever.  Hum or no hum we should claim that space and be done with it.  So I have collected a bag and put it by the stairs, for they are difficult even for me after I have been off my feet for awhile.  I am mindless about routines like going to bed and getting up and cooking breakfast.  I have to think of what I need, so that I don’t end up making five or ten trips back and forth.  I don’t want the dogs to follow me more than once.   The planning begins, as if we are about to go on a camping trip, and it’s only upstairs.  I find a large bottle to pee in.  I will think of snacks to bring, the radio, the medicines, perhaps the water bowl, and the rotating heater fan.  Tonight maybe, we will go upstairs and sleep, even with the omens.

But we don’t.  We sleep on the living room futon.  I can see Babe is in pain tonight. And while there is something to be said about getting up after a fall, about telling the hum to go to Hell by sleeping upstairs. There is also surrender to something greater.

I am the one who is all caught up in taking back the bedroom.  I’m the one who rails against the Hum.  The dogs don’t care about the hum. They are about being here, with me.  Babe needs my compassion, not my wrath at the unknowable, the unseen. Babe would prefer that I am her side.  I lay down next to her, attend to her restlessness, noticie as her breathing finds a regular pace as she passes into sleep.

We all wake the next morning, as if there has been no day before.  No evidence of an upset.  Except for a shopping bag next to the stairs.

“Choose your battles”, my mother used to say, “don’t let them choose you”.

Note:  This story originally posted Feb 27, 2010.  I pulled it almost immediately.  Something about the defiance, something about the anger. Excessive use of swear words…  I can’t say exactly.

Over the next few days, Babe nearly passed away.  Nothing beats death for puting life where it belongs.

I made some changes to the story accordingly.

With recent adjustments to her treatment Babe is comfortable and  stable at this writing.

Chris.

March 2, 2010

Dodging Another Bullet

So here’s the deal.

I have to keep an eye on you.

We thought we were in the clear, what with the cancer and all.  Three plus months without chemo after over a year of treatment.
I needed to be within range of Portland so I could attend Graduate School and meet further prerequisites to qualify as a teacher for the Visually Impaired through a program called Project Braille.   We found  a place in the boonies outside of Portland, in the Coast Range and made the choice to go there.  Two hundred acres of wild woods and forest trails.
We packed up the place in Port Townsend. It was hell.  I hate moving.

Delores and Brutus.

A good friend, Delores came up with her dog Brutus to assist.  Actually to give me a shove.  It’s hard to leave a beautiful place and good people.  We had a thriving writer’s workshop going on.  It started in the dining room of my house.  A historic hideaway for one particular writer, George Bernau who on his first attempt wrote a runaway best seller “Promises to Keep“.  That was over thirty years ago,  but the vibes are still there.  Most of the stories in this blog were written at the House on Windship Street.  My friends continue to meet  even as I bailed out on them.  At this writing they are submitting their stories collectively for local publication.

Last year, I became commitment to Project Braille, a program for teaching visually impaired students.  Then it was suddenly suspended by the supporting University pending reassessment during the financial crisis.  (link to article) I continued to meet prerequisites for Project Braille believing the need was so great for educators in this field, the School would eventually reconsider.
Days before fall term began we got the news that Project Braille had been reinstated, but now as a two year program.   I was invited to begin ahead of formal admission by taking an intensive course on Special Education and the Law. I did most of that work online, but quickly understood that if I was really committed to this education, I would have to move.  It’s tough weighing what you love to do against living into a future that demands thinking about financial security.  But then, there really is no such thing as financial security these days, is there?

I made my choice based on work that would include issues that matter to me, that make a difference, and offer in part the opportunity to incorporate what I love to do:   Basically, telling stories. Telling stories by what ever means available, and teaching others how to tell their stories by whatever means available.  My story is usually about What is So in my life.  Until now that has been a fairly self centered world. With Project Braille, my  little Universe is about to expand.

Back to what’s going on with Babe.

Why does the bandage always have to be pink?

Like I say, we thought we dodged a bullet with the cancer and all,  but just as Delores and I were packing up to move, I discovered a lump on Babe’s left leg.  Within a week the tumor had grown from the size of a grape, to a mass so large, it was impeding her ability to walk.  It would have to be removed.   Just the operation alone could be life threatening, as Babe has compromised lungs from her first surgery. (link to Longest Living Dog) Babe nearly died from airway complications the last time she was put under.   Dr. Johnson, my Vet in Port Townsend devised a plan for limited general anesthesia in combination with other drugs reducing the threat of a respiratory crisis.  The surgery succeeded, but then pathology results came back just days later confirming the presence Malignant Histiocytic sarcoma.  A death sentence.  The same cancer we had defied before, the same cancer I had become convinced Babe could never have had because she outlived any known outcome by more than a year.
This is a brutal, unforgiving disease. Just weeks before, Babe’s focal Vet in Portland had a similar case.  A dog with a tumor on it’s leg, but as Dr. Cain prepared the animal for surgery, she found growths in its throat, and rectal area.  It was Histiocytic Sarcoma.  The dog had to be euthanized just six days later.
So here we were again.  This time a clear diagnosis of active HS at the removal site according to pathology.  All we could to was continue with Babe’s recovery and believe in the best outcome for her, while being prepared for anything.

That was a month ago.

The sun is shining on this little doggie's ass.

Babe quickly began to use her leg again, and now goes for walks nearly every day.  No stairs to worry about, no fences, no leash.  My nearest neighbor is over two miles away. We are adjusting to rural life.  It takes about an hour to get to any metropolitan area.  Babe’s Portland Vet, Dr. Cain has agreed to come up here if an emergency arises.  I want her to be at home, among her companions, with her pack.  Me, Margie, (see The Rough Coat lassie collie trainee) and P-pod the cat. After all this time dealing with a terminal cancer, it’s still very difficult for me to trust my judgement when it comes to quality of life decisions, so in advance, I had a frank conversation with Dr. Cain.
It makes a big diference when you have the support of Vets like Dr. Cain (Linwood Animal Clinic), and Dr. Johnson (Port Hadlock Vetrinary Clinic) who collaborated many times over a great distance on behalf of my dog.
At this time, Babe is stable. But from day to day unexplainable things occur.  A week ago she suddenly collapsed in between classes.   She was not in any pain, but appeared to be slightly confused, and could only move her head any eyes.  I slept at her side, sure she would slip away in the night. Next morning, Babe got up and went out to pee just as always.  She was shaky, has some residual tremors, but was otherwise content.
She walks at a fast trot now, and I can barely keep up.
Part of me wonders if something will move insider her again, and she will just wander off.  You know what they say about dogs.

They go off to die.

The Christmas Decorations were the cat's idea. Some kind of a mouse trap thingie.

Babe is relentlessly stoic. As she never complains, I have to trust her instincts while being observant.  Yesterday she ran off into the woods after some squirrel or something, and was out of sight in a second.  I called, then yelled for her.  It was getting dark and I was scared. Was she loosing her mind?  But Babe had doubled back and was waiting for me at the trail.  I felt like an idiot.  The things my head tells me. The things my mind convinces me are going to happen that never happen-you could fill a book.

Well. What kept you?

Nobody can explain why Babe is still alive, let alone happy and engaged.  Nobody can promise even another day for us.  So what can I do in the face of this example, but trust in what the day offers.  Be as present as I can to the moment.  That is all anyone has anyway. Just this moment.

Marking the territory.

What happened to the Snowcat?