Octomom

Two weeks post mastectomy/lymphectomy.
Friday the surgeon phones. He tells me that he took ALL my lymph nodes.
There were twenty.
Whaaa? Get this: FIVE of them had cancer. 
"My sister said three."
"No. I removed all twenty lymph nodes and five were cancer tumors."
Weird that the surgeon tells me this two weeks after my surgery. My sister had told me that the surgeon told her I had three removed and they were cancerous.


So. Including the three tumors in the breast,  I had eight cancer tumors when I found 'the' lump.

Eight.


I had a dream last night. I was buying a coat (some women buy shoes, go figure, I buy coats.) The clerk says "so do you have children?" I say "no but I have given birth to eight fine cancer tumors."


I would like to be able to say that the surgeon called right before Jordan had to witness what he saw. That would not be true, however. The surgeon called just before I left to walk psycho Shamus, the killer dog that is so vicious he cannot be put with the rest of the pack, and indeed never has been. I walked Shamus and returned and Dave was by then home from the pack walk.


Poor Jordan. He is the son I never had. I think of him like that. If I had ever had a son, I would be so lucky if he had half of his character. The greatest guy ever. Period. Anyway, for almost a year and a half, Monday through Friday, he has dropped off his HALF pitbull Jaida in the wee hours of the morning when we are still asleep, and picked her up again in mid afternoon when I look forward to seeing him and finding out how his day went. (I only know he has dropped her off when she has slipped herself between my arms in bed and is busily cleaning my face while I awaken.)


Friday, the poor guy is standing there just after I have told the 'news' to Dave that two weeks ago I had twenty lymph nodes removed and five were cancerous.  Anyway, I am in floods of tears when I tell this to Dave because eight feels way past "early detection" and on into "oh poor thing she just caught it all too late." Dave and I are holding one another, standing there weeping. Both of us sobbing. Jordan is standing at the door and he doesn't know where to look.


The sight of Dave and I openly weeping in each other's arms has more than likely done something to Jordan ... something irretractable perhaps. I feel guilt at doing it to him, but I can't stop. He is one of the family by now. But wow. Pretty heavy for him to witness.


Later


Nice to lie out and have fun at my sister in law's pool Saturday afternoon with our dogs, Dave, and my best wee girlfriend, Sasha. Sasha is the nanny in the pack. She is "one of the humans," we call her. Bill, her dad, is my guardian angel, the one who treated me to a massage and five star Hilton the weekend before my mastectomy. (Dave and I had a wonderful weekend there thanks to Bill). Sasha lies next to me now, my little angel. I must have told her I loved her five hundred times, cuddling her today. She laughs this wonderful doggy laugh. She has beauty marks like a young Elizabeth Taylor, and kohl lined eyes. The great beauty of the pack. Christine says she is a really special dog. So true. Jaida is Sasha's idol. Everything fun, Sasha thinks, comes from an idea Jaida had..

You have to see her with the pack to get it. She runs off and returns Dexter, (the fuzzy young pup in the second pic above) the Young Yahoo, Rapscallion, Best BedCuddler, when he looks like he is going to run off with a different group at Bruce Pit. Before we realize he has gone, Sasha is returning him to us. She is the most astute German Shepherd mix you ever met. She seems to be mixed with a Shiba Inu with her lovely long shoulder hair and curly tail, skinny short legs. Truly the most gentle dog ever born, with the greatest sense of humour. Always laughing. She cracks me up. Have you ever met a dog that laughed? That is Sasha. When I am driving and she gets in, she will put her paw on my arm, which makes me face her. Then she laughs. This makes me laugh in return. She sees that and then she laughs. Now I am laughing at the fact she is laughing at me.

She will find the lonely person or insecure dog on Lemieux Island and sit with them, or stroll with them, or play with a nervous dog. Everyone ends up adoring her. A stranger she'd been "nannying" last summer came up and said to me "I just want you to know this is a really special dog." Nobody knows this better than Bill. Sasha was removed from her first owner by Bill, when she was an emaciated, bones sticking out, hungry mess of a five month old. Bill had never owned a dog before, but his love, commitment, patience, and kindness created a Sasha who nobody ever forgets meeting. (Sasha, ears back, with adorable, squeezable, wonderful pug Beckham in the car behind her)

She will turn around all dogs with neurotic dispositions and dogs that hate other dogs. She is the dog that changed Bobbi, aka 'Bobo-na-gogo' (about to throw the ball into the river above), Joanna and Ellen's black lab mix, who is my third dog, by virtue of the fact she lives with us (one year to date and perhaps several more) while her moms live in South Africa. Bobbi (see her and Sasha following Jaida, half-Pitbull, Top-Female Ballfetcher, Land Category, Human Assistant, above too) never liked other dogs before Sasha. Sash just made Bobbi her project, and played low dog to Bobbi's Bitch Queen long enough that Sasha just wore her down. Bobbi loves to play practical jokes on Sasha all the time now. And the two girls just love one another. Last night both girls slept next to me and it made me very satisfied to see how relaxed Bobbi is with Sasha.


Where was I?  Sorry.  I got distracted. Thinking about my pack gives me such a serious case of Da Happies...as Bobbi calls it. Oh yes. Back to the much, much more worthwhile topic to blather on about...much more worthy than dogs...Cancer, death, suffering, disfigurement. Oh yes, let's go back there, shall we?


So Saturday Eliza got this great idea that we should say hello to Dad for Father's Day. We drove out to the grave and now I am looking at the family plot in a new way, right? I mean I am sure it never occurred to her, but, like, just hours ago, Dave and I are rocked by the fact I had eight cancerous tumours removed, rather than the three plus ??? whatever was told by the surgeon at the time of mastectomy. This number eight feels closer to ten or something, I just know that I am rocked by the surgeon's info. Maybe it was the number twenty, that was the number of nodes removed altogether. But death is just whispering in my ear for the past day and now I am standing in the family plot where my brother, mom, and dad lie together, and inside I'm like "Move over, Ma! Steve! Dad! Shove over I'm comin in soon!" Whatever it was it was a blackness that just will not quit.


My best friend, Kate, in Toronto, is cleaning up after her mom and cooking and handfeeding her, and over there all the time at her mom's place. Her mom seems, most unfortunately, to be in the losing stages of her battle with cancer. Yes, the doctor says the cancer is advanced breast cancer and the brain tumor is no doubt a separate cancer, but....let's not mince words. It is cancer.


Tonight it is a relief to pick up the phone when she calls and to hear her sob, and really let it go. We did this the day I got my diagnosis, long distance from Zurich when she was there studying. We recalled that tonight on the phone with a laugh. It felt so oddly good to recollect that roaring and sobbing we did with each other long distance. You just can't always have words and self containment for this surreal experience. My pain now is for Kate not me. I just cannot imagine what it feels like to have this disease making her mom's life the most undignified, humiliated experience, voiceless, helpless, yet fully with all mental capacities to feel the indignities. Kate is over there ten or more hours at a time and then she is home at her loft, on the phone with her best friend....who has the same thing that is killing her mom. It is like the worst pair of bookends you could buy.

(Me, hugging my whiney 4 yr old baby, Eiger, left, aka 'Baby Hughie,' Christine's Poirot, the Bernese Mountain dog, right, aka "Fatty" as Simba, his sis refers to him, and wonderful ole Dozer, Cortney and Ryan's Anatolian Shepherd in the Halloween mask on the right).




I might not have given birth to human babies, but as I look at my title for this blog, it occurs to me that I have at least eight furry babies, you know. I look at all the dogs in my pack as my babies. The greatest happiness is looking after them overnight once in awhile, when you really get a chance to know them and love them. Here are some pictures. These are some of my babies:Top-Female-Ballfetcher, Water-Category, Simba, golden-doodle, with Cathy Pomeroy's Duke, golden retriever, top all-round fetcher, land and sea, middle, aka 'The Seal', and bottom, strolling the beach, four-pound Tulip, aka Tutu, long-haired chihuahua and voted "Pack Boss" on long hikes.