Trust in God’s peace – living with cancer

The last several years I've really, finally, come to trust in God's peace.  Living with cancer makes it very important to have that peace.  Over the years, I've written quite a bit about how I've learned about God's love through my dogs.  There's such a level of dependency on their part for their humans.  And love.  So many things that I see in their interaction with me that remind me of how I should interact with God.  I don't want to repeat everything from the other articles here - it would be too long.  But I do encourage you to check out some of the past writings.  Especially Little Replicas of God (Part 1) and (Part 2) as well as the first two I wrote about being diagnosed with cancer in Each day has enough trouble of its own and Trust in God; Trust also in me – especially with cancer.

This one's going to be about Dewey and me.  His experience going through chemo when he had lymphoma and mine as I'm in active surveillance.  Monitor and see what happens, but so far no treatments.

Dewey is the little Shih Tzu.  Hachiko is one of his "brothers", probably a Chow Chow - German Shepherd mix.  Hachiko is checking out the shaved area on Dewey's leg where he got his Chemo treatment earlier in the day.

Unlike people, me included, who often don't know what to say in a situation like this - Hachiko had no problems going right over to check it out.  You have to know, Hachiko was badly abused before he came to us.  He was afraid of literally everything.  But his concern for his brother took over, and he went right away to see what was happening.

The other thing about that moment, dog's don't like to show weakness.  That's especially true in Dewey's case, since he was the alpha among the three of them. 

Yes - Dewey was much smaller, but I helped him out with that.  Hachiko was too big and too strong to have him be the leader of the pack.  So I trained all three of them to learn their places.  Dewey was the leader before Hachiko arrived on the scene.  So I used food to be sure they learned the order was going to be Dewey, Donnie (a little guy, probably Havanese) and then Hachiko last.  

It worked.  And I think that's one of the things that made this moment possible.  It's also probably the only reason we were able to keep all three of them.  But this moment in particular, Dewey allowing the much bigger dog to examine his wound from chemo, was a really big deal.

Dewey's life with cancer

Dewey lived about eight months after his diagnosis.  That's the equivalent of about four to five years in "people time".  And he loved nearly all of the moments in that time.  He loved going to the vet's office. 

Getting chemo - he'd walk back with them from the waiting room and not even look back.  Why not?  Because even though he had a needle in his leg for up to an hour - he was getting attention the whole time.  I got to visit him during the process once.  He was laying there, just taking in all that attention and having a good time.

Going for blood tests and ultrasounds?  No problem.  More attention.

Sometimes it took up to an hour to drive to the cancer clinic, depending on traffic.  He's stand at the open window (attached to his "sky box" so he could get his head just outside but not be able to jump out) taking in all the sights and smells.  That was for pretty much the entire trip.  On the way back, he'd do that as long as he could, but eventually, he would get tired and lay down.  But the desire to enjoy what he could always won out.  And then he's be all excited when we got home.

There were a few times when the chemo got to him.  But as soon as his stomach was better, he was right back to normal.