Final radiation, and a roller coaster ride.

So I sat down to write a blog after Ti’s second radiation last week, and I realized that I couldn’t because there were no words to describe how I felt that wouldn’t get me kicked off of the blog and possibly the entire Internet.

I was really angry.  I was angry because dying from pain is a terrible way to die.  Not only is it a terrible way to die, but it is a stupid reason to die.  And yet pain is what’s going to kill him.  Horses die because of messed up legs, not dogs.  Now granted, I’ve got enough clever comments asking if I have a saddle for him, that one might think he is a horse… but that’s besides the point.

After his first radiation and infusion he seemed worse instead of better.  I had heard mostly good things about improvement after radiation, so I was worried.  When I took him two days later for a second round of radiation, they looked at him gravely when they saw how much more pronounced his limp was.  My heart sunk into the floor.  We did his radiation, and I brought him home.

He laid on his bed, groggy and limp.  I sat with him and took this picture.

His head started sliding off the bed when I moved, and I went to help lift it back onto the bed, worried about his neck.  His head and neck were so heavy in my arms.  It was the first time, I realized, that he ever put the full weight of his head on me… he must have always been being careful before.   This was also the first time that I really came to grips with his situation.  The first time I realized that my amazingly strong and powerful boy was not as invincible as he looked.   To be honest, at that moment, I felt like he was dying, not right that moment, but that this was the beginning of the end.  And my heart broke.  I cried into his neck, and my tears dripped into his fur, and we sat like that for a long time.

And then when I couldn’t cry any more, being the pragmatic sort that I am, I used this opportunity of his limpness to give him the best pedicure of his life with the dremel he usually dislikes.

Days went by, and he started shaking off the anesthesia.  And his limp became less pronounced… and he started acting like himself more.  In fact, he been acting more like himself than I have seen in months.  He is doing really well and I was able to reduce his pain meds a bit.

We have since had his last round of radiation, and I am very pleased with the results.  I can only hope that they last a good long time.  One good thing that came out of his initial troubles upon radiation, is that while I was waiting for him after his last one, an elderly lady overheard that he was getting radiation and asked me, while crying, what to expect.   I am glad that I was able to warn her about how things did seem worse at first, but that it’s helped him so much.   She seemed to be more at ease afterwards.  That made me happy

So he is done with radiation, but he is still going back for more zoledronate, and and I am hopeful that it does it’s job and strengthens his bones.   He has a lot of dog to carry around.