On Cancer

In a slightly less humorous turn of events, Izzy was diagnosed with presumptive cancer at her last annual visit back in September. I brought her to the vet with two concerns: alarming halitosis, and a strange growth on her right hind paw. I left the vet with two additional concerns: a chipped canine tooth (thanks to last spring’s thunderstorm fiasco) and a rather significant amount of weight loss. Her vet and I discussed the pros and cons of getting a 12-year-old dog's teeth cleaned, and we decided to run a “full senior screening” blood panel first and wait for the results before worrying about her teeth.

A week later the blood results were in which showed a small elevation in calcium. Her vet emphasized that the elevation was very minimal, but she asked me to bring Izzy back in for a recheck and a brief follow-up exam. Mary and I brought her back after school the next day, and the two of us sat in the waiting room while the technician brought Izzy back for the exam. 10 minutes later, the same technician asked us to go back to an exam room to talk to the vet in person. I’ve spent enough time in doctor’s offices at this point to know that “the doctor wants to talk to you” is never a harbinger of something good, and I said as much to Mary as we followed the technician to the exam room. After another brief wait, Izzy’s vet came into the room and closed the door. She explained that she had rechecked her blood and that the original results were accurate, her calcium was elevated. And since elevated calcium can indicate one of two types of cancer, she followed up the blood work with a rectal exam and discovered a “firm nodule the size of a pencil eraser in her left anal gland.” She continued to explain that it was not conclusively cancer until it was biopsied, but that in order to biopsy the growth it must first be removed.

Let me be crystal clear right now in case it’s not obvious: my dog is the only constant source of joy in my life. I can think of exactly 3 days out of the last 13 years where I second-guessed my decision to rescue her from the Falls Road SPCA in 2007. Granted those were really bad days when, according to my friend Shelly, Izzy deserved to end up in a freezer (one of those days is detailed in another blog, to read it click here). But other than that, she has been the most consistently loyal, entertaining, and adoring companion I could ever ask for. Which explains why, when her vet mentioned cancer, my face started to burn while the air seemed to disappear around me. I felt like a fish flopping about helplessly on the shore after the tsunami receded. Mary’s eyes bore into me, almost willing me to cry, but then I heard myself speak and I sounded calm and rational and far away: “She is almost 13 years old, do you think surgery is the best option at this point? Her overall quality of life is paramount to me.” She assured me that yes, given Izzy’s otherwise good health, she’d definitely recommend the surgery. She told me to schedule an appointment with the oncologist on my way out and we said goodbye.

Izzy pre-ultrasound waiting for her morning treat
(she needed to fast and did not understand)

I’ve been blessedly lucky that none of my immediate human family members has dealt with cancer at this point, so I can only imagine how exasperating the healthcare timeline must be for humans. From the time I heard the word cancer until Izzy’s actual surgery, we waited a mere 2 ½ months, but it felt like 2 ½ years. During that time period, she had an appointment with her oncologist, an appointment in Syracuse for an ultrasound to check for metastasis, and an appointment with the surgeon.

Mercifully, per ultrasound results, there was no obvious evidence of metastasis in her lymph nodes or other vital organs and her surgery was scheduled for early November. In the meantime, my friends and I had planned a 10-day trip to California, and although I was hesitant to leave my dog for that long, there was no rational reason to cancel our vacation plans. I hoped a vacation would help kill the time, and one of my travel companions for the trip was my favorite compassionate-yet-logical vet friend, Ellen. She not only understood my concerns, but also was leaving behind her own beloved cat with cancer. So I tried to suppress my anxiety and enjoy myself in California. It was a trip I had been planning for over a year and Ellen and I were meeting up with my sister (from another mister), Sonya, and several of my other favorite people in the world on the West Coast. Still, I could not help missing my four-legged sleeping companion with vile breath.

Ellen, Kristen, Matthew, and my sister, Sonya

While in California I was surrounded by so much beauty – both the environmental and human types. And I was simultaneously distracted by so many wheelchair malfunctions (for more details click here) that I was able to keep my mind from obsessively worrying. When we returned from the West Coast, I had less than two weeks left to wait before the surgery. The morning my mom brought her in for the surgery at Colonial Veterinary Hospital, I made sure to let Izzy lick my face extra-vigorously and said about 300 silent prayers on her behalf. The surgery was not until 5 PM, and the surgeon said he would call me afterwards. If everything went according to plan, we could pick her up within 48 hours. In the meantime, I went to school for the afternoon and tried to stay distracted by editing college application essays and helping students identify central themes in the book Things Fall Apart. I prayed that Izzy’s fate would turn out better than Okonkwo’s.

Day 3 in the hospital

My phone did not ring until close to 7 PM, but it was good news: Izzy was alive and recovering, and the surgeon thought he got good margins. Per my request, in addition to removing the tumor, he had also removed the unsightly old lady wart that protruded from Izzy’s left side. He told me to call the clinic in the morning to check on her and he hoped she would be ready to come home by the following day. As it turned out, she was not. Nor was she ready to come home the next day, or the day after that, or the day after that. Post-surgery, Izzy was stricken with the most dreaded of possible side effects: fecal incontinence. Two words that should never be used in the same sentence. I called Colonial twice a day for six days, and twice a day I heard about her lovely disposition and ravenous appetite, before hearing about her uncontrollable diarrhea. Given the fact that Colonial is staffed 24/7, and that technicians were able to bathe her and sterilize her incisions after every “accident,” I did not pressure my mom to go pick her up; sometimes I know my limits. Fecal incontinence does not fit into the schedule at the Hooks’ household, especially with two other dogs and only one able-bodied human.

As the days added up, I was secretly starting to worry that fecal incontinence would continue indefinitely, and I would never get my dog back. When I vocalized my concerns to the surgeon, he seemed genuinely shocked that her recovery was so fraught with difficulty. I thought back to my original conversation with the oncologist in late September about Izzy’s quality of life being paramount, and I started questioning my decision. Then I flashed back to my appointment with the surgeon in October; he did warn of potential fecal incontinence, but said it was extremely rare – especially with such a small mass in such an otherwise healthy dog. As two days turned into three days and three into four, I continued calling Colonial until even the technicians recognized my voice. They graciously invited me to come visit her in the hospital, but it seemed too cruel – she would think I was there to bring her home and then I’d turn around and leave her again. So, I continued to wait, and after six days I finally got some encouraging news during my morning phone call: Izzy still had diarrhea, but she had no accidents overnight. I consulted with my mom, and we agreed that – if Izzy continued with no accidents throughout the day – she could come home that evening.

Thankfully, Shelly – who might be the only person who loves Izzy almost as much as I do – agreed to accompany my mom and me to pick her up. It was later in the evening when we arrived at Colonial, and the waiting room was empty. The three of us headed back to an exam room to wait for a technician to retrieve Izzy and give us the (extensive) discharge instructions. When the door finally opened, we were presented with a very excited, very skinny Izzy with a cone on her head. The second she saw us she started wiggling and squinting her eyes and wagging her tail, and she left a trail of pudding poop in her wake. The technician did not seem to notice, but I saw my mom’s eyes start to bug out of her head and I had a sinking feeling that we might be bringing Izzy home too soon. But at that point it was too late, the damage was done, Izzy already knew that she was coming home. The discharge instructions began: first there was anti-septic wash for the incision site, which needed to be thoroughly cleaned at least twice a day, and then there were antibiotics, pain meds, anti-diarrheal meds, a probiotic powder and prescription dog food. The instructions continued, and I could see my mom’s stress level elevate with each directive: one medication was administered every six hours as needed, the other was every twelve, the probiotic powder could be split between both meals or put in one, but it could not be given at the same time as the antibiotic, and we needed to make sure that Izzy was always on a leash even if she just went into the back pen to pee, and under no circumstances could she jump on furniture until the sutures were removed.

When the technician finally stopped talking and left the room (to get another medication incidentally), Shelly and I tried to assuage my mom’s concerns. I tried to reassure her that I understood all of the directions and that everything was written down in the discharge instructions. Meanwhile I could not reconcile the Izzy in front of me with the Izzy from seven days ago – she looked like she had lost about 10 pounds, her rear end was pink and inflamed, her tail was shaved so she looked like a rat and she had anxiously nibbled the towels in her crate so aggressively that the area between her lips and her nostrils was red and raw. She reminded me of a kindergartner with Kool-Aid all over her face. Nonetheless, I tried to convince my mom (and myself) that we could figure everything out at home and that Izzy’s sphincter function would soon return to normal. I paid the bill, and the four of us headed home.

Shelly sat in the back of the van and held onto Izzy to keep her from jumping on the seat, and less than five minutes into our ride home she had two accidents. I was relieved that the floor of my van is not carpeted, but that fact did not change what I saw as a bad omen for the rest of the evening. Incidentally, while Izzy had not had an accident in the house or car for over 12 years, she did not seem particularly ashamed of herself. My mom pulled the car into my driveway and opened the garage door, and the second we let Izzy out of the back of my car, she dragged Shelly straight to the shelf that holds the tennis balls and started prancing in place and looking up at the box of balls and looking at us, up at the balls and back at us, back and forth. Something about that moment, even though she had just pooped in my car, reassured me that she was going to be fine. She might be emaciated with fecal incontinence, but she still wanted to play ball in the dark. Once in the house and off the leash, she immediately trotted to the back door and asked to be let out. That was also a good sign, I thought, even though she left a small poop splooch or two along the way. Shelly came to our assistance and followed behind Izzy with the Clorox wipes, and then helped us problem solve the next inevitable obstacle: where should Izzy sleep? Where to put a dog with a leaky sphincter?

A discontent Izzy in my bathroom

Shelly considered lining her crate with trashbags or towels, but quickly abandoned that idea once we realized she could barely fit in the crate while wearing the cone of shame. Ultimately, we decided to cover her bed with towels and put it in the bathroom adjacent to my bedroom. I figured after six nights in a crate next to other hospitalized dogs, the bathroom floor on her plush bed would be luxurious. I figured wrong. After Shelly left and I was settled in bed for the night, and after Izzy had gone out for the last time (and had her incisions thoroughly cleaned by my mom), my mom closed the door to the bathroom and attempted to retire to her own room for the night. Izzy’s noises elevated slowly, starting as occasional pathetic sounding yelps, but ramping up to a full doggy temper tantrum within minutes. I could hear her banging up against the door with the plastic cone as she graduated from pathetic yelps to high-pitched, almost piercing barks. I heard my mom’s footsteps through the house, and she opened the door to the bathroom and moved Izzy to the other side of the house in the laundry room. Once again, it took only a matter of moments for Izzy to successfully articulate her sense of doggy injustice. Panting dramatically, she was eventually returned to my room where she stood at the foot of my bed accompanied by my increasingly displeased mother.

Temper tantrum, please notice the Kool-Aid lips 

“What do you suggest we do with her? It is after midnight, I’m not doing this all night.”

Before she even finished the sentence, Izzy jumped onto my bed. She immediately curled up with her cone on my legs, and sort of looked up at my mom as if to say: “Took you long enough to figure that one out.” Defeated, my mom shoved an old blanket underneath her, turned off the light and left my room in disgust.


The rest of the night, or at least what was left of it, followed suit – Izzy needed to go out once in the middle of the night but mostly made it through the next eight hours without incident. It was a stressful first 48 hours home after an already stressful 2 ½ months, but I am happy to report that over the next two weeks, her sutures remained intact, her diarrhea subsided, her sphincter control returned and my mom expertly followed her extensive medication protocol – including frequent antiseptic cleansing to affected areas. Most importantly, six months post-surgery, her quality of life seems unchanged; she still tramples over my mom’s shih tzus daily while she races to get a morning treat, she still begs to be fed as if she is on the brink of starvation, and she still wants to play ball – every single day, no matter the weather. The older she gets, the less obedient she seems, but the only thing that matters to me is that as of today, she is cancer free, and she remains full of the shenanigans which make her both the best and worst dog of all time. 

"Porch ball" with Shelly

On Traveling with a Dog

This is one of my all-time favorite Izzy stories.

Almost 2 years after leaving Baltimore, I convinced Shelly, another member of my Ithaca caregiving crew, to take me on a mini break down there to visit friends. My friend Peter lived outside of Baltimore and invited us to stay in his accessible mother-in-law suite, and he made the deal even sweeter when he told me I could bring Izzy. Predictably, Shelly, Izzy and I left Ithaca two hours after we intended to, and I quickly realized we were not going to arrive at our intended destination until after 10 o’clock at night. Under normal, even perhaps highly trafficked circumstances, the drive from my house in Ithaca to Baltimore city is 5 – 5 ½ hours max. With Shelly driving, however, the same exact drive (even without traffic) took almost seven. I blame it on her slightly abnormal obsession with McDonald’s unsweetened iced tea which necessitates we stop almost hourly to pee. At 9 o’clock, still north of Baltimore and more than an hour away from Peter’s, Shelly and I aborted the mission and elected to find a hotel room for the night. The only problem was my beast.

Izzy, Shelly, and me on the Inner Harbor

Luckily for us we had her therapy vest in the car, and it would only be for one night. We pulled into a Hampton Inn a mere 15 minutes north of Baltimore city, got an accessible room with a roll in shower and the three of us retired for the night. Izzy was a picture of perfection, she ate her dinner in the room, went out for a nice walk before bed, did not bark or whine when strangers walked by and snuggled up with me in the queen-sized bed all night. The next day we coordinated plans to meet my friend Lena for a trip to Whole Foods and a nostalgic walk along the waterfront in Baltimore. As we walked/wheeled, she convinced us to find a hotel within walking distance of downtown rather than trek to Peter’s house in Silver Spring. Considering everything Shelly and I planned to do was downtown – including our later dinner plans – we were easily convinced. After the previous days’ interminable drive from Ithaca, another 45 minutes seemed daunting. Especially given Shelly’s obsession with iced tea, and the traffic on I-95. I called Peter and told him we’d see him at dinner and used the (presumably now obsolete) Hotels Tonight app to find an inexpensive hotel room in the Inner Harbor. 

We told Lena we’d see her later and headed a few blocks away to the hotel. Izzy, adorned in her therapy vest, got settled into yet another hotel room and Shelly and I did our best to make her feel comfortable before we left. She ate her dinner, we left her water bowl in plain view, and she had access to two queen size beds of her choice. Relatively certain she was tired after our walk anyway, Shelly and I headed out to meet my friends for dinner. Our reservations were at 6 o’clock at a restaurant about 10 blocks away from the hotel. As Shelly and I left the lobby I said to the concierge, “I’ve never left my therapy dog behind in a hotel room, and sometimes she gets anxious without me, so please call my number if there are any problems.”

Shelly and I got into the van and headed to City Café. The traffic was horrendous. 20 minutes after leaving the hotel, we’d barely made it five blocks. And then the inevitable: my phone rang, it was an unknown Baltimore number. Shit. Without functioning hands, I was no help, and Shelly had to reach over and grab my phone in order to answer it while navigating rush-hour traffic. The man on the other end of the phone sounded frazzled: “Ma’am, I’m sorry to tell you but it seems your therapy dog is causing problems on the eighth floor. There have been some complaints about the noise coming from your room. Can you please come back?” Naturally we were on a one-way street going north, so by the time we’d turned around and fought through thick traffic heading back to the hotel, we were already late for our intended dinner reservations. I stayed in the car while Shelly ran in to grab the beast. Moments later she was back in the car with Izzy in tow.

Me: Where is her leash?
Shelly: I didn’t grab it, she was already out of the hotel room when I got to the eighth floor.
Me: What are you talking about?
Shelly: She greeted me as soon as the elevator door opened, so I did not even go to the room. Someone must have gotten her out before I got there.
Me: Shelly, that makes no sense. Why would the hotel staff let a dog out of the room to wander around the hotel without a person?
Shelly: I don’t know, it did not make sense to me either.

Then it dawned on me: the door to the hotel room was a lever. My crazy dog had let herself out of the room. I called Peter with my predicament and explained that we’d be late, and that my dog had broken out of our hotel room and would be joining us at dinner. Shelly and I crawled our way up Charles Street back towards our original destination and eventually arrived a mere 20 minutes late. Unable to find parking, I called Peter again and begged for his assistance. I was anxious to see all of my old teacher friends and felt like a proper asshole for being late. Meanwhile, Shelly’s hair was about to fall out of her head after driving through Baltimore traffic, and trying to parallel park on crowded one-way streets was beyond what either of us could handle. Peter traipsed out of the restaurant as Shelly unloaded me from the van, and I implored – as Shelly passed off the keys – “Can you please put Izzy’s vest on and bring her in after you park? I think it’s still too hot for her to sit in the van.”

Shelly and I went into the restaurant, completely forgetting that Izzy didn't have a leash in the van. Once I introduced Shelly to my favorite friends from Baltimore, all of whom had been sitting at the table for at least 30 minutes, I awkwardly parked my chair under the edge of the long table and turned around just as Peter walked in with Izzy. He had removed his belt and looped it through her collar, and had buckled her therapy dog vest around her midriff rather than around her chest, so as she walked it wiggled down towards her hind end and resembled a diaper. Meanwhile, unaccustomed to being in restaurants or surrounded by so many friendly people, Izzy was ebullient; her eyes squinted as if she were smiling, she tilted her nose in the air to smell all the delicious food and she wiggled with excitement. I could almost hear her say, “See what good things happen when I escape from hotel rooms?”

We ate dinner, shared dessert and made general merriment until the post-meal surprise: tickets to see Peter Bradley Adams at a local venue, one of my favorite singer-songwriters. The concert was scheduled for 8 o’clock, so we needed to head out as quickly as possible. The only problem? Izzy. What was I going to do with my dog during a two-hour concert? Mercifully, one of my friends at dinner was not accompanying us to the concert, and he volunteered to dog sit for the rest of the evening. (Probably something he will never do again.)

The concert was incredible. Shelly describes Peter Bradley Adams as a “closed mouth singer” but his voice resonates with me, and beyond that, I just felt so loved and so grateful to everyone who made the entire evening possible. And despite the fact that my therapy dog escaped from a hotel room, made us late to dinner, and ruined any chance of my friend Matt having a relaxing evening with his wife due to Izzy's irrational anxiety about spending time with strangers, I will always look back on that night as one of my top 10 favorite memories. It certainly would have been more seamless without Izzy, but it would not have been as memorable. For any of us.

On Thunderstorms

When I retired from teaching in 2012, I moved back in with my parents in Ithaca. The only one at that time who was fully enthusiastic about my new life plan was Izzy. With the exception of the summer of 2010 which I spent almost entirely in the hospital, Izzy and I had spent every summer since her adoption in Ithaca. She loved Ithaca. When we’d drive home to visit my parents, as soon as I took the exit for Whitney Point – a full 45 minutes away from Ithaca – Izzy would sit up and start panting and whining in anticipation. My dad used to joke that Izzy was like a “fresh air dog” that came up from the city for the summer to spend two months in the country at the doggy equivalent of summer camp. With access to real grass in the backyard (as opposed to the pee pad we constructed on my balcony out of bricks and pebbles) and almost daily visits to the lake to swim and chase her ball, Ithaca was a proper utopia for a dog that was used to 30 minute walks with a dog walker through downtown Baltimore.

Just because she is happier in Ithaca, did not mean that she left her doggy shenanigans in Baltimore. As she got older, her fear of thunder took on an extra element of intensity. To illustrate, the last time she was crated during a thunderstorm, my mom and I returned to find the bottom of the crate on the other side of the room, blood all over her dog bed and a broken tooth from her apparent efforts to escape. Henceforth she was never again crated during a thunderstorm. I felt so guilty, just imagining her abject terror while attempting to tear the metal crate asunder while I was out to dinner with my family. Fast forward a few months, Mary – one of my dream team Ithaca caregivers – and I were out running errands. Halfway through my shopping spree at EMS, a storm unleashed itself in true Central New York form. There were literal sheets of rain coming out of the sky and intense lightning that seemed to bounce itself through the parking lot in front of us. I purchased a water bottle and Mary and I made a quick break for the van to head home. The rain eased a bit, from torrential to steady, but the thunder and lightning continued throughout the 15-minute drive back to my house. As we turned onto my street, I noticed a man walking his dog in the distance and commented, “what kind of idiot walks a dog during the pouring rain without an umbrella…?” But before I even finished the sentence, I realized that the idiot was not walking just any dog down the street, he was walking my dog down the street. Without a leash. Mary pulled up alongside the stranger and rolled down the window. Before she could explain who we were or ask the man what he was doing with Izzy in the pouring rain, my – at the time 11-year-old dog – jumped through the driver’s side window and clawed her way behind Mary (shredding the back of her neck in the process) to land in my lap. All we heard from the man during the struggle was, “I just found her in my garage.”

When we pulled into the driveway, I was shocked to see my mom’s car was not in the garage. I thought perhaps my mom had let her out to go to the bathroom and Izzy had discovered an unlatched gate in the backyard. Instead, we discovered an empty house (with the exception of two very anxious shih tzus), with the back door ajar letting a steady stream of rain into the living room. Mary walked onto the back deck to see if the gate was open. It was not. Using deductive reasoning we concluded that Izzy had freaked out upon hearing the thunder, depressed the lever door to get out of the house and into the backyard, jumped over a 4 foot fence and wandered down the street until she found someone to rescue her.

Every time I tell this story, I can’t help but imagine all of the ways things could have ended badly. What if Mary and I had not turned onto the street at the same moment the man was walking her past my house? How long would he have walked her in the rain trying to find her owner? He was not my immediate neighbor, he lived several houses away and Izzy’s address was not on her collar. What if in her panic to escape the thunder she had run into traffic and been hit by a car? Living in a town with frequent thunderstorms, my options felt pretty limited: don’t leave the house when it might thunder, put her in the crate and risk her ripping her own teeth out, or trust the weatherman and drug her every time it’s supposed to storm? There was no good answer, but while I waited in trepidation for storms, I realized that there is one perk to my favorite four-legged friend finally getting old: she is starting to go deaf. A few months ago we had our first Ithaca spring thunderstorm, and Izzy – mercifully – did not hear it.

On The Dangers of Owning A Smart Dog

There is a lot of heavy shit on my mind these days, and the actual blog that I’ve been mulling over in my head is honestly something that no one needs to read during a pandemic. So, for right now, in order to give myself a remote sense of productivity, I’m going to write a series of Izzy stories for your reading enjoyment. You are welcome in advance for making the most irresponsible, impulse purchase in the history of such purchases at the Baltimore City SPCA in April 2007: Izzy.

I make reference to a few of her first year’s antics in a blog (click here for the link) I wrote several years ago, but a decade later there have been a few more doozies. I had great aspirations of self-training a reliable, mixed breed therapy dog. 13 years ago, when she was just a tiny one, I tried teaching her how to move things out of my way in my apartment. With much peanut butter and patience she eventually mastered, “move your bone,” or “move your toy," and with ample opportunities for practice, she soon learned that “go get Meg” (my roommate back in Baltimore) meant I needed help out of a pickle. She also walks exceptionally well on a leash – I think running over her paws a few times with my manual wheelchair when she was a puppy sent an enduring message. Along the way she also learned how to open doors – at least the ones with lever handles. She had no problem jumping up, depressing the lever and barging into someone’s room, and she soon figured out how to depress the handle, walk backwards and stick her snout in the doorway in order to pull the door open as well. During her first few years with me, I was still able to walk, albeit with difficulty, and there were occasional nights when I tripped and fell en route to the bathroom and needed Izzy to go “wake up Meg” to help me off the ground. On another morning, I woke up and struggled to get myself out of bed. Unable to break my superhuman extensory tone in the morning, I could not pull myself into a seated position to transfer to my wheelchair. I summoned the beast: “Izzy, come, come up here!” She leapt onto the bed, eager to encroach upon my personal space as always. Once she was standing directly over my face, I grabbed her collar and told her to “back up.” Whether she knew what I was talking about or she just backed away from me in an act of attempted defiance, I will never know – but the result was that she pulled me into a seated position. Once seated, I was able to grab onto my nightstand and reach forward for my wheelchair in order to successfully transfer out of bed. That was the first moment I realized, this beast deserves a therapy dog vest.* Whether or not she would be physically able or well-trained enough to help me out of the myriad predicaments I’d find myself in over the next dozen years remained to be seen, but I knew I needed her by my side.

There have been times however, especially in her younger years, when her extensive therapy dog “training” and her intuition backfired. For example, I never thought about the downside of Izzy learning to open doors inside my apartment. Fast forward a year or two to when my friend Meli flew in from Seattle to visit me for the weekend. Izzy mistakenly believed that anyone entering my apartment was there explicitly for her entertainment, and was thus non-plussed when the two of us departed the apartment to go out for brunch. Two hours later we returned to my apartment to find a pink Post-It note stuck to my door. It read: “FYI, I found your dog in my apartment. I returned her and put her in her crate. – Apartment 509.” I was confused, the deadbolt to my apartment was locked – how did she get out? I shrugged it off thinking perhaps the door had not latched for some reason. But then, just a few weeks later when I was wheeling to the garbage chute in my pajamas, immediately after the door latched behind me I heard clattering – as if the metal handle on my apartment door was being violently jiggled up and down. I thought to myself, maybe this is how she got out? I dumped the garbage and headed back towards my door where I discovered that somehow Izzy had managed to lock the deadbolt during her erratic clawing at the handle. Wearing pajamas on a Saturday night with no cell phone on me, I immediately panicked – how was I going to get back in? None of my friends had an extra key, Meg was in New York for the weekend and how could I contact anyone without my phone? The apartment manager didn’t even have an emergency contact number, and I wasn’t particularly friendly with any of my neighbors. In desperation, I did the only thing I could think of at the time: “Izzy girl, Izzy girl!! Let me in, come on girl, open the door!!” She must have hesitated for a minute or two thinking, why isn’t she just opening the door herself? Yet with repeated urging, I heard the familiar scrambling of her front paws against the door handle and soon enough she depressed the handle and pulled it backwards just enough to let me in. I felt the same sense of pride at that moment as I did when my most academically unmotivated student finally managed to pass a test. I leaned forward and praised her as if she had saved someone from a burning building. Never mind that she was the one who had locked me out to begin with, her brilliance prevented me from spending the night in the hallway of my apartment building.

That was only one of many door-related exploits perpetrated by this dog of mine. On at least two other occasions she managed to escape the apartment while I was in the hospital and at school. I received a phone call late in the afternoon the day before I was scheduled to begin my first chemo infusion. Recognizing the number as my apartment manager's, I answered: “Hey Melody, what’s up?” Sounding flustered she responded, “Are you home? Your dog is in my office.” Confused, I explained, “I’m in the hospital for a couple days, nobody is in my apartment right now. Meg will not be home until after work. How did she get into your office?” That question was never answered (although I wish I could get my hands on the security footage). To be clear, I lived on the fifth floor of a high-rise building. Melody’s office was on the eighth floor. Which meant that Izzy either rode the elevator up three flights or that she somehow got into the stairwell by way of a heavy duty door that she pulled open before walking up three flights of stairs to the eighth floor. Either scenario did not make much sense to me. Who in their right mind would let a dog get into the elevator unaccompanied? Or how did she manage to pull open such a heavy door? On another afternoon, the maintenance guy from my building called me at school to report that Izzy was found on the ground floor of the parking garage. He escorted her back to the apartment, begging the question: what would have happened had he not been in the parking garage when she came out of the elevator door? It was terrifying to consider.

I’m sure you are shaking your head at this point and thinking, why the hell did you not just put that Houdini of a dog inside her crate? Good question. Primarily because when I was the only person in my apartment, I was physically unable to get her into the crate by myself. She’d throw herself on the floor just outside the crate and have a canine equivalent of a toddler’s flop and drop. From the confines of a wheelchair it was pretty much impossible to force her in, and she couldn’t be enticed by a treat when she knew it meant I was leaving her alone in the apartment. The most annoying part of these shenanigans? When there was an able-bodied person in the apartment with me, all I’d have to say was, “in your crate” and she’d walk in obediently. (Clearly not a characteristic of a reliable therapy dog when said therapy dog is able to expertly exploit her owner’s disability.)

I’m going to leave off on that note, and hopefully – as the quarantine continues – I will be motivated to chronicle a few more Izzy adventures before life returns to normal. She is 13 at this point, and already had a cancerous tumor removed. My goal is to get these stories written while I can still look at her sleeping on the floor in front of me, gnawing on her bone, occasionally passing gas, and making me smile.

*Important note, although she does currently have a therapy dog vest, it is just from Amazon. She has accompanied me to a lot of places over the years, but I’d never take advantage of the system and bring her with me on a plane or, Lord forbid, to a grocery store.

On swimming.

Me. Many moons ago.

I mainly try to keep things moving forward, to stay distracted, to keep busy. Even then though, even while I am out exercising my dog, or sitting on Kelly's boat reveling in the sun, even then, unexpected moments of stillness creep in and nostalgia washes over me with the force of a tsunami. Last month, the Ithaca area experienced some unseasonably warm October temperatures and Chrissy and I brought Izzy to the lake. We went to a part of the lake in Lansing that my friend Kim and I previously referred to as Stinky Beach. To be clear, the section of the beach did not actually stink, but as a rare chunk of waterfront land that was neither part of a public park nor privately owned, it was gloriously unregulated and occasionally somewhat trashy. It was not uncommon to find empty cans of beer or discarded cigarette butts lying among the stones, and on sunny afternoons one may have encountered unleashed dogs and their rowdy human counterparts, loud kids and an occasional sunbathing smoker. That Stinky Beach lacked pristine characteristics never bothered me, I went there to swim; and for that, it was perfect in its imperfection. 

Fast forward a few years and apparently someone out there disagreed. Chrissy and I turned off the main road and onto a potholed, gravelly road that ran parallel to the train tracks, and as we approached the non-designated parking spot where I used to park, I noticed that Stinky Beach had been transformed. It resembled an actual state park. I had a moment of panic, was Stinky Beach too classy for a dog that drops her wet, dirt-covered ball in strangers laps? Would we interrupt the serenity that was the newly reformed Stinky Beach? I decided the answer was no, so we parked, let Izzy out of the car, and sent her out into the lake in quest of her orange ball. As her dog paws ferociously paddled towards the floating ball, leaving a gentle wake behind her, I had a moment. The lake was the most beautiful I had ever seen it. The water was clear enough to see the nuanced colors of stones at the bottom of the lake, and the water was as still as a pane of glass, perfect for skipping stones, paddle boarding, playing fetch with the dog or – most obviously – swimming.

Swimming is something I did because I could no longer run. And consequently it was something I always secretly resented. Until I started open water swimming. Open water swimming in the lake gave me a sense of freedom I had not felt since before 1997 when my body began forsaking me.

Back in Baltimore, during my earliest days of learning to swim for reasons other than survival, I would painstakingly splash gracelessly from one end of the YMCA's pool to the other. In between laps I would catch my breath and attempt to glean tips from the Catonsville swim team, who practiced in the three lanes to my left. I listened to their coach and watched their arms under the water. I figured out that the key to surviving more than 50 yards at a time was to exhale when my face was in the water, and to keep my fingers tightly together. My legs – supposedly the least important part of your body when swimming freestyle – fatigued quickly. After about 500 yards of swimming, they would slowly start to sink and I quickly resembled a fish without fins. In my quest to find a solution to my bottom half's lack of buoyancy, I tried sticking kickboards between my legs. Although I liked the shark-like image of the blue kickboard sticking vertically out of the water, this solution proved cumbersome during turns. Mercifully, the coach of the swim team, acknowledging my plight, offered me a buoy that was actually designed to suspend one's legs, and required much less finagling. The downside? I no longer resembled a shark. The upside? It actually stayed between my legs and I learned how to flip turn.

Slowly but surely my endurance improved and my previously toned runner's legs were exchanged for broadening shoulders and powerful arms. I could never swim fast, but eventually I could swim far. Most significantly, despite the fact that I was only begrudgingly a swimmer, swimming started to yield the same results that running had in my previous life. On days where my predominating thoughts centered on fear and loathing of MS or teaching -related conundrums, after an hour and a half in the pool I discovered that I could (usually) swim myself happy.

I still remember the school policewoman at City College high school asking me where I was going one spring afternoon after school. I told her I was heading to the gym for my daily swim and she looked at me with pure amazement, "You swim every day? I never learned to swim and I always wished I could, I feel like swimming is the closest a person can come to flying." I told her I had never thought about it that way (which I hadn't), and told her it was never too late to learn. Then I drove to the pool, and completely forgot about what she said.

Until I started open water swimming. In my younger years (read: pre-MS), swimming in the lake with something I did solely for temperature regulation on hot days. The weeds, the jagged stones and the occasional fish all creeped me out, and the frigid temperatures of the water in Cayuga Lake deterred me from ever venturing in for more than a few minutes at a time. Post-MS, once I tried it, once I tried swimming in the lake on summer afternoons, my entire perspective on swimming changed. The cold water fueled my body like 80° pool water never could, the rocks no longer bothered me because I could not walk anyway and the weeds were a nuisance that I learned to embrace.

In the lake I felt weightless in the water. Swimming above the weeds, I started to imagine that I was flying. That the weeds were trees beneath me. My arms would pull me through the water, elbow up first, forearm extending, fingertips in the water, arm following, pushing the water behind, gliding forward, repeat on the other, breathe. The water felt like satin against my skin. There was silence except for the rippling of the water.

There is nothing in my post-MS life that ever rivaled swimming in Cayuga Lake. It was something I never would have attempted had I not lost my ability to run. As such, swimming was a gift. And it brought unexpected peace to a body of unexpected tumult. 

I stopped swimming even before I lost my arms. It became impossible for me to change into my bathing suit independently, especially after a long day of teaching. A gym outing that had previously taken two hours started to take almost 3, and after climbing out of the pool and flopping onto a towel in my wheelchair, I would not have the energy to wheel to the locker room, stand, shower, get changed and drive home. So I froze my gym membership and tried to embrace the extra time in the afternoon between school and dinner. I took my dog on long walks using my scooter. I spent more time at my kitchen table editing lesson plans. I ate delicious dinners with my roommate. I had time to meet friends for dinner during the week. All of those things were enjoyable in their own right, but none of them melted my stress away. None of them quelled the fear and loathing of MS or re-centered me after a frustrating day in the classroom. None of them was a proper buffer between a stressful day and a peaceful night like an hour and a half in the water.

I have learned to deal with stress in different ways now. Occasionally by writing, but mostly by coiling everything together into tight little knots that take up residence in my trapezius muscles. A coping mechanism that I most assuredly need to work on. But every once in a while, my dreams rescue me from myself, and I can fly. I always have MS in my dreams, and there is always a stressful situation that I need to deal with in a more efficient manner than my legs will allow: I need to catch a connecting flight in a busy airport, there are bad guys chasing me, or sometimes I need to reach someone who needs my help and there are crowds of people in my way. In all of these circumstances, the common denominator is that I can escape the stress by flying. But never do I have wings, or do I flap my arms in the air. Instead I jump into the air, do a few dolphin kicks and start swimming to safety. I leave the danger and the people beneath me stroke by stroke and I feel the same freedom that I felt years ago in Cayuga Lake.

On The Meaning of Life

When death comes

like the hungry bear in autumn;

when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse

to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;

when death comes

like the measle-pox

when death comes

like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,

I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:

what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything

as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,

and I look upon time as no more than an idea,

and I consider eternity as another possibility,

and I think of each life as a flower, as common

as a field daisy, and as singular,

and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,

tending, as all music does, toward silence,

and each body a lion of courage, and something

precious to the earth.

When it's over, I want to say all my life

I was a bride married to amazement.

I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it's over, I don't want to wonder

if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,

or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

Mary Oliver, When Death Comes

The above is one of my favorite poems by one of my favorite poets, it encapsulates everything I want from my own life and what I believe everyone should aspire to: to make of [their] life something particular and real. It also, though, highlights my current existential crisis, and leads me to wax philosophical while writing a potentially self-indulgent blog. A blog that, I may note, explains why I publish a blog so infrequently: I pick hard topics.

It is amazing how, as my body and its function continue to wane, my cognitive dissonance grows exponentially. I feel increasingly as though I am having an out-of-body experience because really, this body is not me. I see myself in the mirror and internally gasp: this must be a mistake. Despite my horror though, despite my unwillingness to accept the reflection I see, there I am. Furrow my brows as I might, I'm not going anywhere. It is me staring back at myself with skinny arms and bad posture, it is me in a wheelchair that is slowly engulfing my entire body, it is just me. But without a body that works, what does that mean anymore? Am I my thoughts? Am I my memories? Am I the words I speak and the people I love? Who am I? I took a class in college called the Philosophy of Mind where I wrote a paper articulating that a person’s self is separate from his chemical makeup. I had only been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis a year and a half prior to that course, so my disease had nothing to do with my convictions. Nevertheless, at 20 years old I was a steadfast dualist and nothing could convince me otherwise: a person is more than his or her physical makeup; identity is indelible, invincible and inextricable from a person’s body, yet it endures even when the body does not.

From my current vantage point, I wonder, is that a good thing? What gives an invincible identity its value? Moreover, what gives a lasting identity its happiness? I still agree with my 20-year-old self, I still believe that my self will persevere in the face of my body's demise, but I question – sometimes – whether or not this is a good thing? This is the root of my existential crisis: it is hard for me to find fulfillment or to attribute value to an identity that can no longer do anything with its intentions or desires.

When I took education classes while getting my masters, we learned about Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. In the context of teaching, the idea was that a student could not reach his highest potential academically until his basic needs were met. In the context of life, the pyramid represents what steps we must ascend in order to reach our highest potential, our actualized, best selves. We cannot reach the top of his pyramid without first meeting our physiological and safety needs, and without achieving a basic level of security and belonging. Up until a few years ago, I felt as though I had things pretty much figured out when it came to this Maslow character: with caregivers I could complete necessary tasks to achieve safety and survival, I felt a sense of belonging thanks to my family and friends and students, and my achievements gave me the esteem I needed to motivate me towards my life’s purpose. There were numerous glitches along the way, and I by no means lived a perfectly fulfilled and “self actualized” life, but I felt generally as though I had climbed to the top of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, figured out what brought me fulfillment and joy, and then watched the entire pyramid flip over on itself (and me). So here I sit with the weight of the pyramid (and all of its competing needs) suffocating the self I had come to know and love.

Given the fact that I am currently squished beneath a theoretical pyramid, what is my next step? How do I find fulfillment and joy again within a broken body, how do I take solace in the endurance of a self that feels shattered?

Accepting the numerous roadblocks between my current reality and my previously imagined full potential, I wonder what to do next? I envisioned my fullest potential would encapsulate some, if not all, of the following: running, horseback riding, swimming, playing the piano, drawing oil pastels that would adorn the walls of my own house, teaching, maybe getting a PhD in educational philosophy, starting a program for at-risk middle schoolers in Baltimore city, writing a book, adopting kids and eventually leaving this world behind knowing that I had tried to make things a little bit better while I was in it. From the vantage point of someone who can no longer move, I understand that I need to reimagine this vision. I need to reconstruct a vision that lies somewhere between the superhuman Kate-goals of yesteryear, and my current expectations of myself that often involve just making it through each day. I need to make peace with the fact that the most time-consuming aspects of my day-to-day involve attending to my basic needs, and acquiesce to the fact that reaching the top of Maslow's pyramid will require a lot more patience this time. 

First, I need to rewrite my fullest potential under entirely new circumstances. My life continued after my previous achievements receded into memory: I am no longer a runner, a student, a horseback rider, a swimmer, a pianist, an artist or – most painfully – a teacher. I am no longer any of the things that gave me my previous identity; that gave me pride; that brought me joy. In my multiple sclerosis-imposed stillness, I have turned inwards and faced some unwelcome realizations. Namely, that just because you no longer do something does not mean that that part of you disappears. Just because I no longer can run does not mean I am no longer a runner at my core. This realization makes the grieving process difficult, because it is hard to move forward while the ghosts from my past insist they are part of my present. I know that I am more than what I have done with my life, yet the memories and the love I have for the things I did, construct an identity that is plagued by a constant level of inescapable sadness.

And that is not who I am. My fullest potential is not mired in grief.

Because despite the sadness, I do still feel pride in my resilience, and I do still find joy in the world around me. I can still love, I can still communicate, I can still appreciate the beauty in my surroundings and feel immense gratitude for the world I live in. There are times when something so simple can make my heart break open: my favorite horse at the Equine Research Park down the street rubbing my cheek with her nose, Izzy climbing onto my wheelchair with all four legs just to kiss my face, Truman curling up next to my legs under the covers, and any type of physical affection that isn’t functionally required. I love seeing people, out of the corner of my eye, watch in awe as Kelly carries me on and off her boat by herself, and I love watching the clouds streak by above me as we motor down the lake. I love when the sun hits my face on an otherwise chilly day, and when my dog demonstrates unmitigated joy at something as simple as her ball. I love when certain songs transport me elsewhere with their lyrics and melodies, and when someone constructs a perfect bite of delicious food to savor in my mouth. I love making others laugh, even if it is at my own expense, and sharing memories with old roommates that occasionally make me cringe. I love watching my friends’ kids grow up, and seeing my nephews live a childhood full of love and sports and more sports. I love hearing from old students, and knowing that so many of them have turned into fully productive and thoughtful adults. There are so many things that make my heart feel raw and alive and full of gratitude, that I need to stop listing them for time’s sake.

So, for now maybe my best self needs to fully embrace what I have when I have it. And to allow the memories of my previously fulfilled life to exist inside of me without strangling my ability to appreciate the now. I need to continue doing what I can with what I have even though what I have is subject to change, and may never again be what it once was. Maybe I can be more patient when my self is sad, and more forgiving of my interrupted life goals. Maybe I can realize that despite a body I would vastly prefer to live without, it is still my responsibility to do more – as Mary Oliver says – than visit this world.

There is a cliché statement, it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved before. I have lost more than I ever imagined I could, and it has shaken me to my very foundation. But sitting in the cemetery of my life’s achievements, I hope I can concentrate on more than just the myriad gravestones around me.

I had a roommate once who said, in slightly melodramatic fashion, "Is this all there is?" And her boyfriend at the time looked at her and said, "I think so. But this is so much."

My 21-year-old self knew those words were true then, and I know them to be true now. But sometimes when I am chipping away at the bottom of Maslow's pyramid on a daily basis I forget.

On relationships

One of my favorite ex-boyfriends said something to me that he might as well have tattooed onto my skin, because, like most hurtful words, they were seared into my memory with the intensity of a young calf being branded, you know, my friends all say they could never date a chick in a wheelchair. An obvious response to the comment is: what a d-bag, I can't believe he said that to you, he probably has dick friends, he was trying to make himself feel good, etc. etc. And while there is truth to all of those responses, I'm sure his was not a fabricated statement. Further, while the hurtful words should never have been uttered, the sentiment makes sense.

For me, sometimes the only thing more difficult than living with this dumb disease, is trying to figure out how to be someone's partner while having it. I think I cognitively understood the risk going into this, and I think she did too. But the actual day-to-day is so. Damn. Hard. Why, you may ask? Let me shed some light on this subject:

No matter how long I am in a relationship I don't know if I will ever feel good enough. I don't think I will ever feel worthy of a beautiful, kind, hard working, compassionate partner because I will never be able to give her what she gives me. I understand that this is an unhealthy perspective to bring to our relationship, because it makes me feel like I need to prove that I deserve her. Mainly to myself. But like an ant trying to climb itself out of quicksand, I don't know that I will ever achieve my objective. And for those of you who wish to allay my fears, please don't. Just hear me out.

If I did not rely on caregivers to drive me to and from the grocery store I would love to bring her dinner or flowers five days a week, but then again, if I did not need caregivers to drive me somewhere, I would just help her make dinner and wash the dishes any night she was free. As it stands though, I try to do something helpful once a week, even if it is as banal as running errands for her at target. Other than that, she is stuck working too much, getting too little sleep, and taking care of her house, lawn, dog and – on the weekends – me. I cannot cook, I cannot drive to get takeout and I cannot even Google takeout menus without my Dragon software. Beyond that, once we eat I cannot help clean up. We cannot sit on the couch and watch a movie eating pizza without Kelly placing the order, driving to pick it up and then physically feeding it to me. I have caregivers come over to Kelly's every evening and morning of the weekend, but once they leave she is on her own to help me pee, give me a baclofen, straighten my left arm, push my shoulders back etc. No matter how long of a day she has or how stressed she is, my needs never give anyone a break. And, as Kelly is a human and not a robot, she is occasionally exasperated and I can tell. My response, no matter how effectively she attempts to hide her exasperation, is to recoil to the same spot that I was sitting over a decade ago on my green couch in Baltimore, where the words, my friends said they could never date a chick in a wheelchair were first introduced to my brain. Clearly this is not a helpful or healthy response, and unless I can squash my insecurities and remind myself of all the things I do bring to this relationship and of all the memories we have already shared in our almost 3 years together, I inevitably come out with something like: "I think we should break up."

Which never fails to piss Kelly off.

But I cannot help myself. I feel so selfish imposing my life upon her, and I immediately think of all the alternative scenarios that could enrich her life tenfold in my absence – she could be with someone who could drive to pick up the pizza, feed themselves, cleanup and even take themselves to the bathroom afterwards. It is my fault that she is not with this fictitious, superior alternative to me, which means I am a selfish person and if I truly loved her I would set her free. That is 100% my thought process, and 0% what I actually want, but sometimes it feels like the only solution to the stress in our relationship.

Meli – my best friend since high school – listens to me dutifully when I relay my relationship woes, and almost always responds with: "Kate, this is your shit, this is not Kelly's. You need to get a hold of your insecurities and deal with this on your own." And I know this is true, but sometimes self-doubt trumps reason and I speak. Which always makes an otherwise benign issue much less benign.

Because the next stage of the "fight" which was inadvertently caused by her exasperation, leads me to explain all the ways her life could be better without me, while she becomes increasingly annoyed. The more annoyed she gets, the more insecure I become and eventually we both get quiet and go to bed angry. Except unlike Kelly, I cannot sleep if there is any semblance of conflict in my life, so while she falls instantly into a peaceful-seeming slumber, I lie there and turn a perfectly normal confrontation into a Dr. Phil-worthy catastrophe. In addition to my insecurity is running rampant, I also start thinking, she knows I can't sleep when she's angry with me, why couldn't she reassure me? Why couldn't she at least put her hand on my arm or give me a kiss good night? How can she be so cold? In reality, I know at this point that Kelly's sole objective is to go to sleep and she has no ulterior motives, I cannot understand how anyone could sleep without resolution.

This is just one example of an issue that highlights both the normal and the abnormal aspects of our relationship. I think it is normal for a couple to have different confrontation strategies. I think it is normal for one person to want to resolve everything immediately while the other needs to digest and talk things over later. I think it is normal for a couple to have different sleeping preferences, and it is even normal to bicker about one person being "needier" than the other. Beyond that however, this scenario is completely abnormal. Our relationship is completely unbalanced, and it weighs on both of us in completely different ways. Further, it is difficult for either of us to vent about our respective burdens in any type of healthy and honest way without compounding my insecurities or Kelly's guilt. The obvious solution: vent to someone else. However, while obvious, this solution is not always viable because our individual burdens are so unique to us. All of our friends are in significantly more balanced relationships, or at the very least, in relationships where one person is not both a partner and a caregiver to the other. Even my therapist, who always offers a compassionate and judgment free ear, has yet to offer any concrete advice.

So until we find an equally unbalanced couple out there, we will continue to rely on our own strength. We will rely on our own patience, our own resilience and our own commitments to each other and to ourselves. Ultimately the success of this relationship comes down to two things: trust and choice. I need to trust that for Kelly, our three years together trumps her occasional frustrations with my body. I need to trust that she loves me and she chose me for the person I am in spite of the body I inhabit. At the same time, she needs to trust that when I say things like, "I think we should break up", it is coming from a place of deep insecurity and never from a place of rational thought. She also needs to trust that I chose her. And I acknowledge that this choice comes with great responsibility; responsibility to address my insecurities because she deserves the healthiest version of me possible. Trust and choice.

I will probably struggle until the day I die to understand why Kelly chose me, but it is a struggle I will happily embrace if she is by my side. Because as long as Kelly chooses to "date [this] chick in a wheelchair", this chick will work to believe it is a choice she does not regret.

I just hope that next time that I lose the internal battle with myself and I hastily suggest a break up, she will trust that I am coming from a deeply sad space and will summon enough patience to put her hand on my arm before we fall asleep.