Introducing Gem

 

Shortly after posting my last blog, I spent the next month doubled down on service dog applications. I submitted initial applications to 10 different service dog organizations throughout the country and received official follow-up applications from only two programs: ACTS (Assistant Canine Training Services) in North Conway, New Hampshire and K9s for Mobility in Cheyenne, Wyoming. I filled out each extensive application, detailing the extent of my disability, my familiarity with dog ownership and the types of tasks a potential service dog might complete for me. I solicited references from friends who could attest to my ability to care for a dog despite my physical limitations and harassed my neurologist to complete a rather lengthy questionnaire explaining the specifics of my disability. I was then asked to compile videos showing the layout of both the inside and outside of my house. To my surprise, within a week I was offered a Zoom interview with both programs. Neither ACTS nor K9s for Mobility mentioned anything specific about the timeline I could anticipate, but I looked forward to both interviews with a renewed sense of hope. At the very least, the amount of time and concentration I spent completing the applications got my mind off the almost suffocating loneliness I felt without Izzy by my side.

 

When comparing the two programs, I ultimately felt more drawn towards ACTS because of its (relative) proximity to Ithaca (an eight-hour drive as opposed to a flight requiring layovers etc.), and because of the warmth and commitment I felt when meeting Nan Ippolito, the director of client services and Mary Russell, the director of graduate services during the interview. However, two weeks later I interviewed via Zoom with K9s for Mobility in Cheyenne and, catching me completely off guard, they invited me to fly out there in October to meet potential “matches.” Wanting to be completely transparent with both programs, I emailed ACTS immediately and told them I was invited to Cheyenne to meet potential service dogs in October, but that I first wanted to inquire about what type of wait-time I might expect through their program. To my complete surprise, Nan asked me if I could possibly delay booking travel by a week because they planned to “evaluate” one of their current dogs on August 31. Contingent upon the positive outcome of that evaluation, they were planning to offer her to me. But, if she failed her evaluation I could expect a 1 to 2 year wait for another potential match. I immediately channeled my cosmic energy and prayers to all the things: Jesus, the universe and Izzy’s indestructible spirit. I do not know what role dead dogs play in facilitating future dog ownership for the people they leave behind (especially when said dog actively despised most of her fellow four-legged friends), but I desperately wanted Izzy’s help in finding her successor. So I asked all powers that be – Izzy included – to guide this unnamed dog to pass her evaluation if and only if she would be a perfect fit for me and my unconventional lifestyle.

 

I must have refreshed my Gmail inbox 327 times on the afternoon of August 31, but I did not hear a word from Nan and started to assume the worst. I reassured myself that everything would be okay, I didn’t feel “ready” for a new dog anyway. The next morning, I stumbled through my duties with Mary and tried to focus on other things. It wasn’t until my post-stander bathroom routine that I received a phone call from an unknown number and answered eagerly, hoping it would not be another reminder about my car’s extended warranty. It wasn’t. It was Nan. I felt my heart leap into my throat as soon as I heard her voice. When her opening sentence was, “Kate, I have great news…” I started crying before she even finished her sentence. She must have been confused by my silence, but my words were unable to fight their way through the heart-shaped lump in my throat. I look imploringly at Mary as if to say, say something for me, I can’t talk, but Mary was crying as well. Nan went on to explain that the dog they were offering me was a black lab named Gem, and she would be mine by Thanksgiving if I could coordinate plans to make it work.

 

After what could only be perceived as an awkward silence, I was finally able to articulate some sort of affirmative response in between halted breathing and inaudible sobs and attempted to assure Nan that these were happy tears. Happy tears that I didn’t know I was even able to produce. Before Izzy died in June, it had been nine years since I could remember producing actual tears out of my eyeballs. In fact, I communicated concern about this to my doctor a few years ago, wondering if perhaps MS had stolen my ability to emote properly, or if my years of Lexapro consumption had finally done irreparable damage to my limbic system preventing me from physically producing tears. Whatever the cause of my relatively recent emotionless existence, my last conscious memory of crying was on July 1, 2012, when I left Baltimore to move home to Ithaca. However, when Izzy died, it was as though she bequeathed me the gift of tears once again; losing her was immensely painful, but for the first time in nine years the pain had somewhere to go rather than inside my body, it streamed down my cheeks. When Nan told me about Gem that afternoon it was the first time that I realized I also was capable of tears of joy.

 

Throughout this process I have had numerous conversations with Nan where I have doubted my worthiness of an actual service dog. Dogs raised through ACTS have more skills and knowledge than many middle school students I have taught, and considering the fact that I almost always have a caregiver with me, would I be a waste of a service dog’s abilities? Do the people in my life negate my need for a service dog? The self-doubt continued to spiral: am I too disabled for a service dog? Would the skills of a service dog be squandered in my household where so many of my needs require the dexterity of fingers? Are there so many caregivers on my caregiving team that consistency would be impossible? Am I destined to bore or – worse yet – ruin an actual service dog? When I expressed these fears to Nan prior to my interview, she was so reassuring – as the layers of smothering insecurity piled on, she assured me that I was a perfect candidate for a dog of this caliber; that I deserved a service dog. So I moved forward, committed myself to what would inevitably be a long wait for a dog, and attempted to intercept my insecurities before they rendered me dog-less forever.

 

More amazingly, while ACTS requires two weeks of “team training” once clients are matched with their dog, they were willing to waive the two-week requirement for me, understanding that it would be a practical impossibility for me to tear one of my caregivers away from their own families for a 14-day stay in New Hampshire. Nan asked me if I could commit to three days of training and – before even checking with Mary or Shelly – I immediately said yes.

 

So between September 1 when I got the good news from Nan, and November 19 when I was able to reserve an accessible hotel room for two caregivers, myself and my mom, I shared the good news with everyone and started trying to imagine my life with an animal who wasn’t Izzy. When I told my college students, it’s possible they were almost as excited as I was. In fact, two of my sixth year PT students offered to take me to North Conway, New Hampshire during their fall break, October 13-16, so I was able to meet Gem even before our scheduled mini-training in November.

Fast-forward to today, the Sunday after Thanksgiving. As I write this, I have a Shih Tzu on my lap and a beautiful black lab curled up on the floor next to my wheelchair. She is, as I suspected, smarter than a handful of middle school students I have taught and inexplicably loyal to a person who has neither trained her nor pet her. She has been “mine” for barely 48 hours and she has already picked my phone up off the floor and placed it on my lap after an inconvenient spasm sent it flying upside down and under the table, she has learned to “tug” the pocket door in my room open, and these are only two things that she has “learned” in a brand-new environment with people she hasn’t even known for a week. She stays in her “place” when we are eating, does not rudely beg for human food and loves to show off her ability to “go find help” when asked. My God brother’s nine-year-old daughter (with some minor assistance from me) taught her how to “tug open” the pocket door to my room, and our next task is to conquer tugging the blanket off of me at night when I am hot. I anticipate there will be growing pains ahead of us; she will test me and I might fail. I also know there is ample room inside my brain for continued self-doubt and ruminations over ways I will potentially fail as a service dog owner. But I am absolutely certain that whatever difficulties befall us in the distant or not so distant future, I will not face them alone. The team at ACTS will never be more than a phone call away, and I am looking forward to regular Zoom meetings in order to check in on both Gem’s progress and my own.

 

Perhaps most importantly, when I let her kiss my face, even when I am not disseminating pieces of cheese from my mouth as a reward, she squints her eyes and lays her ears back against her head while her tail wags and her hind end wiggles in a manner eerily similar to Izzy. When I invite her onto my bed before I go to sleep, she curls up adjacent to my pillow and rests her chin on my chest, and when I move from room to room during my four-hour morning routine, she follows at a distance before laying down nearby as if to supervise. She loves to pick things up off the floor for me, and last night even picked my mom’s phone off the floor next to the couch and placed it on her stomach as if to say, I’m willing to help you too, you know. And unbelievably, somehow, she seems to know that I am her person – at least for now. And equally surprising, I have found an almost endless capacity to love a dog with the same fervor that was once reserved for Izzy. Gem is an amazing dog, and I can’t help but believe there was a certain amount of providence involved in the two of us finding each other. Too many things just don’t make practical sense without a pinch of divinity mixed into the equation. So thank you, to all the things I implored while Gem was passing her evaluation with flying colors: Jesus and the universe and even the spirit of my precious Izzy beast. But thank you most of all to the people involved in making me cry tears of actual gratitude and joy. Thank you to the selfless puppy raisers and trainers who spent the last two years nourishing, loving and training Gem, to everyone who works for ACTS, to everyone who supported me throughout the painstaking application process, and to everyone who helped me make the arduous drive to New Hampshire in order to make this dog a part of my life. I hope she will be with me for a long, long time to come.

If anyone is able to make a donation to this incredible organization for Giving Tuesday, here is the link. I can promise your money is going to a fantastic cause.

https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=WFH4LZNL8M35G 

On Dog Motherhood

Two things in my life keep me sane: gratitude and perspective. I must say though, they do not come easily – especially when browsing social media or lamenting the exhaustive list of things I wish I could still do. Being grateful and keeping perspective require consciousness and effort that I frequently lack, but – once summoned – also enable me to be mostly happier than sad. Mostly.

 

That said, I am having a harder time than I care to admit moving forward without my dog. She wasn’t directly responsible for it, but she played a major role in helping me snooze the incessant clanging of my irrelevant biological clock in my early 30s – mainly by reminding me how insanely impractical motherhood would have been for me, and also by keeping me distracted in perpetuity by antics that will forever be unprecedented. Izzy was a daily source of joy amidst a life that is – to my chagrin – overwhelmingly characterized by frustration. She was my daily activity partner and reason to be outside – even during the winter. She was filled with shenanigans that were only barely eclipsed by her fierce loyalty to me. On a particularly dark day during the first half of her life, I called my brother and asked him if he would take Izzy if something happened to me; he – apparently understanding what I was alluding to – said no. He refused to raise a dog whose very existence reminded him of the saddest thing that had ever happened to him. I’m sure that was not exclusively the reason I opted for therapy rather than the alternative, but I cannot overstate the importance of having a responsibility to something outside of myself for the last 14 years. I know with absolute certainty that there will never be another dog like Izzy in my life, ever. I also know though that she cannot be the only dog I have in my adult life.

 

Which leads me to another sticking point: my reality-based fear that no other dog will ever know me as its mom. For the first five years of is Izzy’s life I fed her, trained her, pet her, brushed her, attempted to cut her nails and walked her (or otherwise exercised her) every single day. When I impulsively picked her up at the Baltimore SPCA in 2007, she rode back to my apartment on my lap as I precariously navigated 83 S. using hand controls as she crawled up my chest with razor-sharp puppy nails. Thankfully, because of those first five years together, she knew – no matter what I could or could not do for the last 9+ years of her life – that I was her person.

 

It is that feeling, the feeling of being seen, occasionally willfully ignored, unconditionally loved and simultaneously taken advantage of that made Izzy feel like my kid. I’m not delusional, I know that she was just a dog and I will never truly know the depths of love that a mother feels for her child. And part of me actually is relieved that I will never understand that type of love, because with it comes the possibility of hurt, frustration, and – for some moms – heartbreaking loss. But with Izzy, even when she was getting kicked out of dog parks for attempting to eat her furry friends, there was one thing that I never questioned, not even once: her love.

 

A few weeks ago, as Izzy lay next to me on the floor, I decided to investigate the possibility of adopting a service dog through Canine Companions. I have a rather extensive list of needs (as one might surmise) and some of those needs could be addressed by a well-trained and loyal dog. I completed a pre-application online in order to receive an actual application for said service dog, but the website warned that they are inundated with requests and it would take 4 to 6 weeks to receive the application. Further, once approved for said service dog, the waiting list to be paired with a dog can take as long as 20 months and culminates with a two-week long stay in Long Island in order to be appropriately matched and trained together. Understandably, neither my mom nor caregivers seem super eager about the prospect of a mandatory two weeks in Long Island to complete the adoption process, which leads me – indirectly – to this blog post.

 

How can I avoid spending the next two years of my life dogless?

 

And how can I ensure – if I do not adopt a legitimate service dog – that my next dog will know I am his or her person? In my unrealistic dreams, Izzy is running wild in doggy heaven while finding her four-legged successor that she will magically direct into my life. Maybe this dog will arrive at the Tompkins County SPCA while Shelly is volunteering; maybe a perfect Kate-companion will end up surrendered in the exam room of one of my veterinarian friends; maybe he or she will magically wander into my backyard. More practically however, I know that – just as I must actively choose gratitude and perspective on a daily basis – finding my next dog will require some type of conscious work and patience that I’m not entirely sure I possess. Writing this post and opening myself to the possibility of a future that is absent of Izzy, but not necessarily absent of joy, is maybe just a small part of that work.

 

On Saying Goodbye…

During my teaching days in Baltimore, I managed to fit more into one day than I can even imagine squeezing into a week at this point. I usually stayed at school until sometime between four and five, and then drove home to my apartment to grab my dog before heading to the dog park and eventually the gym. The drive between my apartment and the park could take anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes depending on traffic, and as soon as we turned onto Boston St., Izzy immediately started whining in anticipation. On a particularly anxious day she actually peed in the passenger seat of my car when we were still five minutes away; that's how much she loved the dog park. On one afternoon when I returned to my apartment, it took me a minute to find my keys and unlock the door and I heard Izzy on the other side, repeatedly whacking her tail against the wall in anticipation of my arrival. When I finally opened the door, she charged me with the force of a wild beast, leaping from the doorway of my apartment directly onto my lap with all four of her feet. Unfortunately my wheelchair, already weighed down by the backpack of school supplies hooked over its handles, immediately flipped over, landing the chair, myself and Izzy upside down on the floor of the hallway in front of my door. Undeterred, Izzy placed one paw on each of my shoulders and licked my entire face until I was crying for mercy (and, embarrassingly, one of my neighbors came out to rescue me).

I'm telling this story right now, because Thursday was Izzy's last day with me. It was a spur of the moment decision made easier when my friend Annette, who just happens to be an end-of-life veterinarian, came over and told me her stomach looked potentially filled with fluid and her heart arrhythmia was more pronounced than usual. She had already firmly rejected regular dog food for more than a week in favor of homemade beef stew (thanks to my mom), baked cod (also thanks to my mom) and over easy eggs (thanks to Mary). Additionally, she was living with lymphoma, hypertension, a heart arrhythmia, hyperparathyroidism and splenic masses since the end of January. With a lump in my throat I knew, rationally, I was prolonging the Inevitable and I elected to avoid any further discomfort to the dog who literally brought joy to my life every single day for the past 14+ years. After relocating to the couch, and putting Izzy's sedated head on my lap, we put her to sleep. Forever.

I'm unclear on where I stand when it comes to the afterlife these days, but I have to believe I will see her again. And I can only hope that when we meet, wherever it is, she will be just as excited as she was when I attempted to wheel through my door 10 years ago.

On Podcasts

 

Historically I am a bad sleeper. I can date my first bout of insomnia back to the age of seven when, for whatever reason, I was plagued with the anxiety that accompanies sleeplessness. Make no mistake, I was seven years old, there was absolutely nothing in my life to be anxious about, but it was dark, and I was alone and everyone else was sleeping and I was supposed to be sleeping, and oh my God why couldn’t I sleep? Reading became an obsessive antidote to this anxiousness from that point forward, and – even throughout high school – I would invariably fall asleep with the adjacent reading lamp still on and my face plastered against the pages of a book. My sleep-related anxiety even prohibited me from reaching over to turn the light switch off, as the darkness indicated time to sleep, and despite my heavy eyelids and my barely conscious ability to comprehend the written word, the movement of my hand towards the lamp would immediately catalyze a racing heart. I used tiny reading lamps throughout college, so my roommates could deal with the light, and years later, once my disease had rendered my fingers unable to turn the pages of a book, I could still navigate a Kindle – backlit appropriately for reading in the dark, and easy enough to resume if I fell asleep and woke myself back up. For a few underappreciated years, the Kindle was the perfect solution: I could read without concerns about the anxiety-provoking light switch. Unfortunately, it too was only a temporary fix as multiple sclerosis soon came for even my left thumb, leaving me alone in the dark with nothing but my thoughts. But my thoughts were darker than my bedroom, and I could not sleep without something, anything, to occupy my mind other than my own fears. At first, audiobooks seemed a natural solution, but I frequently fell asleep in the middle of a chapter only to wake up hours later with the book over and no memory of where exactly I had lost consciousness. Eventually, I was gifted an Amazon Echo and was introduced to a brand-new anxiety antidote: podcasts. So no, I no longer sleep with the light on, but I do frequently find myself snoring about 15 minutes into an episode of This American Life, the Moth or – my personal favorite – Terrible, Thanks for Asking (TTFA).

 

A recent episode motivated me to reach out to the host, Nora McInerney, and my friend Lena convinced me to publish my email in a blog. So here it is:

 

Hi Nora!

I am an avid TTFA listener for a few reasons: 1. I am occasionally predisposed to self-pity (which I abhor) and I appreciate that your show offers much-needed perspective. 2. I believe deeply in the philosophy that two things can be true at the same time – your life can be hard but simultaneously joyful, painful but simultaneously rich, frustrating but retrospectively hilarious. In short, I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1997. I was 19 and a sophomore in college where I had (ironically) been recruited to run track. Although my original plan was to "beat" my diagnosis, deal with the temporary setback and get back to running, my immune/nervous system had other plans. I was never able to run again yet did – despite being rather gangly – attempt to throw the shotput in order to stay involved with the team. Three years later I graduated with my BA in history and got a job through TFA (teach for America, not to be confused with Thanks for Asking) teaching middle school in Baltimore Maryland. My disease had progressed significantly at that point, but I was still able to walk – albeit with a noticeable limp – and I kept major progression at bay by taking steroids every four months (great for the skin by the way). I taught for 12 years (although teaching middle school nearly killed me and after three years I got a job teaching high school), but by April 2012 I was using a power wheelchair and could no longer use either of my arms reliably and was paying (out-of-pocket) for live in caregivers. When I was no longer able to sign a hall pass, I finally retired. Leaving teaching was, and still is, the hardest loss I ever suffered. It obviously sucks not being able to walk or use my arms anymore, but at that point teaching had become my identity – even more than running had been in college.

 

All this to say, your "Who Cares part 3" episode really resonated with me. When I finally left teaching I was paying more for caregiving than I was making as a teacher (with tenure and a Masters from Hopkins). Luckily I had a number of supportive friends that encouraged me to start fundraising – probably much like you had to do when you finally accepted that your husband needed part-time care. Asking my friends, most of whom were also teachers, to donate money to me was a hard pill to swallow, but with endless amounts of help from a support system that I'm still not entirely convinced I deserve, I have held an annual caregiving fundraiser every year since 2011. Even now that I retired from teaching and live in my childhood home with my mom (my dad also has MS and lives in a nursing home, something he also pays for out-of-pocket), the fundraisers have continued (although I did have to skip the in-person event this past year thanks to Covid). If it were not for the generosity of my friends, family and community (I currently live in Ithaca New York), I have no idea how I would survive. I spend – on average – between $500 and $800 a week for an annual total that surpasses my SSDI + my teaching pension. And yet because I receive that annual income, I am unable to qualify for any type of public assistance. It is a double-edged sword, and fortunately (?) one that the general population knows nothing about.

 

So thank you. Thank you for putting that valuable information out into the world and thank you for understanding and validating not only people’s pain, but also their resilience. I'd love a chance to share my story with you in more detail if you are interested, including but not limited to my somewhat recent attempt at a relationship which ended five years later in an unimaginably painful way.

 

Also, without working hands, this email is only possible thanks to my Dragon dictation software. It gives me a voice and makes navigating my computer possible. It also occasionally makes me lose my mind and want to throw my computer out the window. But that is why I see a therapist!

 

With gratitude, Kate Hooks