Crazy Shit We Tell Ourselves

Before Fred was my best boy, there lived this other "Mahmah's best boy...and his name was Kootney. He was a dignified Shepherd/Husky that did not have one single goofy bone in his body He was serious about everything...so serious. Even his woo woos were serious. You would come home and immediately he would woo at you with such a serious face you would immediately regret whatever excuse you used to leave the house.

In early 2013, I took him into the vet because he just was not himself. At the time I just thought I was being overly cautious. He was a 15 year old puppers and he had just had routine blood work and a full dentistry under anaesthetic. He was healthy as an ox. So I really thought the vet would attribute his slowness and slightly decreased appetite to his advanced years. But within seconds of starting her assessment our vet (my former boss) told me she thought he had Lymphoma......I remember thinking OMG... I hadn't checked his lymph nodes.... how had I missed the rather obvious sign.

What followed was 8 weeks of treatment with steroids and chemo in an attempt to buy us more time together...but alas that wasn't the case. I lost my handsome serious boy on March 7th 2013. I remember being plagued by guilt for not catching it sooner....thinking if we had started chemo earlier he may have had more good days. It was such a defining event for me, I ended up becoming "that dog parent" that constantly checked her dog for masses and rushed them to the vet for every abnormal bump and lump I found....no matter how minuscule.

And this is how I ended up feeling Fred's enlarged spleen back in February and rushed him in for diagnostics and an urgent splenectomy. On one hand I'm glad my unhealthy paranoia paid off.. and I'm hoping it has bought us some extra time with the boy. On the other hand I keep having these irrational, illogical & intrusive thoughts that none of this would be happening to Fred if hadn't been so paranoid about cancer and kept putting the idea in the universe mind. I know it is a ridiculous...it really is...but it will not go away no matter how much I ignore it. Sometimes you cant win against yourself. #CrazyShitWeTellOurselves