If you know me, you know I am a spiritual biddy who firmly and stubbornly resonates with Astrology. In my experience, your zodiac chart is in essence your egotistical blueprint, each sign has their strengths and their weaknesses. Understanding these gives you an understanding of yourself. I am off topic, I know, but it is relevant to this part of the story.

I need to touch and feel and I need everything to be logical. When I am stressed, overwhelmed and in a spiral, the fastest way for me to stabilise myself and my emotions is to make a step-by-step plan which is usually hyper analytical and long winded. Anyone who knows anything about astrology can pick up my sun and moon sign from this statement..

I have included below Nahlas Chemotherapy protocol that was provided to us by the oncologist, as well as how I kept track of it in the first few weeks. As you can see, chemotherapy is a complicated treatment and in humans, this is all run by and monitored by super intelligent scientists who have studied medicine for years and years. I am not that person so I found myself becoming increasingly overwhelmed and confused as I was trying to navigate Leukemia, work, renovations, grief, stress and financial hardship. So creating this very clear and concise plan that I could touch, feel, see and tick off completed tasks instantly calmed me down and made it manageable.

This calendar was month one of a three month immediate ‘rescue protocol’. Just for reference.

The next section became about urgent care and warning signs of this.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves, the side effects and flow of effects of Nahla being on Chemotherapy and steroids is a whole other chapter of this story.

So, essentially we were taking Chlorambucil and Prednisolone daily, at home, administering it myself.

The first few treatments were awful. I had so much guilt around treating Nahlas cancer. I didn’t want to do it and I resented that I had to. My energy around it was hesitant and awkward, I was frustrated and grieving and Nahla did NOT take well to my mindset. Within two days of giving her the meds she had decided the experience was trash and disengaged from it. It became a struggle to get her to come near me once I opened the door and then to get her to swallow the tablets.

I don’t know if any of you have a Border Collie, but these dogs are smart. She realised very quickly what container had the Chemo pills in it and knew instantly when I opened that side of the fridge to become difficult and not come near me.

I remember one day, I was in the bathroom with her meds. I had to trick her into thinking I was having a shower, lock her in there, grab the meds then come back and sort it out in the bathroom so she couldn’t get away from me and she was NOT having it. Under no circumstance was that dog going to take those pills and I had a breakdown. I remember sitting on the floor panicking because the Chemo becomes inactive once it’s been out of the fridge for a period of time (this was an unreasonable, emotional response. Calm down Sarah…) and I didn’t know what to do anymore. She was sick, suffering and cranky and I was fighting a loosing battle.

I was crying on the floor, very dramatically and suddenly I just remembered, Nahla never used to play fetch. She had no interest in a ball whatsoever when she was younger but really loved to play with us, and someone pointed out to me one day, make the ball fun without her. Play with the ball between us and make it look SO fun so she associates the ball with joy and within days my at-the-time five year old BC was fetching the ball and she was damn well pleased about it.

So I decided to make Chemotherapy fun.

That’s a really stupid thing to say because Chemotherapy is not fun, it is gross and scary and toxic, but I didn’t really have a choice, so I had to give it a go. And no, hiding it in food did not work, she could smell the drugs and refused to eat it.

With my new found inspiration, I battled and got that day over and done with out of sheer stubbornnness then decided to change how it all worked the following morning.

The new way…

I got up, offensively early. Nahla is not an early riser and if the sun isn’t up, she has a look of absolute filth on her face should you dare interrupt her slumber, I will try capture a photo of this as it’s genuinely hilarious. Then I did something she did not expect, I got the ball and we went outside to have a play, sluggish but being a typical BC she agreed to come with me, it only took about five minutes to get her worked up and excited, then I simply asked her if she wanted to go to the beach. At the time I lived maybe a few hundred metres away from our local dog beach, and the ears pricked up immediately. Knowing she understands a scary amount of words, I said “Okay, shower, then beach.” And predictably she took herself into the bathroom, sat down and waited for me to come in. Yes, she is always in the bathroom when I shower. It’s just easier than having her open the door and let herself in. These dogs man, they’re so damn smart it hurts my soul.

So I bought in the meds, I did cop a side eye of filth here as well, twice in about ten minutes this particular day. But I just said ‘beach’ and she sat up, decided to swallow the tablets and I tell you I made a HUGE fuss. You would think this dog had won the damn olympics if you heard me, there was praise, there was treats, there was jumping and dancing, patting and belly rubs galore. Her response? See the photo below. Yesterday, she wouldn’t come within 50 metres of those tablets, today.. she was pleased about it. She then ran herself to the front door and barked at me to hurry up. I had officially found a way to manipulate the Queen of manipulation into doing what I wanted, she knew. She was sassy about it, but the beach was worth it and so was the fuss.

The lesson I learnt here, make the crappy thing worth it. The reward must outweigh the suffering and you may not have control over the suffering, but you damn sure do have control of the reward.

And from that day on, Nahla hated the vet, she hated being sick, when she has a flare up you can just tell she is so pissed off that she has to go through it again. But she knows that the reward is worth it. And the reward..

We have had another four and a half years together.

She is my best friend and my biggest inspiration. She is smart, logical, kind, loving, patient and so so accepting that she has a disease she cannot control and it has bought me so much joy to love her through all of it. The same way she has loved me through Kidney Failure.

People ask me why I do the things I do for her, it’s because when I was recovering from fourteen surgeries, she was right there next to me. Every time. Without fail. Loving me through my anger, resentment, sadness, withdrawals from pain medications and countless nights of pain and sickness. Nahla is the first ever love of my life and she has taught me more than any human has of unconditional love.

Our story is not done yet. After this particular day, things did get worse. Somehow… But it was the beginning of me becoming an entirely new person and I wanted to share how we found a way to make something so tragically sad, into one of the happiest memories of my life.

Until the next chapter, thank you for being here.

Sarah x