The adding up of small victories

I’ve been waiting to blog again until I had something cheerful to say, and here it is: Lizzie is being adopted by her foster mom! Dorian’s eye infection has miraculously cured itself! And I was able to get Claude’s chemotherapy meds into him tonight with just one towel and one friend helping me!! Yay!

Okay, that’s THREE cheerful things.

To back up, and drop the bomb: Claude has cancer. My oldest feline friend of a decade now (13-16 years old) was slowly breaking down – losing weight, hollowing out in the eyes, looking distant and ill. An ultrasound led to a colonoscopy / endoscopy and the diagnosis of small cell lymphoma of the duodanem – the small intestines. With meds, they told me, he could have a good year or two of quality time left. On top of the news about Patricia, this could not have hit me harder. I made him sick of me that first day, holding him too tightly and weeping on his soft black fur.

Get a grip, woman, he seemed to say with his cool stare. I’m not going anywhere. 

Worse, almost, than the news is the fact that my darling, gentle Claude de Pussy turns into the Tasmanian Devil when you try to give him meds. Sticks all four legs out rigidly and digs in, jerking his head and sending any medication flying. His diagnosis was revealed just days before I was supposed to go to Dallas for Patricia’s memorial and it looked like I might need to cancel my third trip in a row in order to care for him. But my kind and fabulous vet clinic offered to hospitalize him and give him his meds, and I jumped on it – hoping, perhaps, they could “break” him of his rebellious ways.

No such luck.

I went to pick him up when I got home Monday and asked them to show me how to do it, and it took two technicians to get the two medications (prednisone and a liquid chemo drug) down his throat. When they were done he sputtered and foamed at the mouth and I dissolved in tears. How on earth was I supposed to save his life if he wouldn’t take the life-saving drugs? It turns out it takes a village.  (Thanks to Kim for helping me last night.) But it also makes me wonder if we’re doing the right thing, if it takes this much effort to “help.”

If Claude is dying, is there virtue in the peaceful, quiet death? Or like humans, and to quote the great Dylan Thomas, should we “rage against the dying of the light?” I want Claude to have the best life he can while he remains in this body. But do I owe it to him to force medicine into him that will prolong and improve his life?

I’ll be watching for signs from my sweet boy, and asking for guidance, before those decisions are made. St. Francis, it’s been a rough year. Cut your servant some slack, and send a little grace our way. Swaddle us with love and presence of mind to do the right thing.