Where does choice take us when we live multi-species family lives?
When I learned my beloved dog, Murphy, most likely had splenic cancer, I knew that our long journey together was ending.
You don’t beat splenic cancer, you just delay the inevitable, and not usually for very long.
The problem is, when you find it early, like we did, you don’t have many symptoms: what took us to the vet that day, Dec. 26, 2011, was a cough that turned out to be bronchitis complicated by anemia and an infection. An X-ray revealed a splenic tumor.
The problem is, you don’t know if these tumors are cancer until you take them out. If it was cancer, it wouldn’t matter, because that cancer was aggressive and insidious: all you get is a bit of time, and then only if your dog survives the surgery and you add chemo to the mix.
What I did know is that the tumor was most likely growing, so if it wasn’t cancer, I was killing her by not removing it.
We talked to four vets: all believed it was cancer. Two vets were telling me to operate. The surgeon was leaving it to me, calling a person who refused surgery for their beloved animal “compassionate.” Our vet of choice was hesitant, insisting she was not an immediate candidate for surgery because of underlying bronchitis, complicated by arthritis, age, and heart issues.
Most important, Murphy was telling me not to operate.
Murphy and I had walked a long, sometimes difficult journey together: we both had health issues, we’d both largely recovered from them, and we were both nearly 14 years older than when we first met.
We’d had a lot of fun, met a lot of challenges, lived a great life together.
A life that was clearly ending.
We were at a crossroads. How would that life end?
I talked with Murphy about choice. Our life together had always been one of choice. I made particularly sure about this one: we hired Debrae FireHawk to talk with us. A loving, sharp intuitive, she knew us both quite well and was brave enough to walk this road with us.
So we talked with Debrae, and we talked alone together. The answers were the same. Murphy did not want surgery. I’d saved her life already, which was true, she’d had a few illnesses that resulted in major surgical bills, but they were all things that could be fixed.
I saw to it that they were. I knew very well that most people would not have done the things I did for Murphy. I did not understand why, only that the human-animal bond meant something else to them.
But this thing that was wrong wasn’t fixable. We could only delay the inevitable. If it was cancer.
Murphy was clear about what she thought, both when we talked with Debrae and when we talked alone. Murphy believed that she was simply at the end of her life: her body was slowly breaking down, getting weaker with age. She believed we would have more time together if we did not operate on her: she believed the surgery would most likely kill her, or cause her pain and suffering for some of the few weeks she had left.
I was very comfortable honoring her decision to not have surgery.
Until I started to doubt.
It seemed too easy: she didn’t want surgery, so we wouldn’t do it, but was that really the right thing?
What about fear? Major surgery scares all of us, and Murphy had been through a number of them.
Was she just afraid? Was she being fatalistic?
Was I passing the buck?
Here’s the thing. I am a professional intuitive. I talk with things: with animals, with dead people and animals, with buildings and volcanoes and, well, with just about anything. I can do that because I look at all life as being equal, and equality means free choice and responsibility, soul and consciousness.
I believed that Murphy could and should choose how she wanted her life to end.
But then I started thinking.
Was she making the right decision? Was I? When she was gone, would I regret not trying to save her?
If she didn’t have cancer, I was killing her by not removing a benign tumor that would absolutely grow and rupture and kill her.
What was I going to do?
Murphy and I talked about that. Her answer was profound, loving, right.
She said I had to decide for myself whether she was having surgery.
Her concern was what would happen to me afterwards. She knew how deeply I regretted losing my beloved English Cocker, Maggie. I know I euthanized Maggie too early, before she was ready, before we really knew what was wrong with her. I grieved that decision so deeply I couldn’t bear the thought of having another dog for 10 years.
Murphy said I had work to do, and she didn’t want it complicated by my grieving over making the wrong decision for her.
She was right. I had to think through what was happening. Figure out how I could live with the decision I made for the end of Murphy’s life. The decision we’d make together.
Free choice is essential to our growth as citizens of the planet. It’s also essential to family lives. And in the case of family lives, it comes down to what is best for the family after we consider what is best for the family member who is dying.
In this situation we didn’t have much time to spare. There just isn’t time when you’re dealing with this kind of tumor. So we set a date with Debrae, and I had 48 hours to decide what the right choice was for me.
For us.
I had two days to decide how Murphy was going to die.
I spent a lot of time in the bathtub those two days. Soaking. Thinking. Crying. Being rational and being angry. Being grateful I’d had such a wonderful life with Murphy. Grieving its coming end. Fearing my life without my soul mate. Resigning myself to whatever was the right choice.
And then I knew what the answer was.
When it was time to talk with Debrae I was calm and clear. I knew exactly where I was coming from: pain and disability.
My life has not been ordinary, not because as an intuitive I talk with things that most people don’t think can speak, but because I have lived most of my adult life handicapped and in pain. For over 15 years I was too ill to work at all, and lived mostly as a hermit. That is, in fact, how I learned to talk with things: I simply stepped out of normal human time.
I know how much pain and disability made my life uncomfortable, and often downright miserable. I have been disabled so long I don’t even comprehend life without pain. It’s exhausting and frustrating. I’m lucky I have a sense of humor.
I know that if I had splenic cancer my answer would be no surgery. I would want to feel as well as I could, and be as mobile and fun-loving as I could, for as long as possible.
That precluded surgery.
So when we sat down with Debrae, I saw Murphy waiting patiently for my answer: would we operate or not? Waiting with her were her guides, and my guides, those invisible beings some people call spiritual guides. And Grey, my planetary guide. And Alki, my second dog, and Grace the Cat. And Mount St. Helens, and my car. And the dragons, yes, real dragons, the king and queen of the dragon kingdom, for whom Murphy was an honored ambassador. Yes, ambassador.
I told Murphy how much I loved her. How a hundred million years with her would not be enough. How much I appreciated her sharing her life with me. How sorry I was that she was dying. How much I would miss her.
We cried together, again.
And then I asked her about the arthritis she’d suffered with for 2-1/2 years. Yes, it was controlled by that wonderful drug, Rimadyl, so she was getting along quite well, although she was slower and stiffer and always a bit uncomfortable. Yes, she’d chase her brother around the garage, but her life was definitely compromised by pain and disability. She was happy and fun-loving. And hurting.
I asked her, “Murphy, tell me how much the Rimadyl is helping with the arthritis pain?”
She said, “It takes about 50 percent of the pain away.”
That was kind of what I suspected, watching her.
I said, “Murphy, I love you so much, and that’s our answer. I won’t ask you to do surgery, to have more pain and disability, because it’s already enough. It’s the arthritis I’m saying ‘No’ to. It’s enough. I don’t want you to hurt any more. You want to walk the mystery, to be fully in the moment with death, and I will walk it with you. We won’t complicate that with surgery. Is that okay with you?”
And what did she say?
“Yes. Thank you. Thank you for making sure I wasn’t handicapped during my life.”
That stunned me. Murphy thanked me for making sure she led a comfortable life.
“You saved my life a long time ago,” she said.
Yes I had, and she had saved mine.
With that we were both comfortable with our decision. We had each come to our own conclusion about what the end of her life would look like. We would see it through together, with her as fit and strong as we could make her.
Without surgery. With love. As bravely as possible. Not afraid to cry or grieve.
And not afraid to live.
© 2012 Robyn M Fritz
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