I meant to post the first part of this just after returning home on weekend one of Camp NaNoWriMo but then I didn't because there was a feeling of my whole world falling down and I wasn't sure I was actually going to be doing any writing what so ever. In my life, there are a pair of Shih Tzus, Teddy, who has been around for what feels like just short of forever, even if it is only five years, and Chai, who arrived just last year (with me, though she is nearly six years old). The idea of them not being together for playdates or for when my parents are away or I'm away (they swap houses so they're with whoever is around) is unthinkable, but the worst, or one of the worst things, imaginable happened and when Teddy went into surgery for the removal of two lumps that we thought were giving him problems pooping, we found out they were cancerous.
In a way, it's a good thing that they were where they were. He has had lumps since the day we got him because he has these cysts on his skin that fill to a point and then, essentially, burst everywhere and are a bit bloody, a bit chalky, but ultimately no harm at all. Anywhere else on his body lumps would not bother him at all, and we and his vets would just assume that they were more of the same and leave them be. It was only because we were not sure if that was creating some bum related issues that we decided to go for them being excised, and then the pathology on them was a huge shock.
Having had the shock of it's cancer, we were pretty relieved to know that the lumps were gone which meant the tumours were gone, but that was short-lived as the vet told us it was a nasty and aggressive tumour, and it's location would make it very tricky if it came back because removing tissue on what is essentially his buttock can affect the motor function of the back legs and the tail as well as continence, particularly for his bum. None of us wants to lose him, but doggy diapers aren't the sort of thing that is conducive to a good life for a dog. The only option we really had was for him to go back into surgery, to have the margins on the tumour widened from almost nothing to as much as they could (although with this sort of tumour it's supposed to be an inch either way and that was simply not possible) in the hopes that it would prevent the regrowth of cancer and give him his best chance to be happy, healthy and cancer-free.
Before he went in for surgery, I wanted the pups to spend time together and honestly, I wanted to spend some time with him, too. He's been my baby since we got him, not as much as he is my mum's baby, but he's my baby, too, and he's considered an older dog now, since he's eight, and older dogs and anaesthetic isn't something you mix for fun. I was concerned about the anaesthetic but also concerned about what happens if the surgery doesn't cure him? What happens if we have weeks of recovery only to find out he's not fully recovered and he won't be? I wanted to get in some good days with him in case they were Chai's and my last good days with him, so that had to be before surgery, and then when he had surgery I knew my mum was going to need some help in nursing him back to health, so I decided to just move - temporarily - back to my mum's.
Generally, being back at my mum's is really good for me writing because my mum takes her mum-ing seriously. She does all of the cooking, she cleans, she does the laundry and she even makes me regular brews when I'm working so that I can just keep cracking on. I guess what I'm saying is I'm massively spoiled when I'm here. This time though, with worrying about Teddy, caring for Teddy and the lack of sleep and general tiredness affecting the whole house, I've been skipping more days than I have been writing, because it's just not happening easily, and I don't have it in me at the moment to grind through writing a few hundred words a day without a particular reason to.
Caring for Teddy is meaning carrying him up and downstairs at the beginning and end of the day (he's also spoilt and sleeps on the bed), picking him up to put him outside for toilets and picking him up to get him back in, cleaning his wound regularly (especially when he's been sat on it outside with no concept of the kind of germies he could pick up out there!), giving him his medication, of which there is quite a lot!, and also trying to stop him from getting stressed out. It was a big operation and a lot of trauma for the poor guy, and he's still not really come to terms with what happened. He keeps whipping his head around trying to look at it, and probably bite it, but he has a big inflatable collar on so he can't get to it to bite or lick it, and he can't see it either, and even if he could, there is no way for him to understand what it is and why we have done it to him. He cried a lot the day we brought him home (and so did we if we're being honest) but being at home seems to have settled him and he's been to a wound check with the vet where they said he was doing well. Whilst things are looking up for him, it does mean that during this Camp NaNo, I haven't dropped everything to just get some writing done, I haven't been trying to plough through and finish in a couple of days and honestly, it's made me realise again that Camp does not have the same sort of effect on me that November NaNoWriMo does. And that is fine because I can plan for November being super busy with NaNo, but letting it take over three months of my life just doesn't work.
The upshot is I'm writing when I can, but that's not much at the moment, because the doggies come first.
