Sad dogs, sick days and life hacks

Our dog, Bravo, was pretty sick this weekend. After a few sleepless nights and a new antibiotics prescription, Bravo seems to be doing better. We all remain sleep deprived, though.

Bravo was sick this weekend.

Really sick. Go outside and spend hours pooping kind of sick. So, the weekend was lost to an unhappy, sad dog and a trip to the ‘weekend vet,’ seeking treatment.

When our 140-pound yellow lab is under the weather, it’s difficult not to feel for him. Certainly, when any loved one is sick, having empathy is key. For Bravo, however, it seems he needs just a bit more TLC on his down days. He’s a big dog. When he’s down, he’s really down.

I snapped a photo of Bravo Saturday afternoon as he napped on his favorite pillows, trying to recover from a sleepless night.

Looking at the photo reminded me of how intermittently wiped out our family has been for the past several years.

Like his sister, Rio, Bravo has had a few health issues in his 10 years.

He has seizures. Usually, they come from out of the blue. It’s difficult to see him collapse and tremble on the floor. When this happens, The Weed or I try to comfort him. We hold his head in our laps, tell him he’s a good boy, massage his ears. Eventually, he comes out of the seizure and invariably looks around like ‘What the hell just happened?’

In addition to seizures, Bravo has hypothyroidism. To treat this, we work with a compounding pharmacy to concoct a special thyroid-replacement formula in olive oil. Bravo receives two synthetic thyroid doses daily. Every six months, his levels are tested and we adjust the doses as needed.

Bravo also has had a cancer scare. Several years ago, we noticed two large lumps developing beneath his right front leg and in his ‘armpit.’ We took him to the Veterinary Teaching Hospital at Colorado State University. There, the veterinary cancer specialists diagnosed the large lumps as lipomas, fatty, non-cancerous tumors. However, he also had a few areas of mast cell tumors. Cancer. Bravo underwent a five-hour surgery and had everything removed. When we arrived to pick him up after the surgery, I’ll never forget his pitiful state. He had two fluid drains safety pinned to a makeshift post-surgery T-shirt and the largest, saddest puppy dog eyes. The heavy sedation helped make him look rather pitiful but he did a lot of that on his own.

Fortunately, the surgeons were able to remove all of the mast cell tumors and lipomas. Bravo’s recovery went smoothly and since he has enjoyed relative health, aside from the occasional bacteria bloom and his seizures. Today, he is still a bit punky from the weekend of gut woes. Antibiotics have helped bolstered by near constant dog naps.

For Rio, there was the torn ACL, a scary, swollen reaction to a bug bite and canine allergies that took some serious diagnosing. She had special medications for allergies and ate special food for many years. Aside from that, our girl hates loud bangs or thumps. Thunderstorms and fireworks make her mental! She also hates when The Weed and I loudly curse. She especially hates the F word at higher decibels.

Aside from these small issues, Rio really is the energizer bunny of yellow labs. She takes a licking and keeps on ticking.

For The Weed, he’s also a pretty decent war horse. Of course, there’s been the occasional cold or flu. When he’s sick, he tries his best but he’s also a little like Bravo. He needs more attention than usual. Grilled cheese sandwiches and Gatorade almost always make him a happy human again.

As a former world-class athlete, I suspect The Weed has a really strong system. He swam, ran and rode his bike through several international competitions and emerged successful and proud. He did all of this on a rather shoddy knee. As a teen, he tore something in his knee while fencing. He never had it repaired. To this day, he has bouts of ‘bad knee’ days. A few Advil and some beers usually get him back on his feet.

For me, my checkered health history is well documented. Several badly broken bones, Breast Cancer 1.0, Breast Cancer 2.0, surgical recoveries, chemotherapy ills and mental health coping issues.

After compound fracturing my ankle, I had a decent case of PTSD. In those days, if I thought about what happened while hiking and falling, I got dizzy and had near panic attacks. After a few therapy and EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) sessions, I learned how to better cope with those intense, vivid memories. I am lucky to have emerged from that situation with only a few mental, physical scars.

As for emerging from Breast Cancer 1.0 and Breast Cancer 2.0, I’m still working on that. There are days when every muscle or bone aches or my brain just doesn’t fire on all cylinders. I suspect I have some chemo brain issues. I try to work through them as best as I can. When I read words strangely, I stop, look at the word again, and try to figure out why my brain read ‘tollhouse’ instead of ‘toll free.’ Seriously, that happened just this morning. I wasn’t even hungry for cookies.

There are some cheats to this life with cancer. Some helped me through treatment. Some help me today as my recovery continues.

So, here’s a laundry list of life hacks I try to keep handy in case anyone asks me what to do when going through life with cancer.

Breast Cancer Life Hacks

> Medicine. We are prescribed certain meds for certain reasons. Whether to help combat pain or ease nausea, the doctors really are trying to help. If you have a medication that doesn’t seem to be helping with vomiting or stomach issues, tell your doctor. After the first few doses of The Red Devil for me last year, my nausea was intense. I told the oncologist and he switched my prescription, giving me a dissolvable tablet that worked immediately and helped get me through some really barfy days.

Also, I had terrible bone pain after Neupogen injections to boost my blood levels. I told the oncologist and he prescribed a pain killer I could take on difficult days. There’s no need to suffer in silence. Tell your caregivers. They can help.

> If you have a metallic taste in your mouth when eating while going through chemotherapy, use plastic utensils. During Breast Cancer 1.0 treatment, the metallic taste bothered me so much that I didn’t want to eat. A friend reading my blog saw my complaint and offered the plastic utensil suggestion. It is one of the most helpful tips I remember receiving.

> Whenever returning home from the hospital and a surgery, be sure you have a pillow with you. Clutching a pillow can help ease jostling to any new incisions and really helped reduce pain for me while in the car.

> If you can’t turn off your brain at night to sleep, request a sleeping pill. There is a lot to contemplate and consider with a cancer diagnosis. Sleepless nights are par for the course. However, they shouldn’t impact your day-to-day life. If you can’t sleep, that’s not a healthy way to prepare your body for the surgical and chemical treatments on the horizon.

> Chemo brain issues can creep up on you after chemotherapy treatment. Chemo brain is a term used by cancer survivors to describe thinking and memory problems that can occur after treatment. It’s also called chemo fog, chemotherapy-related cognitive impairment and cognitive dysfunction. According to MayoClinic.Org, many questions remain about the memory problems some cancer survivors feel. Some symptoms include being unusually disorganized, confusion, difficulty concentrating, difficulty finding the right words, fatigue, short-term memory problems, short attention span, and trouble with verbal memory, like remembering a conversation. For me, I sometimes have trouble reading/tracking words correctly. Also, I have trouble remembering what I’m doing when I’m trying to juggle a lot of work. To combat the mental ‘scatteredness,’ I often make notes for the day ahead, especially if I will be doing a host of different tasks. One of the biggest issues I have is forgetting something when I’m busy. If I walk into a room and can’t remember why I went there, it is particularly annoying. I think this is part of my life now after cancer treatment and getting older. I try to cut myself some slack, laugh it off.

> Food can be a blessing and a curse when going through treatment for cancer. One important tip I like to tell people: If you have a favorite food, do not (DO NOT) eat it while going through chemotherapy. That sounds like a real bummer especially at a time when you want to treat yourself well. What I found is that food tasted different for me. It also affected me differently. So, when I went through chemotherapy and tried to eat my favorite meatball sandwich, it didn’t go well. I had immediate ‘buyer’s remorse.’ I can’t eat meatball sandwiches anymore.

That said, some foods really saved me during my most sick days. Oranges and mashed potatoes were the magic bullets for me. I clearly remember one difficult day when I asked The Weed to stop at the grocery store and pick up some oranges and ready-made mashed potatoes. He grudgingly obeyed and I had those strange bedfellows for dinner that night. I felt so much better almost immediately. Today, oranges and mashed potatoes aren’t as appetizing but I can stomach them.

> Some people have reactions to chemotherapy and develop brittle fingernails and toenails, darkened nails and nails that lift from the nail best. For me, I Iost several toenails that eventually have grown back. BreastCancer.Org suggests a few tips that can help keep nails healthy and free from infection, including: Keep nails trimmed and clean; wear gloves; don’t bite or tear at your nails; don’t pick at cuticles; use a cuticle cream or gel; and, avoid artificial nails and adhesives.

Do you have any Breast Cancer Life Hacks? I’d love to hear them!