A Dickens of a Cat

Continued from page 1

"The vet doesn't think so. He thinks Dickens is old enough and strong enough to survive. He gave me some antibiotics that we'll start him on right now."

Poor Dickens. He was very sick. He lay on the foot of my bed on a hot water bottle for days. It had been my intention to refocus our attention on something besides my illness and upcoming chemotherapy, and I surely did it. All we could think about was whether Dickens would live or die.

One day, after about eight days, there was a turning point. Dickens sprang up from the hot water bottle with a gleam in his eye. "Well, hello, cat," I said. And I could see in an instant that I had correctly named him. He was going to be a rascally dickens all right. He crouched around corners waiting to spring at me as I passed by. He attacked my feet under the covers. He played until he dropped exhausted at my side.

Then it was time for my chemotherapy. Wendy went with me for the first round of treatment. I didn't learn until later how frightened she, too, had been. I didn't realize what it was costing her emotionally to see her mother in this dire situation. Neither of us knew when (or if) I, like Dickens, might have my turning point.

I tolerated the first round of chemotherapy fairly well, and I thought I could make it through the remainder of the twenty-four treatments on my own. So I sent Wendy home to Seattle to take up her life with the understanding that if I couldn't get along without help, she would come back.

Twenty-one days after I began chemotherapy, my hair started coming out—great handfuls of it. I was ready with my wig and scarves. Just then Dickens decided my pillow was a good place to sleep. I don't know, perhaps he thought my balding head needed to be kept warm. I do know that in the mornings my pillow was a mess. It was covered with his fur and my hair, making it hard to tell who was shedding the most.

There were lots of nights during the next six months when I would wake from a deep sleep and be nauseated beyond belief. Dickens by now was sleeping in the crook of my arm. When I was sick, he'd jump to the end of the bed and wait. When I would lie down exhausted from vomiting, he would instantly jump back to my side and snuggle down. This little creature God had sent my way blessed my long, lonely nights.

Then there were the days Dickens raced me up the stairs. At my pace it wasn't much of a race, really. He romped and played and made me laugh and laugh and laugh. I tolerated the chemotherapy pretty well, and I am sure one reason was because Dickens gave me a merry heart that "did good, like medicine."

Then, at last I was through with chemo. All I had to do was wait. In October my surgeon said, "We'd like to do a second-look surgery. We can't find any cancer from the outside and we'd like to take a look inside."

This time my son, Mark, came to stay with me during surgery and to take care of Dickens. After only an hour in surgery, through my anesthesia-induced fog, I heard my very delighted surgeon say, "It's gone. There's no cancer anyplace."

I had my turning point! I was going to live. Five days later I went home, and while I couldn't scoop Dickens up (he now weighed fourteen pounds and I was not supposed to lift anything over ten), I sat down and he crawled into my lap. "Well, cat," I said, "it looks like I'm going to stick around for a while. We both made it. We're survivors." Dickens didn't say much. He just stretched a little and purred and purred.