Diablo, cancer
In 1994, my father was diagnosed with cancer. The disease was advanced so alternative treatments, we were told by professionals, weren’t a realistic alternative. The best and brightest minds in oncology decided aggressive radiation would give my dad his best chance.
Two months later he was dead.
My family grieved and while I urged my lonely mom to get a pet, she wasn’t ready. Nor was she ready the next year. Or the next. Five years went by until she decided it was time.
We visited a breeder who had five toy fox terrier puppies, all so bouncy they spent more time in the air the on the ground. Of the five, one loomed large and in charge, at a whopping 1.5 pounds. He was more willful than the rest. He wasn’t taking no for an answer. He was coming home with us by his choice; we had no say in the matter. And he would go almost two months in our care before being named because we desperately hoped he would outgrow the only name that felt appropriate. He didn’t. So the name stuck: Diablo.
He was 500 lbs. of personality in a less-than 2 lb. pound body. He was smart. He was fun. He was a devious prankster. He brought a smile back to our faces. He trained us well. He was, as the saying goes, just what the doctor ordered.
And a year and a half later, that little handful, after destroying everything we’d come to discover we didn’t really care about in the house, had us on the road to feeling whole again.
But whole would evade us.
Sadly, young Diablo, like my father, was diagnosed with cancer.
We’d caught it early, so the prognosis was good. The cancer was surgically removed. We hoped to move toward whole again, though our hopes were more guarded this time around.
Diablo’s reign grew. What was his was his and what was ours was, well, also his. He just had that effect on everyone and everything. At his adult weight of 18 pounds, he feared neither man nor beast. He was master of all he surveyed.
We were all were just hitting our stride together. Life was fun. It was good. We traveled. We vacationed. We hoped.
Until…
A biopsy.
A relapse.
Diablo was diagnosed with cancer.
Again.
We went through another surgery and it appeared Diablo was going to be okay. He was still large and in charge. He was still boss of the house.
All was well in our world, but the wellness didn’t last.
Whole remained just out of our grasp. Around the time Diablo turned 10 (And a spry and wily 10 it was), he was diagnosed with cancer for a third time. The diagnosis was canine cutaneous hemangiosarcoma – a cancer of the blood vessels – and it was bad. There were multiple tumors. They were too wide-spread to operate, and we feared we were going to witness my father’s fate all over again. Diablo had lived a good life, but sadly, that life appeared be coming to a premature end.
We were crushed.
We were numb.
We’d given up hope. There would be no hat trick, no third time’s a charm. We would lose our friend.
That’s when our integrative veterinarian proposed something so simple, so organic, so whole-listic, that it bordered on radical. We were shocked.
He wanted to do less, not more. He wanted to work with Diablo, not on him. He explained that he’d recently gone to New York to debunk a holistic veterinarian’s claims that a new homeopathic voodoo (or so he thought) cancer treatment was working wonders. In an unlikely twist of fate, he became a believer in the very treatment he’d traveled across the country to skewer.
And he believed that approach could work on Diablo. He couldn’t promise a thing, but it was a chance. He wanted to try simple, non-invasive, bi-weekly homeopathic injections along with supplements in Diablo’s food.
Me? I didn’t believe in alternative therapy. I didn’t believe in homeopathy. I didn’t believe in whole.
I believed in bad-beat hands. I believed the world had dealt my father one and was now dealing my dog one as well. I believed cancer was a death sentence. Traditional medicine had educated me well. I’d gotten the memo.
It would appear, however, that Diablo did not.
True to form, Diablo once again proved what I thought didn’t matter: It’s what he thought that counted. And it seemed he not only believed our veterinarian’s treatments worked, he got excited about his bi-weekly visits. He jumped up and down in the car as we got near. When we were in the waiting room and they called his name, he walked himself back to the treatment area, full of excitement.
He did that for almost four years with a disease that has an average survival time of 174 days.
In fact, he did it just today. And then we went for a walk. I almost kept up with him. Almost.
He’ll be 14 this year.
He’s still in remission. Still large, still in charge. He behaves like a two-year-old, a very smart two-year-old, likely because that’s how he feels. He’s got more zip than I do, certainly more than either of us had five years ago. If we stop his homeopathic injections the tumors recur. If it’s a placebo, it sure is tricky. Recently our doctor presented a series of seven of these cases at a national meeting. It’s exciting. I surely hope that people start doing research on this branch of medicine. Based on my experience, it’s sorely needed.
What felt like wishful thinking to me is simply reality to Diablo. Once we stopped trying to run the show and went along with his program, we became whole again. Thank God he’s the one making the important decisions because they most certainly can’t be trusted to us.
– Lou Voiler