“Bentley and Me (are sharing cancer).” Part 1 (reading time 1:18)

*Note to Grammar Police: I know that "Bentley and Me" is incorrect grammar. We watched Marley and Me the other night. Blame them.

It is six weeks now since I noticed a swelling on the right end tip of Bentley’s (my best friend and the coolest dapple Dachshund) nose. It is four weeks now since I found out that Bentley has a mast cancer tumor…three weeks now since I found out that Bentley’s tumor is a Class 2 (out of 3) malignancy and is located in a spot that makes surgery veritably an impossible alternative. It is two weeks now since Bentley’s veterinarian team here in Nashville (Dr. Bush and Charlie Beauchamp; world’s #1 vet and B’s doc since he was born 8 ½ years ago) told me about a new, experimental treatment for this exact type of mast tumor that is having breakthrough results. It is one week now from when Bentley and me will meet the cancer specialist that will trigger the start of the most important walk we’ve taken together.


The facts:

• I held it together for the first 48 hours, then I lost it in my hotel room while visiting my new grandson (Utah Cohen Sewing) in Medford, Oregon. I wept, and wept….
• We took a biopsy and the malignancy is (gratefully) at Grade 2, which means it is not in the most aggressive type of malignancy.
• It does not appear to his vets (gratefully) that it has affected his lymph nodes and spread to other areas of his body.
• The new experimental drug, Palladia, is seeing 60% positive results, Bentely seems to be a good candidate and there is a specialist here in Nashville that we are meeting on the 19th of October.
• His nose looks gross (from the biopsy, he keeps licking off the Polysporin (I tasted it and it tastes lousy and everything else about him is totally…Bentley “normal.”
• Bentley and me have been partners and have partnered with the roughest (and most rewarding, life giving, revealing and formative) events of our lives.
• Bentley and me will partner with his cancer.
• Bentley and me cannot lose.

So what?
• Life is on loan at every level - we have and own and possess nothing.
• Bentley has cancer – he is not cancer. We can choose to accept and partner (and struggle) with our affliction, limitation, weakness and other dis-ease…or we can choose to become our affliction, limitation, weakness and other dis-ease.
• We have a wonderful chance through all the moments we are given to be a lamp (without a lampshade) that showers the light of our experiences on the lives of others.
• There is humor to be found and shared through all life’s ambiguities (or should that read ambiGOOEYties).
• God loves dogs too.

There are treasures to be learned from our teachers; especially those who see life from 5 ¾ inches off the ground.

For emphasis.
(b&b)