Category: I Am

There is a kind of sadness that doesn’t arrive all at once.

It builds quietly, in layers — in cones and pills, in unsteady legs, in the way a body you know by heart begins to move differently.

I’m watching my two dogs, Zach and Xena, navigate illness at the same time, and it feels like the ground has shifted beneath me.

They say a parent doesn’t have favourites. I know that’s meant to be comforting, but it isn’t always true. Xena is my baby girl. She came into my life in May 2014 — a tiny thing, travelling alone in a crate from Bangalore, brave before she even knew what bravery was. I loved her from the moment I knew she was coming. Some bonds form slowly. Some arrive fully formed.

Now she has mast cell tumours. One of them is in her eye, and to protect her from hurting herself, she has to wear a cone. Watching her struggle to make peace with it breaks something in me every time. I want to take it off. I want her free of it. But I also don’t want her to bleed again, to panic again, to hurt again. Holding those two truths at once is exhausting.

Zach is another kind of heartbreak. My big firstborn son. My Virgo boy. The gentleman who loves women, especially strangers. His hind legs are giving way — cancer, muscle loss, steroids. I see him trying to stand tall in a body that no longer cooperates. I wanted to lift both of them onto the sofa with me, to gather my family the way I always have. But Xena wanted down. The cone went back on. The moment passed.

There is grief in these small things.

I can handle my own pain. I’ve done that my whole life. I can handle illness, fear, uncertainty — when it belongs to me. But not this. Not when it’s my children. They look to me. They trust me. And there are moments when I can’t fix what’s happening to them.

What makes it harder is memory.

They’ve seen my aunts alive.

They’ve seen my mother.

They’ve seen me truly happy in a new home.

They are woven into my life’s milestones, my becoming, my survival. Zach, my steady beginning. Xena, my brilliant, intuitive girl — the one who always looks back for me on walks, the Aries family soul who makes sure everyone is accounted for before moving on.

Xena understands more than people give dogs credit for. She watches. She waits. Even now, groggy from medication, she tries to cooperate with a world that feels suddenly restrictive. Zach, even in weakness, still believes in affection. Still believes people are kind.

I have done grief before. But never this — never two lives I love this deeply hurting at the same time. It feels like life keeps adding new levels to sadness, as if asking, Can you carry this too?

And yet… love remains.

That is the part I am holding on to.

I don’t need miracles anymore. I don’t need guarantees. What I want — what I hope for with everything I have — is that they do not suffer more than they already have. That their days are gentle. That fear does not dominate what time we have. That there is peace, even if there is no cure.

Peace looks like rest without pain.

Peace looks like safety.

Peace looks like being surrounded by someone who knows every inch of you and still chooses you, again and again.

If I cannot give them long lives free of illness, then I will give them this:

presence, dignity, softness, and love without condition.

And maybe — just maybe — that is enough.

Zachary and Xena. My dogs. My kids.

Both are fighting cancer.

Zach has lymphoma — stage three. His hind legs are slowly failing him now. He can’t stand up on his own anymore, but when I lift him, he still walks. He still wants to.

Zena has aggressive mast cell carcinomas. Most are calm, except two on her chest that flare because of daily friction. They’re dressed, monitored, and she isn’t in pain — the doctors have been clear about that.

They are both on high-dose prednisone. This is palliative care.

Surgery is an option — but not one I’m choosing.

General anaesthesia. A long recovery. A month of inactivity.

When the prognosis is months, not years, I won’t trade living for procedures. I want their time to be time, not convalescence.

There will come a moment — as it always does — when I’ll have to make the hardest decision. Anyone who has loved animals knows this. These are never easy calls. I’ve made them before. With Zoe. And they stay with you forever.

Caretaking is not new to us.

My sister, Anand, and I cared for our mum through cancer for two years.

Then Rolf. Diana. Zoe.

Now Zach and Xena.

Caretaking isn’t heroic.

It’s repetitive. Exhausting. Quiet.

It’s lifting, cleaning, medicating, watching, waiting — and taking each day as it comes.

And this is why I cannot stay silent when I see what’s happening outside these walls.

When animals are culled. Discarded. Dehumanised.

When compassion is mocked with lazy arguments — why don’t you take them home, why do you eat meat, why bother at all.

None of those arguments survive when you are face to face with another living being’s vulnerability.

Care is not conditional.

Empathy is not transactional.

Life — human or animal — deserves dignity.

This is the world inside my home right now.

And it stands in sharp contrast to the world we seem to be becoming.

Choose compassion.

Even when it’s inconvenient.

Especially when it’s hard.

I am living inside inevitability.

Two of my senior dogs are dying slowly of cancer. There is no emergency, no dramatic collapse — only a steady narrowing of the world, measured in medications, mobility, and attention. I know where this leads. What I refuse to allow is suffering to arrive unnoticed.

So I put on a brave face for the family.

And when I can’t, I put on vigilance instead.

A House That Runs in Shifts

Care in our home does not happen all at once. It moves like a relay.

Anand carries the mornings and the day.

I take over from late afternoon and keep watch through the night — from about 4 pm until 9 am.

Between us, nothing slips through.

Zach: Learning the Language of Decline

Zach has lymphoma. His body is changing in very specific ways.

He no longer walks much for pleasure. When we go downstairs, he does his job and immediately wants to come back home. Once standing, his hind legs still carry him — but they can no longer lift him up from the floor. I now have to help him stand. He can still rise from mattresses on his own, where the body remembers leverage and comfort.

This isn’t collapse.

It’s negotiation.

His day begins with Anand, who gives his medications without ceremony:

Morning

Pan 40 Uripet Intense Syrup – 5 ml Viusid – 7 ml Deep TBR Vibact Wysolone 20 mg Moxikind 625

Wounds are checked. Cleaned. Redressed. Anand waits for Zach to catch up with himself. There is no rushing a body that is learning its limits.

By afternoon, the watch passes to me.

I help Zach move when he needs to. I clean wounds again if required. I speak to him even when he doesn’t lift his head, because recognition does not need eye contact.

Today, while I was dressing one of his wounds, I stroked his cheek.

He lifted his left paw and placed it on my hand.

There was no weakness in it.

Just intention.

Something broke inside me then — completely and quietly.

But I didn’t cry.

Because he was watching.

And because sometimes love asks for stillness instead of collapse.

Evening

Uripet Intense Syrup – 5 ml Condrovet Dental Powder

Night

Uripet Intense Syrup – 5 ml Wysolone 20 mg Moxikind 625 Deep TBR Gabapentin 300 Vibact

At night, his hind legs fail him more often. I help him settle. I make sure he never feels abandoned by his own body.

Xena: Illness Without Surrender

Xena’s story is different — and that contrast is its own cruelty.

She has mast cell disease, now spread across her body. She has already been through multiple surgeries. I will not put her through more. Her eye carries a tumour growing into the third eyelid. Her chest has two large, problematic masses. The disease is everywhere — but her spirit has not retreated.

She is full of vigour.

She wants to play.

She wants to join Zuri. But she can’t. She has a large sore under her left paw that needs to be protected.

She hates it when I give Zuri the toy and barks ferociously, jealous as ever.

That jealousy is not a problem.

It is proof of selfhood.

Morning

Bladder Plus Wysolone 15 mg Cetirizine 10 Viusid – 6 ml

Her eye is cleaned gently. Drops and ointment are applied patiently. She is spoken to, not restrained. She is still herself.

Afternoon

Keppra 250 Famocid 20

She still wants her walks. I don’t let her decide the distance. I try and make peace with her energy.

Evening

Condrovet Omega Oil Dental Powder Cetirizine 10

Night

Bladder Plus Keppra 250 Cetirizine 10 Avil (pheniramine) Gabapentin 100 Wysolone 15 mg

At night, her eye now itches more. The tumour becomes restless when the house quietens. I will have to put a cone on her before bed — not as restraint, but as protection.

Tonight, because I was awake, I caught the bleeding in time.

If I hadn’t been —

I don’t know what might have happened.

That is why I stay awake.

What This Life Is — And Is Not

This is not denial.

This is not heroism.

This is not clinging.

This is two people refusing to let suffering arrive unaccompanied.

Zach is teaching me once again, how the body lets go before the heart does.

Xena is teaching me once again, how life can blaze even while it is failing.

I know how this ends. I have known for a while.

What I will not allow is panic, violence, or unnecessary intervention to steal what remains.

When the time comes — before pain, before fear, before indignity — I will let them go.

Until then, this is my work:

Following charts.

Measuring doses.

Lifting bodies.

Cleaning wounds.

Watching eyes through the night.

Holding paws when they ask.

Not crying when they are watching.

This is what love looks like at the end.

Not loud.

Not dramatic.

Just present.