Tag Archives: Family

34 days and counting…

I shouldn’t even put a countdown in writing because I’ll jinx us.  In case you haven’t heard, the latest is that we’re still going.  Eric and I will go on January 8 as planned.  CB and Addie will follow in mid-February when we move into an apartment that will let us have dogs.  CB will continue to receive chemo while we’re there.  And he is a super happy dog after his first chemo treatment, btw.  We are on Day 4 and he hasn’t shown any bad symptoms.  Sadly, his pee also hasn’t turned bright blue, which was a possible side effect.  That would’ve been cool.

Y’all have heard about our wonderful vet, Bethany, without whom we would’ve been sunk through this whole thing.  And we also now have a great team at a specialty hospital and an incredible oncologist who is even willing to keep in touch with us and/or our vets down in Panama.  God is good.  God is faithful.  Even in things like dogs.  He knows where our hearts are, and sometimes they are firmly implanted in 81 pound bouncy silly animals who want nothing more than to be with you.  Okay, enough about that.  There’s no crying in blogging.  At least not tonight.

So…a year.  It’s hard to imagine when my house is still as it’s always been…at least in the past year or so.  Nothing is packed.  We have a ton to do.  We don’t have renters lined up.  We don’t even have a kitchen in one of the apartments.  We’re still trying to figure out which international health insurance plan is best for us.  We’re collecting reference letters from banks and “business references,” whatever that means, as one of the many steps in the process of opening a personal bank account in Panama.

In the middle of this, I have roughly 12 more days to write three responses to motions for summary judgment and close down the rest of my post-conviction cases before my end date at work.  That’s the funny part.  Some part of me actually believes I’ll get to leave work on December 17th as planned and start to get everything prepared to leave everything I know and pack for a YEAR.  NOPE!  (If you watch Archer, you can hear how I said that in my head.  If you don’t watch Archer, your life would be better if you did.)

For those of you who are tempted to give up on my blog, I assure you that it will be much more describing what happens when you just pick up and move to a new country and much more of what Panama is like, and a lot less of me just being whiny when we get there.  Or at least if I’m whiny it’ll have a cultural flair…right?  My goal here is to be honest, to share what this experience really is like.  I feel so fortunate to be in the situation that we are in.  So few people are able to just pick up and leave, and even those who can often don’t.  So I want to share the good and the bad, the beautiful weather and the terrible rainy season, the modern city and the ridiculous tendency for everything to take 3x longer than you think it should.

I’m praying for strength right now because this is super scary.  It’s surreal right at this minute, and I think that’s God’s blessing because he knows if I really understood what we’re doing, I would completely freak out.  I think it’s also a blessing that I have more to do at work than I’ve ever had in a two week period.  I HAVE to be focused. I HAVE to work at night and on the weekends.  My brain has to be focused on prisoners constantly, so there’s no time for fear.  Yet.

Speaking of prisoners, the internship with the United Nations, in what I am starting to guess is Panamanian style, fell through.  At least for now.  My contact there had previously said that it was no problem for me to work only 30 hours a week.  My plan was to get to know the city, work on my Spanish in different settings, and have time to be with friends and family that visit.  Long story short, I am likely going to be doing some contract work for my firm here in the US, and the UN doesn’t allow interns to have another job.  When I told them I hadn’t signed a contract yet and would be willing to give up the work here in the States, she was still unwilling to commit to letting me come.  She had some worries about the nature of the class action suit I have been litigating.  She left it open for further conversation when I get to Panama, and I am hopeful that we can work something out.

Very upsetting, considering, first of all, the name-dropping potential of the, ahem, UNITED NATIONS gig, and secondly, the learning opportunities – both in language and in the prison world.  Praying that I can work something out with her once we are face to face.  I have talked to my boss up here, and luckily she completely understands and is willing to be flexible.

Alright, so if you’re up for praying for us, here are some specifics:  1) Wisdom,  2) Diligence in work over the next several weeks, as well as to get done all that we need to do before we move.  3) Decreased anxiety.  Mine is through the roof.  For Eric: Continued strength to take care of me in the wonderful way that he does.

And in the meantime, here are some pictures because pictures are fun.  Thanksgiving, the Carolina/State game (I don’t want to talk about it, but don’t we look happy in the pics?), and my happy dogs.

My dad, brother-in law, Drew, and my niece, Laine at the Old Well.
Bro-in-law Drew, sister Jennifer, and 4 year old niece at Old Well.
All the cousins! Eric and me, Drew and Jennifer, Cousin David and his new wife Averil from Houston, and Cousin Ashley and husband Ian from Atlanta/Decatur. So cool to have everyone together!
Laine modeling her new hat!
Eric didn’t make it to Hogwarts. I told him he had to go to Platform 9 and 3/4 or whatever.
Before the UNC/State game, obviously, b/c we’re happy. With good friends Dan and Sarah.
Game selfie!
I was forcing selfies on everyone.
He only likes them when they’re bloody. Creepy dog.
My friday night with the doggies. It got a little crazy.

CB

We found out last week that our sweet 8 year old doggie CB has terminal bladder cancer.  We are devastated.

For those of you who don’t know him, CB is 80+ pounds of pure joy, unencumbered by the burdens of intellect and common sense.  What he lacks in smarts, he makes up for in boundless love.

Eric and CB have been together for over seven years, even since Eric picked his buddy up at a black dog sale at the local pound.  Yep, CB was the clearance dog.  Upon taking him home, Eric discovered that his giant puppy cried about everything…so he considered naming him Princess.  However, he changed his mind, deciding instead on Crybaby, or CB for short.  I, however, have called the poor animal everything under the sun, from Biski to Biscuit to Booski to Boodle.

I’m responsible for bringing his sister, Addie, into his life, and making him Beta Dog in his own home.  After a couple of very short fights, during which he immediately started crying loudly, tried to curl up into a (very large) ball, and simultaneously demonstrated to me the reason for his name, he tucked his tail between his legs and allowed her free reign over his house.  He is now lorded over by a 32 pound fox-looking Shiba Inu mix with a Napoleon complex.  To his credit, he still refuses to listen to any command issued by me, opting instead to look at me earnestly with the biggest eyes you’ve ever seen immediately after stepping on my bare feet and sneezing on my legs.  Maybe he’s smarter than he looks.

Anyway, I’ll spare you the details of how we found out he was having problems, but Eric took him in for some testing on Halloween.  The following Thursday night, Eric met me at my car when I got home to tell me he had cancer.  Needless to say, it was a rough night for us.  Worse, Eric had found out the night before, but he hadn’t told me because he hadn’t wanted me to have to deal with it at work.  I had taken some heavy migraine medication on Wednesday night, and while I was sleeping, our dear friend and vet, Beth, called to give Eric the horrible news.  He told me later that I woke up a few times that evening and kept asking him what was wrong.  I guess somehow I knew something was off.  Anyway, he had to deal with the first 24 hours by himself.  Terrible.

We took CB to see a veterinary oncologist yesterday, and we learned a lot about dog bladders and the surrounding anatomy.  The short story is that his cancer is presenting in a very abnormal way.  He doesn’t have one discrete mass like most dogs with this kind of cancer get.  So after spending several days processing the reality that our dog has cancer, this woman came into the examining room saying things like “if it’s not cancer….”  And now we have this tiny glimmer of hope that it’s actually this horrible infection that only looks like cancer.  But the problem is that my heart is focusing too closely on that tiny glimmer and enlarging it to the size of, well, about the size of an 81 pound mutt.  So now when we get back the results of this next series of tests, my heart is going to break again.  Awesome.

In the interest of making this already long story a tad shorter, I’ll just say that there’s been a lot of back and forth in deciding where to do the next biopsy and exactly what procedure to do, but chances are it will take place this Thursday, November 13.  We’ll get results back in “5-7 business days,” as if medical test results are some piece of USPS mail.  So weird.

I would be remiss if I didn’t say something about how completely amazing Beth has been through all of this.  She met us at her office on a Sunday afternoon when we first noticed that CB was sick.  She has given us breaks on her emergency vet fees more times than we’ve even noticed, I’m sure, because she’s as sneaky as she is kind.  She cried with Eric on the phone when she told him CB’s diagnosis.  She has made herself available by phone and text though this whole mess – for nearly a month now.  She referred us to the oncologist, then talked to the oncologist after CB was seen, then spent an evening on the phone with us letting us recap the whole visit with the oncologist.  She’s just incredible, and we don’t know where we’d be without her.

So what does CB’s illness mean for the Panama trip?  Well, not good things, that’s for sure.  The plan had always been (at least as far as I’ve been concerned) that the dogs were coming with us.  And we’re not taking a dog with cancer to Panama.  We’re also not leaving a dog here to die of cancer while we go to Panama.  We’ve been considering going forward with our plans to be there from January 8 through mid-February and then seeing where things stand from there.  Nothing is definite yet.  And of course we are keeping Katie, our friend who just bought her plane ticket to come see us, in the loop.  Luckily she had planned to come during that first 5 week period, so if we stick with that plan to go just for the first part of 2015, it won’t affect her visit.

I’ve spent a lot of time in the past few days being frustrated, not only that our poor baby is sick and that a lot of hard times are in store for him, but also because all of our plans unraveled so quickly.  Yesterday in the vet’s office though, I put my head down and talked to God for a minute, and asked him to help me to let all of this go…to give it all to him.  To stop trying to control it.  He’s so much better at figuring all of this out than I am.

Today I found myself right back in the same spot I had been in before I prayed yesterday.  So I prayed again.