Belle is More than "Beautiful"
 

     When my boys were 15 and 13 years old, we lost a Golden Retriever mix to bone cancer. For Christmas that year, my husband and I went all over the southwest corner of Tennessee checking out the Goldens we found advertised in the paper. Our criteria: female, red, medium-sized. We picked out one that fit the bill, took her home, and she became the family pet . . . though Belle was relegated to the back yard and rarely had a bath, we fed, watered, and played with her. She was a part of the family.
     Six years later, our family infrastructure had changed, and I was spending a lot of lonely nights in my bedroom. One night I was so desperately lonely that I spread a sheet on top of my comforter and let Belle in the house to sleep on my bed and be near me. I don't know why I hadn't thought of it sooner. Maybe it was the depression. Anyway, she immediately loved the idea of being the object of all my affections, and learned to hop up on the bed when I tapped it once . . . and when I tapped my chest, she put her head on my chest so I could pet her. We were both pretty satisfied about this.
      Less than a year into this new routine, I noticed that when she put her boney little elbows into my left breast, it was really painful. I mentioned this to a couple friends and they told me that it was probably nothing to worry about . . . that I probably some fibroid things going on. Still, when she cuddled, it hurt . . . so I finally went to the doctor to have the pain checked out, and I found that I had stage four inflammatory breast cancer. I had never even heard of this kind of cancer, but it is the rarest, most aggressive, most deadly kind of breast cancer. It is hard to detect because there is not always a lump with this type of breast cancer . . . the cancer is actually distributed throughout the dermal lymphatics of the breast. This is also what makes the survival rate of inflammatory breast cancer patients less than half of the survival rate for most other breast cancers.
     My cancer was detected May 19, 1999. I started chemo the next week, had a modified radical mastectomy September 13, high dose chemo/stem cell rescue in October, and began radiation in November. While I was on disability from teaching, good old Belle was either at my feet as I reclined in my recliner in my bedroom, or on my bed with me. I noticed one evening in October that she had little knots on some of her breasts. I thought it was pretty strange that she had been sleeping with me, and when I developed breast cancer, she developed breast tumors. As soon as I came out of isolation the end of October, I scheduled surgery for her in November, and thankfully, her breast tumors turned out to be benign. My vet said that it is very important to give her a manual breast exam every month. I had never thought of such a thing.
     Obviously, "our" dog, Belle, has become "my" dog, Belle, as both boys are now grown, have left the nest, and have acquired "new" dogs. I turned 50 this year . . . and Belle will turn 10 in November. We are both middle-aged women with a lot of love and companionship to share. Her arthritis now makes it more difficult for her to get up on my bed, and she takes anti-seizure meds, but she is regularly showered, pampered, and loved. I am a three year cancer survivor, and we are both winners!