No more rules

It's time for an admission. Following the promises that I made to K in my last post, especially the first one about not being sad, is proving to be an almost overwhelming challenge. I fell into a dark abyss yesterday as I learned more about how bad the prognosis is for K. But, I think that I'm climbing out into the light again.

For one thing, I decided that I am completely and utterly finished with following the rules about limiting K's activity. What are we "saving" K for? At this point, the prognosis is horrendous. She will not have another springtime with me unless a miracle occurs. Yet, on this spring day, K is full of energy and puppy-like happiness. It's time to live.

So, I did something that would probably make our vets cringe. I took K mountain biking. For almost her entire life, K has run with me while I rode my mountain bike. That pattern came to an abrupt halt on December 23, when K was diagnosed with bone cancer. Indeed, she didn't seem even vaguely upset by the sudden halt to our rides back then. I believe that the bone tumors had been hurting her, and she didn't really want to run with me at that time.

Over the past week, she's started telling me that she wants to go with me when I ride. As I put on my cycling gear, she follows me rather than snoozing on her bed like she's been doing since her diagnosis in December. Now, she even "hides" and peeks around corners to watch me get my gear ready. It took several days but this dumb human finally figured out that K wanted to go mountain biking. It seemed like a fairly harmless thing to try. After all, riding a bike through slushy spring snow is not much faster than walking.

So, I invited her to go, a process that started with descending a set of steps that K has found scary for her entire life. Usually, she takes them one step at a time, stopping on each one to get up the nerve to step down onto the next one. Well, they're not scary now! I've never seen her go down them so fast as when I invited her to ride with me! That told me, without a shadow of a doubt, that K wanted to go with me.

So, we did a slow and easy 2 miles on trails that K and I have mountain biked so many times in our lives that we could navigate them with our eyes closed. She seemed carefree and happy, cantering easily by my side. I kept calling out "I love you, K" as we rode (thank goodness no one else was around to witness my happy lunacy)!

We stopped for some photos. You can see that K's leg that received radiation is growing silver fur everywhere except in the pink areas where she had radiation burns. I think that growing new fur is a sign of some strength left within my girl. One piece of good news from the tests last week was that the bones in K's "cancer leg" look very strong, and the tumors were obliterated by the radiation.

She danced on snow patches within our forest, looking as beautiful as ever.

I'm happier than you can imagine that we've been out biking together. We've had so many biking adventures over the years, and they helped cement our relationship. It's good to be able to have some short rides together now, as we know that our time together is winding down.

All that I know is that K will be an angel far too soon. The time for doing the things that we love is now.