Miracle Walk
It was 4 months after Ranger received his diagnosis of a brain tumor. All seemed to be moving in a positive direction for Ranger - his grand mal seizures were fairly under control with the Levetericetam anti-convulstant, and the homemade diet and Traditional Chinese Medicine herbs he was on all seemed to be helping him in a largely positive way.
It was 6am in the morning at the end of June. I was about to take Ranger outside for his morning walk when he had a sudden grand mal seizure. A few minutes after he had his first seizure he had another one. This had happened once before in the 4 months since his initial spate of cluster seizures. I wasn't terribly worried, as I administered the extra dose of Levetiracetem as was instructed on the bottle. This extra dose had stopped an onset of seizures before. But this morning, things were different - he then had his third grand mal seizure a few minutes after the extra dosage of the anticonvulsant. I knew I had to get Ranger to the hospital, ASAP. In the truck on the way over to the hospital, Ranger had 2 more grand mal seizures. As we pulled into the parking lot and I was about to call the reception inside again, Ranger stopped seizuring and he was looking calm and alert in the cab of the truck. I took a few breaths and debated whether we should go inside or wait, I decided to wait with him in the truck for just a few minutes more. I kept looking back at him and he was looking at me, he looked oddly himself. I didn't see any of the normal post-seizure behavior in him. It was like he just snapped out of the whole thing. We sat in that parking lot for another hour - with me just observing him. He had no more seizures, or so I thought at the time, during this duration. I made the decision to pull out of the parking lot and head to Saratoga Lake. He seemed calm, and it seemed like the storm was over, and I was thinking it would be nice for us to sit by the lake and connect with nature. I had read as much as I could in these 4 months about something called status epilepticus (SE), or continual grand mal seizures, and it seemed to me that he had come out of a period of status epilepticus all on his own.
We drove the 30 minutes from Latham back to Saratoga and to the lake. Ranger walked on the grass the short distance from our truck to the blanket I had put down for both of us. It was peaceful and quiet at the lake, and I was so grateful that he had stopped siezuring and that we could enjoy the presence of each other's company. During the time we were sitting there, I started to notice that Ranger seemed to be getting more and more still and some kind of dullness seemed to be settling over him. His grand mal seizures had stopped, so I thought that perhaps he was tired from the whole episode - I was worried about him but the absence of the grand mal seizures gave me a false sense of security.
I had to carry him back to the truck, as he didn't want to, or couldn't walk back. We got home and I called my boyfriend who was at work 3hrs away from us. I asked him to please come home early, I was worried about Ranger. Through the day as we waited, Ranger became more and more still - he didn't want to eat or drink and his eyes started to look more and more glazed over. I really did not know what to do. He wasn't visibly seizuring, and I had called the doctor so many times in the last 4 months with questions about different behavior he was showing, and been told that this is part of the disease - I guess I was in a place of 'wait and see', and inwardly praying that Ranger would come out of whatever thing he was in.
When you're in a war zone, sometimes it's difficult to understand the severity of the current battle you're in - you're in a state of constant anxiety, dread, confusion and not knowing what is the appropriate action to take at any given moment in the war...
In retrospect, I should never have pulled out of that hospital parking lot. But in my head, I thought the SE has stopped, and now he seems fine'. I couldn't explain his lessening consciousness through the rest of the day. Later on I would come to learn through his doctors, that in SE that often seizures continue on that are not grand mal seizures - and these seizures are not visible. This is what was happening to Ranger on this day - even though his grand mals had stopped, a more insidious form of silent seizuring was continuing to wreak havoc on his whole being hour after hour. By the time my boyfriend arrived at the house, early evening - Ranger was virtually comotose. He was looking out at us through vacant and glassy eyes, and breathing, but there was not much else.
I can't remember clearly the sequence of events after the approach of evening and the near death state our dog was now in. There were calls to the doctor, lots of praying, and no sleep that night for either myself or my boyfriend. We were holding vigil over Ranger, and praying with all our hearts that the next morning would bring relief, that Ranger would 'snap' out of this. The dawn of the next day was just a continuation of the long night. We went to the hospital, and Ranger was given an IV drip of a cocktail of drugs. Our neurologist told us that Ranger had gone blind in the right eye. Ranger had to be gurneyed in and out of that hospital visit. He was lifeless in the backseat of the truck on our silent ride home. I'm thinking to myself, this is it, the beginning of a most certain end.
I really can't detail out the pilgrimage of the next 7 days. I could read through the journal I kept for him to try to recapture more detail - but I still find that a painful thought, to read his health journal. I think it will fill me with the terror I felt in all those moments that I wrote descriptions of all the things that were occurring. One day I will read his journal, but I can't do it yet.
Ranger did not eat, drink, poop or pee for 7 days.
During those 7 days, we listened to the gentle and clear words of Dr. Baker. Dr. Baker told us that we were walking a fine line between hope and letting go. She helped me put together an end of life plan for Ranger - she also gave me the number of in-home euthanasia doctors. She told me that there could be hope too, that Ranger might survive this. Dr. Baker's words were so clear and yet so deeply empathic and compassionate. I will never forget her service to us during that period of no-mans land in Ranger's journey. Dr. Baker was not one of Ranger's regular doctors, in fact I never had any interaction with her before or after that 1 week in Ranger's life. I called the euthanasia doctors, there was only 1 still available. I wanted to talk with this doctor about Ranger's symptoms and schedule something a few days out - I didn't want my baby to suffer, but I also wanted to hold on to that sliver of hope. But this doctor really upset me, as he tried to have me put Ranger down within the hour and told me that my boyfriend could Facetime as we did the procedure. I can't say if my tears and sobbing, or my anger was stronger after that horrible call. The doctor also said some other words to me that I won't put here, that were very callous and unwarranted. I have been assured by other doctors that this doctor feels his service to be a calling, but my experience of him awoke me to a sense that there is a 'business of pet euthanasia'. Whether he truly was filling up his ledger for his business needs or listening to the directives of an inner calling, I will never know - but I will carry the sting of that experience in my heart forever. Ranger did not get put down that week.
The first miracle.
On the 7th day of Ranger's comatose state, I had just tried again in vain to administer some water and baby food to him. Both of which he totally ignored. I was beyond despair, I couldn't understand how he was still living. 30 minutes after that moment was the start of the miracle journey. 30 minutes later was how I knew conclusively that my boyfriend was a true animal communicator. My boyfriend had been 'reading' Ranger throughout this whole journey, and often telling me what Ranger needed, with 100% accuracy. My boyfriend, in that late afternoon of day 7 commanded in a clear voice, "Ranger is hungry, give him some food." My reaction to him was 'are you crazy, I just tried to give him water and baby food and he rejected it!' My boyfriend gave the command again. I went to the fridge, and instead of pulling out the baby food I took out some bison meat. I sat down beside Ranger and he gobbled up nearly a pound of bison meat. He then drank an entire bowl full of water. I had offered him bison meat many times during the 7 days and his reaction to it was the same as the baby food - no.
I cannot explain what happened. Somehow my boyfriend knew he was ready to eat and take in drink. Months later, my boyfriend would tell me that he heard Ranger clearly say to him "I'm hungry." I cannot explain how Ranger went from comatose to gobbling bison and slurping water, and shortly after peeing for the first time in 7 days. The pee was a thick brown sludge, the likes of which I had never in my life seen excreted before. As Ranger drank more water over the ensuing days the pee eventually returned to a watery yellowish shade.
When we would finally get in for our first visit with the holistic veterinarian, Dr. Kris, of Ancient Arts Veterinary in Saratoga Springs, NY, she looked at us strangely as we told her what had happened. She said she had never heard of a dog surviving 7 days without excreting urine or feces. She said the toxic build up would be too much to survive. She then looked at Ranger quizzically and asked out loud "What is he doing?"
Ranger was not out of the woods yet. After his first acupuncture session with Dr. Kris he perked up a bit but then seemed to slip back into some kind of state - it wasn't anything like the previous comatose state, but he wasn't comfortable. On our second visit, Dr. Kris talked to us and said she really didn't think Ranger was going to make it. During his second acupuncture session, he went into a deeply sedated state with his eyes open. I remember documenting that moment. He was facing across from a Buddha statue on the floor, the two of them just staring at each other. For all Ranger's life, I have affectionately called him Buddha - I couldn't escape the symbolism of that moment, it was the Buddha looking at the Buddha.
A few days after this visit, after his acupuncture and the new Chinese herbs - Ranger started to improve. I had also demanded that the hospital do a thorough thyroid panel on Ranger - which the doctor vigorously contested as not necessary. Ranger's results returned conclusively that he was experiencing hypothyroidism. He was started on Levothyroxine, and the pustulant skin and hair loss condition he had suffered with for years that grew to its apex during this time of illness, immediately started to heal. This was the start of an unbelievable journey of hope that neither my boyfriend or I could ever have imagined.
A this point, Ranger was still paralyzed. Unable to consciously move his limbs - he was eating, drinking and breathing, but unable to move at all. I was scouring the Internet looking for answers. I could find nothing, except for a few articles on something called Todd's Paresis. Todd's Paresis is a phenomenon that some human seizure patients experience, a short period of total paralysis following their grand mal seizure episode. By short, the period is 2 days max. I looked further and came upon a pdf documenting the story of a young man who was paralyzed for 4 weeks after his seizures. When I read that story, I knew that this was what Ranger was going through. I just knew it inside, I knew after reading this that there could be hope that he could overcome this state of paralysis. I didn't know if he could fully recover, but I knew that hope was there.
On the weekend of July 4, I put Ranger in the back of the truck cab and we went to spend the holiday weekend with my boyfriend in New Jersey. Ranger had to be carried everywhere, it was so very very hard emotionally, but at the same time my boyfriend and I were so incredibly grateful that Ranger had improved and he seemed happy to still be with us.
The second miracle.
The morning of July 5, my boyfriend told me he had a dream the night before that Ranger walked again. In his dream, Ranger was fully walking and he was in the woods. My boyfriend told me that he didn't feel this was a dream, he told me that he felt it to be a vision. When one here's something like this, it's nearly impossible to digest. You're literally hearing about something that seemed a complete impossibility.
Over the next 4 weeks, Ranger gained his mobility back little by little. In the middle of August he was fully walking on his own, peeing and pooping on his own, and all of this was happening in the campground woods, where we now lived. Just as my boyfriend's dream had foretold. I have one of Ranger's walks on video, it's just amazing, and I am so proud of him. Nothing will ever rob us of this victory moment. Not even the sudden events of status epilepticus completely overcoming Ranger a few weeks later, and finally taking him to God. Even as I write this, I can't fully comprehend what all of this meant. I feel it's the power of God working through all of us, Ranger fully walking again was a miracle of proportions in so many ways that I could never have believed had I not witnessed it unfolding before me. I think sometimes it's hard for me to hold the miracle, because it didn't ultimately lead to a complete miraculous healing for Ranger, and delivery from death. A few weeks after his miracle walk, Ranger succumbed to an overwhelming experience of status epilepticus. I wish in my heart more than anything that Ranger's miracle would have restored his full health, but that was not to be. I am so grateful that he was victorious against such overwhelming odds, and that we had the opportunity of more beautiful moments and experiences together.
Miracles are real. They may not always take us to the final destination that we envision, but there is a force of divine beauty working through us, and sometime when we have given up hope there is more to come.
Ranger will always live on in my heart as a true champion.