THE MAGIC OF FATE ✨ Part 1

I knew I had to get back into writing after an incredibly fateful experience in the last 4 weeks. I couldn't work out the best way to share what's happened and the profound awareness that it has given me.

I've been very aware that for the last 4 years I've been paying a licence fee for this URL and trademark, knowing I wasn't ready to close it down. I know what I want to do with it, but I haven't been able to transition to the phase in my life where I'll use it. So instead, I just kept it open and dormant. And then fate jumped in.

In order to tell this story effectively, I have to give background, and it's a little long so bear with.

For a long time now I have been more than aware that I have attachment troubles. I have been exploring it deeply with my therapist of 3 years. Love is the root cause. Or perhaps, more so, the fear of being 'unlovable'. With these attachment troubles, comes a DEEP fear of loss. The idea of losing anyone that I am connected to cuts deep, some deeper than others of course. But the biggest fear of loss... my 2 senior dogs.

You see, these 2 dogs, aged 13 and 12 have been the one constant and stable thing I have had in life for the last decade or so. In fact, it's the only constant I've ever experienced. To me they represent safety and security, loyalty, and unconditional love. I've never had a human in my life that consistently provides all of those things, at all times. It's not 'woe is me', I actually think I have these dogs to teach me these possibilities. They bring so much joy to my life and a deep deep feeling of being loved and loving back that the idea of losing that is huge. The fear of losing them, in any form but end result them no longer being with me, is so big that I cannot physically think about it without crying. Cue unhealthy attachment. The older they are getting, the worse my fear gets. My therapist believes it's not a fear of death, but a fear of what the loss represents. We touched on this over the years in order to get me to a place of acceptance of the inevitable, which is fine, when they're well.

Where it starts to spin out of control, is when they are un-well. And guess what, elderly dogs, get un-well.

Anyway, 5 weeks ago, I popped to my local vet to pick up so flea/tick medication after Barney got bitten by a tick, rather than just handing over the meds at the counter, they insisted he had a £50 check up which I begrudged as 'there was nothing wrong with him' and he's not the easiest of patient. After a short moment of putting the stethoscope on his chest, the vet (who I'd not seen before) said "you know he's got a heart murmur right?"............ NO, no this was something I did not know. Something that has never been picked up, likely was never there. He had a dental surgery 6 months earlier and it wasn't picked up then, albeit they had problems with his blood pressure and heart rate and had to stop it early... warning sign right there. But some shocking news to receive so casually.

We had a brief interaction of what the heart murmur means, what the grading was, and ultimately she very nonchalantly told me "within 5 years he'll go into heart failure and then die", as she was holding the door open for me to leave. Excellent bedside manner I must say. She advised next steps would be an echocardiogram (an ultrasound of the heart) to see what was causing the murmur, and said at his age and breed, it's likely heart disease.

Of course, for the next 7 days, I convinced myself he had tumours on his heart, why else would a murmur just suddenly appear within 6 months, and that he was about to die.

Side note, I just wrote and deleted 'he was dying', part of my acceptance practice is 'of course he is, we all are'.

Suddenly, this attachment trouble of mine was exacerbated. I spent a full week crying every time I spoke about it, and I fully expected the worst. Riddled with tumours and going to die imminently.

I was deeply unsettled sending him in for his sedation as I worried about his poorly little heart and hoped it could handle it. We know now the GA in future will be very unlikely so no more surgeries. He, as I already mentioned, is a terrible patient. He HATES the vet. Hates being left in one of the kennels and gets unbearably worked up. So we found ways around this to prevent distress as much as we could. The scan happened and I was called within an hour.

Barney has what we thought, the vet said.

Mitral Valve Disease. This is where one of the valves on the heart doesn't work properly and starts to regurgitate blood that should only be pumped in one direction, back into the heart, which causes it to swell. We've measured it and believe it's early stage, but we do recommend a particular medication that he'll need to take twice a day, for the rest of his life.

But there are no tumours? I asked.

No tumours that we could see, the vet replied.

I have to add here, the vet I choose to do all of Barney & Wilma's surgeries is my cousin's husband. We are a close-knit family, and I trust him with their lives. I literally follow him around the country depending on where he is practicing. It gives me the reassurance that he will fight to keep them alive, knowing how attached I am. I consider myself VERY lucky to have this option.

So the end result isn't great. There is a chance that one day, my boy will die from a heart that got too big. Please see the irony in this because weirdly, it brings me the teeniest amount of comfort.

But, he didn't have tumours. He wasn't imminently close to death. I could breathe, ever so slightly, while I then spent the next week researching the disease, the medication, and the prognosis. This troubled me more than it should have done, but it's not part of the story.

So here we are, a sudden diagnosis. A confrontation with my biggest fear. And a sigh of relief.

And then fate stepped up a gear...