Dogs Were Rescued (And So Was I)

by Teresa J. Rhyne

  My fellow volunteers were up for the task and then some. They were thrilled. I tried to devise ways to be helpful without being too near the pinpricks of blood for testing glucose levels as I was certain my fainting would not be deemed helpful.

  There was one strength I could put to use—my logic. I became the organizer, enlisting one of the residents, Fatima, to help me figure out the women’s names so I could chart the statistics. Fatima’s English was sufficient, certainly far better than my Hindi. And she had shown herself to be congenial and helpful despite having lost three of her limbs to complications from diabetes (which made the task at hand that much more serious). There was no computer printout to work from, only a large old-fashioned ledger book with light green pages and thin red-lined columns. Sister Margaret Theresa instructed me to put a date at the top of each page and list each woman’s name, weight, and blood sugar level.

  While I worked on the system, Mary and Lisa struggled to find enough various working parts and latex gloves to comprise a functioning glucose test system, and Helene found the scale and talked with and soothed the women lining up. Even I was soothed by Helene’s aura. It was calming just to stand next to her in her state of grace and compassion. Maybe it would rub off on me—me, the one next to her with a clipboard, a plan, and a fear of blood.

  Not that much went according to my plan. We only got halfway through before it was time for lunch the first day and then our departure. Lunch could not wait, no matter what my process was. Apparently the sisters love a certain efficiency too, even if it meant we left without completing our task.

  On the second day when we finished the blood sugar and weight statistics, Mother Superior then informed us we needed to do their blood pressure as well. My system would have worked far better, of course, if all three of those things had been done at the same time. Perhaps Mother S didn’t think we’d get it all done, so she had started with the most important tests. Crafty Mother. But now I’d have to be certain that this “Mina” or “Meena” or “Meha” was the same “Mina” or “Meena” or “Meha” as the one who’d weighed 54 kg and had a blood sugar level of 80 mg. Or was this the other one? And it seemed I was not hearing the names the same way. Mina now sounded like Dina, but I didn’t have a Dina on my list. I did have a Nina and a Meena, though. Adding to my confusion, but certainly making the whole process more fun, the ladies were now mentioning their nicknames.

  Now one woman was referred to as “vegetable Jaya” (her job was to peel vegetables), and there were several “Chotis,” which I heard as “shorty” but in reality meant “small” or “younger sister” (I thought I was close enough). We were taken aback, and duly warned, when we learned one woman’s nickname meant “biter” because of her habit of biting…well, the hands that fed her.

  On it went. I learned bits of both the culture and the language simply by compiling my list. And I found a kind of comfort in the process. I was emboldened enough to try to pronounce the names as I was told them. Luckily, I am able to laugh at myself.

  Fatima stated the name of the next woman in line: “Poppy.”

  “Poppy?” I said.

  Fatima giggled. So did her friend Santi.

  “No.” Fatima was smiling broadly. “Pa-pee.”

  “Pa-pee,” I repeated.

  Now several of the women were giggling.

  “No. Po-pee,” she said with an emphasis on the last syllable.

  Bravely I tried again, though I could not decipher any difference between what she was saying and what I’d already said. But perhaps with volume and enthusiasm my pronunciation would sound the same. “PA-PEE!” I said, the way nervous people speak to blind people.

  The room of women burst out laughing. I tried it yet again and hoped I was not swearing inadvertently. “PAW-PEE!”

  The ladies’ eyes widened and they laughed and covered their mouths with their hands. Fatima explained that pappii is a cute word for a kiss and is most assuredly not a woman’s name. The roomful of women laughed louder now. I could see that I would easily elicit laughter all morning by playing the fool, exuberantly shouting pappii at random moments. And so, when I got frustrated with my failed system or lack of progress, I shouted, “Pappii!” and joined in the laughter. No one kissed me, though.

  It took the rest of my morning to sort out my notes and the charts and figure out which women still needed to have their blood pressure taken. Some were willing to volunteer over and over again, and others hid. Both approaches wreaked havoc with my system. Only one woman kicked and screamed; she was dragged in by two other patients, each holding an arm and a leg, swinging the screaming, squirming woman between them like children on a playground. Still, the woman would not be quiet or still enough to have her blood pressure taken (which was high, we were sure). This was not playing catch in the courtyard.

  And yet Mother Teresa’s Home was quiet, relatively calm, and certainly beautiful in its own way. My mornings there were the best part of the trip.

  Because the afternoons were hard and the nights were unbearable.

  The schedule, combined with the difficulty of carving out any alone time to process India and what I’d left behind in Riverside, was wearing me down, weighing so heavily mentally that I could feel it physically—though I had not yet caught the cold or the Delhi belly that was knocking down our group one by one.

  I was isolated, in part because I roomed with two wonderful, interesting women who happened to be part of another group and thus on an entirely different schedule. So in addition to having to keep my next day’s clothes and toiletries in the living room to avoid waking them hours before they needed to leave in the morning, I had no roommate to talk things over with, to discuss the next day’s schedule with, or to invite me to run out for coffee or to dinner, to shop, explore, or eat in town. The women in my Fresh Chapter group and in my apartment were on different schedules, leaving two hours after I did and generally arriving back from their volunteer placements before I did. Thus, they spent their days together, bonding as women do, and I was never comfortable enough to just walk into their bedroom and join in on those rare occasions we were in the apartment together.

  But my isolation was also a result of being grief-stricken over my dog. And I was angry. Tired and angry, and not hiding it well. The combination left me without friends, and the circumstances left me without solace or the energy to do anything about it.

  I assure you, I am not normally this way. While Chris teases me that I can be a bit of a hermit (the whole “Alcohol, Books, Coffee, and Dogs is all I need” thing), I generally have a good social game face and enjoy meeting and talking with new people. But even in the best of circumstances, I do not do well without time alone. That’s where I get my fuel. That’s how I can function. The welcoming gift of blank journals seemed like a mockery now. Worst of all, I didn’t have enough contact with Chris for him to humor me out of the dark cloud I felt descending on me. He could not lead me to the light, as he has always done in our years together.

  I was on my own.

  I’d learned a lot in my odyssey through cancer, and here—across the globe, traveling with a group of fellow cancer survivors—I’d need to draw on that. One of the things I thought I’d learned was to adjust to circumstances I can’t control, to look for the good, and to cling to what I valued most. That night I skipped dinner so I could carve out a few moments alone in my room. Finally, I was able to email Chris, alternating between descriptions of my exhaustion and begging for news (lie to me, please, if need be) that Seamus was well. It was only five in the morning his time, so I knew Chris wouldn’t answer. He was no more a morning person than I was. I picked up my journal and began to scribble my random thoughts, trying to make sense of anything. I had only half an hour before Terri was back in our flat.

  And then Terri poked her head in my room. “Do you know how to get to apartment 330?”

  Only then did I remember that we were to
have yet another group meeting following dinner. I didn’t want to go.

  “No,” I said in a tone that also said, “And I don’t care.” Maybe my time alone had only increased my need to be left alone.

  “Okay, then I’ll wait for you,” she said. Of course, she didn’t know where I’d gone in my head. She didn’t know how much of my brain had now been consumed by that dark, descending cloud.

  I wanted to scream “It’s going to be a long damn wait!” but I didn’t. This, it turned out, was a mistake. It would have been better to have lost it then and there with minimal witnesses. Or to have told her frankly what was going on with me. But I’m at best reluctant to talk about my feelings. Really, really reluctant. Instead, I dutifully, and against every screaming nerve in my body, followed Terri to apartment 330. Bad idea. Very, very bad idea.

  We settled in on couches and chairs, gathered in a circle. The meeting began with what I swore I was promised would not be happening: talking about feelings with near strangers. I barely discuss feelings with people I know well (I write about them and share them with total strangers, but that’s just different…somehow). Perhaps some people are willing to discuss their feelings about having had cancer. I am not one of those people. I sat, boiling and churning inside. I could not talk about cancer at that moment. I could not hear about cancer. And I was captive in a room of cancer survivors who wanted to talk about…cancer. Yes, I should have excused myself, but I didn’t.

  The discussion turned to how the trip was going and how we were feeling. I had heard many of the participants complain to one another about their exhaustion, their difficulty with the volunteer assignments, and the living conditions. Now many of them voiced their concerns, and finally, for one brief moment, I was not alone. I was not the only one suffering. But when I heard the CVV leader’s response to the suffering—a smile and simplistic “India is hard”—I lost it. And not one bit graciously.

  I thought I was saying that when one of the participants, a single mother of two teenagers, expressed anger that she was diagnosed with stage IV lung cancer and given two years to live, she is allowed to be mad as holy hell and no one should try to temper that. A stage IV cancer survivor does not have to say, “Oh, but others have it so much worse, so I’ll buck up.”

  I thought I said that when we, jet-lagged cancer survivors with all the physical and mental scars and limitations that go with that, are run ragged with an arbitrary schedule of twelve or more hours a day of volunteer work and lectures and tours, with no breaks, while sleeping on three inches of foam balanced on wooden crates, sharing bathrooms that require us to dispose of toilet paper in a trash receptacle, and showers (when we were lucky enough to get one) with water we have to be careful to spit out, we are allowed to complain and we should be heard. The standard for a legitimate complaint is not that no one anywhere in the world possibly has it worse than you do. We do not have to say, “Oh, but those kids in the shantytowns have it so much worse than we do, so we’ll just be grateful.” Not when it would be so easy to fix it by, say, giving us an hour of downtime one afternoon. Or scheduling a walk instead of a lecture.

  I know I said, “Don’t brush off our concerns by saying ‘India is hard’ when you are making it hard. The living conditions are hard. Fine, I get that. But the schedule does not have to be insane. You cannot put a six-week schedule into a two-week one and impose it on cancer survivors!”

  But what they all heard was me yelling at a stage IV cancer survivor that she shouldn’t complain and that everyone else should just keep their damn feelings to themselves. Or better yet, avoid having them, thank you very much. It’s also possible I said I felt like a prisoner, and not a U.S. prisoner, because those prisoners have rights.

  The group fell into a stunned silence.

  I made Terri cry, and I made everyone else hate me. I deserved that. Terri did not.

  Just when I thought the trip couldn’t get any worse, I officially made myself a pariah.

  • • •

  The next day, following lunch, Terri asked if she could speak with me privately. I was being called to the principal’s office and I felt it. I was chagrined, concerned, and simultaneously defiant. I may not have expressed it in the best way possible, but my complaints were legitimate. The schedule was too much.

  So before dinner, I sat in the courtyard, talking to Terri. She thought I’d offended members of our group, and I assured her I hadn’t meant to. But, she went on to say, she thought I was affecting people and pointed out that I had a strong personality.

  If I had been in a better mood, I would have laughed at this. It’s something I’ve heard my entire life. My entire life. I was apparently a three-year-old with a strong personality. And yet I never know what people expect me to do with that information, and asking, “What do you expect me to do with that information?” only seems to solidify their observation.

  “I don’t see how I’m possibly affecting anybody else. I’m hardly around anyone, except at Mother Teresa’s, and we’re pretty busy there.”

  “You are. You’re part of the group, and everybody can see that you are unhappy. I was afraid to talk to you. I think the others might be afraid too.”

  I thought I was mostly alone because I’d missed the opportunity to really get to know anyone in our group due to the room assignments and a schedule that didn’t lend itself to leisurely conversations. But somehow, apparently, I’d frightened a group of cancer survivors.

  “Look, I stand by what I said about this schedule. But I’m also having a great deal of personal difficulty right now.” I took a deep breath. I thought but didn’t say, I’d like to just leave it at that, if I could.

  Terri’s already large blue eyes widened and then narrowed as she tilted her head. “I’m sorry.”

  One look of sympathy was all it took. The tears began to flow. “My dog was diagnosed with terminal cancer before I left. The dog in the book.” Terri had read my memoir just after it came out. I suspect that played a role in her selecting me for the trip. A selection she was clearly regretting now. “He means everything to me. He was a huge part of my cancer recovery and now… It’s just hard to be here.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  “I know. And even in the best of circumstances, I need quiet time. Time to write, to think, to just be in my own head. And I can’t get that here. Not ever. It’s impossible. So right now, all of it, it feels like I’m being tortured. It’s just too much.” I looked away. “So, yeah, I understand that I may look angry and unapproachable.”

  Terri shifted sideways. “I was thinking maybe you shouldn’t go this weekend. Maybe this weekend would be a good time for you to be alone.”

  The weekend trip was to Agra to see the Taj Mahal.

  Why would I fly all the way to India and not see the Taj Mahal? I stared at the ground, dumbfounded.

  Then, no longer crying, I looked up at Terri. “I’ve thought about leaving the whole trip several times, believe me. But I made a commitment and I’ll stick it out. The Taj Mahal is a highlight of the trip. I don’t think it’s fair to ask me not to go.”

  “I’m not telling you that you can’t go. I’m asking you to think about it.”

  “I will think about it.”

  I would not think about it. I was not missing the Taj Mahal. Not after everything else.

  We were both quiet for a few moments.

  “Here’s the thing. If you decide to go, I need you to not make fun of things. No snippy comments, no sarcasm. I know you don’t like the touchy-feely stuff, but you can’t affect the others.”

  “I will think about that too,” I said. And I half meant it.

  At dinner, Terri informed us all that the late-night group meetings would be voluntary. She had postponed the exercise that involved writing down something we wanted to let go of in our life and then burning that slip of paper. It was to have occurred the night of my outburst, and
now instead, they’d be lighting it up that night. Notice I said “they”? Right. I was the only member of the group who chose not to attend. So much for my “influence.”

  By not attending, I got the chance to IM with Chris. My two main coping mechanisms in life are talking things through with Chris and sarcasm (these thing overlap, not coincidentally). I was miserably unhappy, generally wishing I was home with Chris and Seamus, with only Mother Teresa’s Home for the Destitute and Dying as my respite and solace, ironically. I considered booking an early flight home.

  Again, Chris talked me out of it by being supportive, assuring me that Seamus was doing well, and that the two of them would be fine if I stayed and made adjustments to get through the trip, like I’d started to do by staying in that evening. He was supportive whether I got on the plane home or stayed and worked through it.

  Although, I can see where it will be hard to visit the Taj with one arm tied behind your back. Possibly both.

  I responded, What?

  If she wants you not to crack jokes or use sarcasm, she’s basically removing a large chunk of you, and certainly one of your finest honed weapons.

  I smiled. I couldn’t even be insulted by this. And suddenly, going home seemed like quitting. I wasn’t a quitter. Cancer had taught me that much.

  When Terri returned to our apartment that night, I told her I was going, but I couldn’t guarantee I would smile through it all. Likely I’d just be quiet. But I was going.

  “Fair enough,” she said.

  I hoped I could do it, but I had my doubts.

  Chapter 9

  In the Pond of Wonder

  One more night on my foam-on-wood-crate bed and I did not wake on a positive note. On the bus to Agra, we were handed name tags. Only they said things like “In the Moment,” “Confident,” “Peaceful,” and “Amazed.” I’m amazed. I mean, yes, amazed at the name tags, but also, my tag said “Amazed.” These were, we’re told, the words we each used in our interviews when asked how we wanted to feel when we came to India. I wanted to be amazed. Now I just wanted to be alone (and that would have been a name tag I could embrace). I’d had a hard enough time remembering actual names, and now I’m supposed to remember to call someone “Present.” And Terri wanted me to do this without laughing. Or scoffing.