When it's hard to be an atheist

My dog is dying of cancer. The past two weeks have been pretty sad - she won't put weight on one of her paws and is in a lot of pain from the fluid buildup causing her bones to swell.

It's hard to be an atheist when people and things you love are dying or die.

Would it be comforting to think I'd see them again when I died? Yes, of course it would. But believing in an afterlife is like drinking ... it's numbing you to reality.

For me, this is it. Life and time is precious because I get one shot at it. Death is death.

I've known I was an atheist for a very long time. Before I was 10, for sure, but I wasn't allowed to say I was. ("Stop scaring the babysitter," was what one parent told me.)

It would be great to think the people and things I loved could hear me and I could speak to them. But I don't believe in God and I'm not going to start because death is coming.

I will grieve, but my grief is rooted in the knowledge that there is nothing after we die.

Living in the South for the past three years, I've learned to avoid talking about church and religion. Most folks don't know I'm not a believer, although I'm sure many of them suspect something is up.

Militant atheists are as annoying as militant religious people. Two sides of the same coin if you ask me.

I work for a public institution, so I am always pointing out when we may not want to come across as endorsing religion.

However, this does not mean I do not support the religious beliefs of my colleagues. Good Friday means there are like of us non-Catholics at the office that day. It doesn't bother me; if I had an equivalent holiday, I would be granted the same leave as them, so why be upset about it?

I also made sure that this Friday, when it was my turn for the weekly breakfast, to make sure nothing had meat, since it's Lent. Do I observe Lent? Nope. How do I know it's Lent? The gazillion "fillet o' fish" commercials for McDonald's. That's how.

Nevertheless, I recognize that Lent is a particularly important time for my Catholic colleagues. Thanks to the Internet, I was able to read up on the particulars of the requirements and so I was able to accommodate their dietary restrictions. (If anyone gave up anything particular for Lent, I was not aware of it.)

My atheism is not about having anyone else believe what I believe; rather, it is about what I perceive to be the truth. How can I follow any religion that says my gender is inferior? How can I believe in this all-knowing, all-seeing deity when other adherents to that belief system were exceptionally cruel to me? No thank you.

If there is a Hell, I'll see you there.

I dyed my hair purple - Coping with my dog's cancer diagnosis

For several months, our dog has been sick. It started in November right after we got back from a friend's wedding.

We came home, and the dog wouldn't eat. Three days later, her stomach was hot, like an oven, to the touch. We rushed her to the vet on Saturday, were given antibiotics, but after ten days, the cough wouldn't go away.

The vet thought it might be a drug-resistant strain of pneumonia. Another ten-day course of antibiotics.

She seemed well enough when we boarded her for Christmas break, but on New Year's Day, we got a call from our boarding/daycare place. The dog was coughing again. We were going to be home in a few days, so we said we'd take her to the vet.

We did X-Rays. There was a mass in her chest, which in November, the vet had thought was pneumonia. We paid to send the X-Rays to a specialist. The conclusion: either fungal infection or cancer.

I remembered my college roommate is now a practicing vet. I called her and asked for her professional opinion. She agreed with everything our vet was doing, but told me that if it was cancer, it would be fast since our dog was so young.

As bad as a fungal infection could be, we hoped it was fungal, but as every test for fungus came back negative, the reality of it being cancer started to set in.

We were faced with a choice: a chest biopsy or a shot of Elspar. Elspar works by starving cancer cells of an enzyme they need to reproduce. The vet said if the Elspar worked, it would work right away, but the effect would be short-term.

We decided to try the Elspar. There was a risk of allergic reaction and death, so the night before the procedure, we decided to let her have some tuna. Google says dogs can have tuna. Google failed to mention tuna can make the dog very sick.

The next day, at the vet's, the dog had a slight fever and then suddenly puked. This meant she was ineligible to start the Elspar that day. I had started to drive toward work, but then I turned around to go pick her up. The vet's office gave her a shot of anti-nausea medicine.

I had decided to take her to daycare, and I was seriously a mile away from the business, when she proceeded to vomit and have diarrhea all over the back of my car. Thank goodness for the two layers of blankets and dog covers I have in the back. May you never know was tuna vomit/diarrhea in an enclosed space smells like.

Also, remember Google can lie.

I called work and took a comp day and took the dog back to the vet, where her temperature was down and she was just fine and dandy, although she had diarrhea every couple of hours for the rest of the day. She was doing the diarrhea-I-might-shit-in-this-corner dance as I walked in with the holy mess from the back of my car. Narrowly avoided that misery.

So, the next day, we did the Elspar shot and by that afternoon ... our dog was back to herself. It was bittersweet to see her so happy and playful; it meant it was cancer.

The vet in the office handling our case was out of town the week following the Elspar shot, so this Tuesday, she called me.

The dog's life expectancy, with chemo, is six to 18 months. Without it, 30 to 60 days. We're doing the most effective chemo, the CHOP protocol. Chemo is well tolerated in dogs, and according to the literature, chemo improves their quality of life.

The specialist radiologist said the tumor by her heart had shrunk, and her liver and spleen were smaller. This mean her liver and spleen had/have tumors. This makes her cancer Stage IV (V is the worst), type b (symptomatic).

I texted my partner and lied. He's out dealing with live ammunition and I need him to be focused on his job. I texted him if the dog makes it to 18 months, we'd need to go see an oncologist. I left out that if she made it to 18 months, we'd need to see the canine oncologist because she would have beaten the odds.

Our dog is two. TWO.

We planned on at least a decade with her.

My partner loves her. We were together seven, eight years when we got the dog  and not once had I heard him sing - not even in the shower. Then we got this dog and he started making up lullabies for her, singing to her, cradling her like a baby.

I thought, how, how can I tell this man his dog has six to 18 months to live?

I've spent a lot of the past few days crying. Even writing this post, I can't stop feeling sad.

It isn't fair. I can't fix this. I can't make her stop hurting. There is no magic science to fix this and I feel so helpless.

We started chemo on Saturday. What we thought was a sprained paw turned out to be a rare complication. The fluid from the tumor by her chest is causing her bones to expand and making her limp. We can manage the pain and hopefully as the tumors shrink (if the respond to the protocol), her leg will get better.

Day one of chemo.

I hadn't realized I had schedule a hair appointment for the same time as the puppy's chemo treatment, so I rescheduled my hair appointment.

I wanted to feel something other than sad. As I drove over to the salon, I thought about what I should do. I decided, impulsively, to dye my hair purple.

It's a temp dye that will wash out over the month, but it's something to say "fuck cancer" and "this sucks."

I dyed my hair purple to cope with the dog's diagnosis.

You can tell I went with purple if you look at my hair in the sunlight. Inside, it looks like a dyed it black. Natural light shows the purple tones.

The puppy has been more herself this weekend. Even with her hurt paw, she wanted to go on some walks. We did a longer one and two shorter ones. She's bringing me toys to play with and wants to play games. It's good to see her feeling well.

On the flip side, I have been trying to cope and deal with the grief from knowing this wonderful, loving creature won't be in my life for very much longer. I had worried more about a rattlesnake or car killing her. Cancer? Cancer was for old dogs. Not my little princess.

It's wonderfully freeing though. I mean, I got fast food the other day and I gave her a few french fries. I confessed this to my partner and he said, "Well, she has cancer. I might have given her some sausage when I made spaghetti the other night."

All the toys I keep up in reserve because she plays rough? Cut all the tags off them and gave them to her. The toys I put up and do supervised play with? Here they are, go and de-stuff them and shred them to pieces! I feel like giving her a treat, I do. She's probably not making it to ten with lymphoma, so why give a fuck about verboten people treats? (We make sure they are dog-safe, don't freak out people.)

The hard part is thinking about ... what if we get something for her and she never gets to use it?

I ordered some baking clay to do a pawprint keepsake. I want to do it while she is feeling well. I don't want the memory of the pawprint to be "we did this the day she died." I want it to be while she is feeling good and racing around the house and being a happy dog.

I'm still grieving over the diagnosis and uncertainty, but I am celebrating life with my purple hair and my happy puppy.

A Year Later: Still Not Back to Normal

I do yoga two to three times a week. It was in class this week that I realized I'm not back to my old self.

Let me explain. About a year ago, I was in yoga class when I did a downward dog and felt a little woozy. As the class went into the second downward dog, so did I, only I went from feeling woozy to feeling an incredible sense of dread and became lightheaded. I went into child's pose and didn't move.

I was covered in sweat, and not the kind from working out. It was a cold sweat and I only felt dread and nausea. I left yoga class early and by the time I got to my office, I realized I really needed help.

One of my coworkers drove me to the nearby urgent care, where I was told to go home immediately and call 9-1-1 or go to my nearest emergency room if the symptoms I felt during yoga came back at any time.

I was 28.

Then began a several-month odyssey to figure out what was wrong. My insurance was billed more than $20,000 and I was billed for $5,000 (don't worry, I negotiated several of those bills down).

I had only been at my place of employment for seven or eight months and I was starting to burn through my sick leave.

I was meeting with HR reps and learning about the policies of "What happens if I run out of sick leave? What happens if I need open heart surgery this summer? What happens if I end up disabled from this?"

I realized I could never lose my job or my benefits. It's bankruptcy or death if I do. Because the U.S. does not have a national healthcare system, I can never ever give up a job with benefits. It would take a quarter of the income I'm earning now to just maintain the premiums, not to mention the several thousands of dollars I spend each year out of pocket on co-pays and prescriptions.

Would I like to chase my dreams and start my own editorial business or go back to academia or move to another state to be closer to my family? Absolutely. I can't afford to leave a job that has decent job security when I know I have this ticking time bomb.

Would I like to move to an area that is less critically under served so I could get more reliable healthcare with shorter wait times? Yes, but I can't leave this job and its benefits.

All it takes is for one thing to be slightly off and I could be right back where I was last year.

I didn't feel well for more than six months. It was exhausting. I felt so ill all the time.

I realized I still don't feel 100 percent this week; I can't do the balance poses I could a year ago. That sense of balance is completely gone.

What makes it worse is that several people at work don't understand. Because I look fine, I should feel fine. So, I have doctor's notes, paperwork, and proof.

I hate feeling sick. It's this exhaustion that is never really gone. I can't spring out of bed. I have to be extremely careful about how long I'm standing and how I'm feeling.

I barely have any sick leave because I have to use it all the time.

I tie myself in knots to minimize how much sick leave I use, but those efforts are not appreciated, so I have stopped trying to tie myself in a bow. I have sick leave and I have the legal right to use it.

On No Longer Being a College Instructor

A little more than two years ago, I taught my last class. There were a whole host of problems with that adjunct job (the least of which was that I was lied to about how many classes they had the budget for me to teach), but I still enjoyed teaching. In fact, the reason I didn't walk off the first day when I realized how much I had been lied to was that I wasn't going to abandon my students or leave them in the lurch for the administration's misdeeds.

I miss teaching. I was following my passion. I had even used those words, "following my passion" to describe how I felt. Of course, I was delightfully naive and only two months into the academic job search at the time.

Turning off what you were trained to do is hard; I still plan classes, read up on pedagogy, and research the newest and most effective teaching methods. It's all moot though. I won't take part-time work and I won't accept a position without health benefits.

Why?

Because I am worthy of a salary. Because I don't want to have to declare bankruptcy from medical debt. Because I have been on the adjunct hamster wheel and I am not getting back on that ride.

Technically, I could try again when the MLA annual conference comes to Texas next year, but the reality is that my PhD is stale. I have zero articles and no book contracts. If I want to get back in, I've got a lot of work to do so and I'd rather follow my new passion: creative writing.

I do look back at my teaching evaluations. I was always above center of mass. I even had one quarter where I was 4.7 or a 4.8 out of 5. I had great written comments. Students would take as many classes in sequence with me as they could, even if they weren't morning people. I have many thank you notes, which are very precious to me.

It would be a lie to say I don't feel like a failure. I feel like I failed myself, my adviser, my department, my university. I still can't go through the boxes with my graduate school books and papers.

I have teacher's copies of textbooks so I could write more syllabuses for introductory and culture classes, but I never made it that far in the interview process. Now, these books are outdated and I'm no longer a teacher of record so I won't be able to get new copies to write updated syllabuses.

I'm torn because I spent thousands of dollars on books for my academic library, and the reality is that they have been in the same boxes since I moved to Georgia and then Texas.

Unopened boxes. Unrealized dreams.

My therapy has been to put my teaching and job application materials online for free. I have my syllabuses and sample PowerPoint presentations on my academia.edu page. At least my work is helping someone else. Perhaps in a pathetic sort of way, I'm hoping this digital portal helps my job search and attempts to get back into the academy.

The reality is that I did as much as I could have done from a non-Ivy school to try to get a place on the tenure track.

I didn't win the academic lottery. I didn't have the name-brand recognition. Plain and simple.

So here I am, no longer a college instructor.

A dream without a goal is just a wish

A dream without a goal is just a wish, and if wishes were horses, beggars would ride.

I haven't really been working on the world traveling goal very much. It's something I'm going to have to decide about very soon, because I'll need to know if my employer will grant my leave of absence request, or if I'll be handing in my notice.

I'll need to time it carefully, because as annoying as some of my online classes are, I don't want to have to pay a lot more for them. My employee discount is saving me approximately 60 percent off the sticker price of this degree. I don't want to pay thousands and thousands of dollars to finish what I started; $4,500 a year is more palatable than $10,500 (or $24,000 if I lose my Texas residency as a result of this wanderlust).

I have a few projects in the pipeline: I need to write a lecture on fairy tales and dictatorships for when I guest lecture for my friend's class. I also need to finish translating some poems for a top-secret project.

I really need to move on the graduate school scholarship application, but I need to figure out which two professors would actually help me out with the letters of recommendation.

My goal for today is to finish up my short story for my advanced fiction class. It's due Friday, but I have family coming to visit, and I think I need to clean up the house a bit more.

In a sad side note, it's looking like the dog has lymphatic cancer and not a fungal infection. We're doing a Hail Mary next week, and then going from there.

The Kickoff

I have tried my hand at blogging many, many times. After working in public relations for a little more than a year, I realized how to make this a sustainable and long-term endeavor.

First, I am going to stick to a reasonable publication schedule. I'm committing to every Sunday.

Second, the general subject of this blog will be more varied than my other blog attempts. This blog will talk about academia, graduate school, knitting, altac (alternate academic) careers, online education, the MFA, my PhD, and whatever else appeals to my jack-of-all-trades nature.

Third, I plan on most posts being between 700 and 1,000 words in length.

Lastly, I will work on creating a decent buffer so I can maintain the weekly publication schedule.