The Scariest Thing (Holly Schindler)

 I'm a big Halloween buff. The costumes, the chilly fall nights, the horror movies and novels...

But those are all fun scares. Play scares. As Charlotte so wisely put it in her post this month, fears change as you age. 

Case in point--this little guy:

I'm not making a small-dog oh-so-ferocious joke. That's my dog, Gus, and he has epilepsy. 

Seizures are scary. They're scary because you never know when they're coming and because you don't know how bad they'll be. He had one in August that sent us to the vet for an emergency visit. He had one last night, and thanks to all the reading I've been doing in canine epilepsy forums, I used an ice pack and eye compressions, and was able to help him out of it relatively quickly, without having to use the heavy-duty cluster buster protocol we got from the vet. (We've also been on daily meds ever since the August episode.)

I think, as you age, your fears for the people and creatures in your life become so much bigger than the fears you ever had for yourself. Seeing them hurt or suffer or worry is its own kind of torture, really. What keeps me up at night are worries about the creatures I love, far more than worries about me ever do.

Gus is a real sweetheart, by the way. He's doing really well; the thing about epilepsy is that, when they're not seizing, they're perfectly fine. (Just got to remember the meds.) One thing Gus has taught me is that luck is relative. Maybe he's not lucky to have epilepsy. But if he was always going to have epilepsy, I hope he's lucky to be with me and my family--where we all work from home, and we're able to care for him.

Maybe that's what fear does--the fear for the important creatures in our lives, anyway. It pushes us to be better people for the ones we love. 

~

Holly Schindler is the author of The Junction of Sunshine and Lucky, which has recently re-released and now comes with a corresponding activity book. Check HollySchindler.com for details.