The faithful friend who’s helped us cope with cancer
( ) When she’s not busy chasing squirrels
Former Blue Peter presenter and author JANET ELLIS’ husband is stricken with stage 4 cancer. But there’s been one source of irrepressible joy amid the setbacks... and her account will make your heart soar too
My gaze is fixed on John’s right hand. I know his hands so well. Over our 33 years together, his hands have often held mine. They have cradled first our children, then our grandchildren. They have tended to our house and garden. Now, his hand rests on our dog angela’s large, untidy head. He is lying stretched out on the sofa and she is in her favourite position alongside him.
She looks up at him adoringly, as he rakes his fingers through her fur with a satisfying scratch. The television offers another round of Pointless. Nothing has changed. everything has changed. Two years ago, we collected a sweet, squirmy, protesting puppy from her birthplace in Derbyshire and brought her home. We’d both grown up with dogs, and as an ex-Blue Peter
presenter, I was very used to spending time with them. You were never far from fur or feathers in the Blue Peter studio!
Angela is our second Italian Spinone. Our first, Nancy, had died not long before, in February 2017, at the not-very-grand old age of 12, leaving us distraught.
John had been diagnosed with stage 1 cancer of the tonsil during Nancy’s last days and, truth to tell, neither of them minded about swapping long walks for afternoon rests. He needed to convalesce after six weeks of daily radiotherapy, and she loved the company.
Her death, which left a huge, dog-shaped gap in our lives (Spinones are not small dogs, either in size or temperament), coincided with positive news of John’s recovery — a clear scan.
Heartened, we went on a puppy search and, although they’re not a common breed, news of a litter came exactly when we needed it.
We went to choose our new puppy just before a cherished holiday to Japan. At least, we thought we were making the decision, but she made her feelings clear by settling on my lap at once and staying put, while we admired her brothers and sisters. ‘This one, then,’ we agreed.
The puppy sighed, loudly, and went back to sleep. When we went to collect her, a few weeks later, we were refreshed after a wonderful trip, and ready for the inevitable weeks of chewing, mewling and mess. Puppies are hard work!
We called her Angela, loved her immediately and were at her beck and call constantly, however much we’d promised ourselves that we’d be strict. Her big brown eyes were disarming and her appetite for life and adventure was infectious.
It didn’t take long for her to feel like one of the family. We enrolled in puppy training classes, replaced yet another ruined dog bed and found an excellent walker for when we needed him. So far, so familiar.
John was due to have one final scan before being effectively signed off and promoted to attending yearly check-ups and telling tales of victory over cancer.
His last scan had been good and our recent holiday had been a very active one, including walking and climbing in Japan’s Kiso Valley.
OF cOurSe, we kept some of our optimism back in case we heard bad news, but we felt positive. As we went into the doctor’s consulting room, we were almost convinced this was a formality. It didn’t work out like that. I don’t know if you’ve ever been in front of someone who is speaking your language and telling you something important, but what they’re saying is so awful their words seem jumbled and impossible to understand. If you have, you’ll know how ghastly it is.
Ironically, we got the results of his scan en route to the opening of the new Maggie’s cancer centre at St Bart’s in London — I’ve been a Maggie’s patron for ages.
‘I’m afraid we’ve found something,’ his doctor said. ‘In one lung.’ And we sat, smartly dressed, where only moments before we’d been thinking about celebrating another fantastic, necessary Maggie’s centre, as the realisation dawned that the worst had happened.
The inexplicable, unfair, bewildering reality was that my beautiful husband — my truest friend, my champion, my love, the best person I’ve ever known — had stage 4 secondary cancer.
I’m slightly jumping ahead, because there were biopsies and scans and tests to come, to confirm what the medics suspected, but really we knew.
We knew in that instant that everything was going to be different. That plans would always come with provisos (‘if we can; all being well; treatment permitting; fingers crossed’). That our children, friends and families would have to cope with this situation in all sorts of unprepared-for ways.
We’d all have to learn the grammar of treatment, outcomes and protocols. We’d become familiar with his doctors and the hospital, with the appointments and the regimes. We’d anticipate or manage the side-effects and complications.
In the early days, which coincided with the depths of winter, it was easy to believe all was bleak. The temptation to hibernate, to shut out the world, was overwhelming. Our dog, Angela, had other ideas.
The first time we saw her again — coming home broken and bewildered from the doctor’s consulting room — the way she bounded up to us showed that, to her, we were exactly the same. What mattered to her is that we loved, cared for and entertained her, and she couldn’t see any reason why that should all stop.
Sure, on occasion, she let me howl and rage. She allowed me to hug her, even when she ended up damp with tears, without flinching or pulling away. But then she reminded me that there was a world outside the window. For her, it was full of different sounds and sights and smells (especially smells), each one more entrancing than the last.
Throughout what felt like a winter of Siberian intensity, while John recovered from brutal treatments and investigations, I pulled on stout boots and thick coats and took Angela for walks. Day after day, I trudged on, while she ran and sniffed, and ran back to sniff again.
I was angry and resentful, knotted with fear and sadness. Angela bounded ahead anyway, as if she were only waiting for me to catch up. Which, eventually, literally and metaphorically, I did.
I finally admitted I couldn’t resist her enthusiasm for life any more. It wasn’t so much that she ignored my pain, she simply showed me how to live alongside it. Yes, she seemed to say, there is big stuff going on. unknowable, frightening things are happening. But, look! There is joy in the detail, in the small things you won’t be able to see if you assume everything is terrible.
There’s a lot of kindness to be found, too. My puppy greeted everyone as if they were a potential friend. Her charm and
‘The temptation was to hibernate, to shut out the world. Our dog, Angela, had other ideas’