I’m on Assignment

by Donna Poole

Stan, the hostler, held out a carrot and rubbed my head.

“Sorry, Bella, but the vet says you’ll probably need to stay penned up a bit longer so your leg can keep healing. He’ll know more after he does X-rays tomorrow.

 X-ray time again. I’m nervous—hopeful but afraid to hope.

I tossed my chestnut-colored mane, whinnied, and nuzzled his shoulder.

Stan laughed. “I believe you understand every word I say to you, girl. I hope you get good news tomorrow.”

Stan left and padlocked the door to the small stable where they were keeping me isolated from the other horses so I could rest and heal. The cozy stable hadn’t been so bad during the winter, but spring was coming. I could smell it in the air when Stan opened the door, and today I’d heard the red wing blackbirds. I looked out the stable window and saw only a few piles of snow remained between the oozing patches of mud. Tiny snowdrop flowers were blooming, and in the field winter wheat was growing green.

Spring called to me. I wanted to go outside, kick up my heels, and feel the warm breeze blow through my chestnut mane. I wanted to challenge the wind to a race around the pasture.

I especially missed training and show time. I remembered the feel of my owner on my back when I’d trotted, head high around the ring, and the pride she and I’d both felt every time someone had pinned another ribbon to my halter. More than once my owner and I’d had our picture in “The Morgan Horse Magazine.”

But now I was stuck here, sidelined by my injury. The stable had been a comfortable place for healing, but I was starting to dislike the very word. Stable. Well, tomorrow’s X-ray might show a change. Either I’d be heading back to training and the show ring or off to the glue factory.

Some of the other Morgan horses scoffed, said the glue factory was just a ghost tale the elders told colts to scare them. But Wise One, the oldest of us all, said the glue factory had once been a cruel end for useless horses. He said now they dispose of our bodies by burying, cremation, or taking us to a landfill.

I told him I didn’t much like the idea of the landfill.

“It doesn’t matter what they do with your body, Bella,” Wise One said. “Your body is just the house you live in. It’s not you. The real you isn’t your beautiful mane; it’s the part that feels joy when you toss it back and run with the wind.”

“When I die, what happens to the part of me that feels joy, Wise One?”

He whinnied. “I don’t know, but don’t be afraid. I’m sure the One who made us will know what to do with us when the time comes.”

I didn’t need to ask about the One who made us. All horses instinctively know him. Though we can’t put our feelings into words, we bow our heads low and feel glad when we think of him.

 Tomorrow will come, and with it the X-ray and the vet’s verdict. I’ve been through this before.  Just as I once was on assignment to do my best in the show ring, I’m on an assignment now. It’s to wait. I lie on the straw and sleep.

***

Like Bella, I’ll be on assignment tomorrow, and I hope to hear a better word than “stable” when I finish it. This assignment isn’t one I particularly relish, even though they serve drinks at the location. I know this because I’ve been there many times.

I usually pick the berry flavor drink and manage to gag it down. We aren’t talking milkshakes here, people. The drink is barium, a contrast solution to help the radiologist visualize the PET and CT scans better.

My son-in-law Drew knows there are many assignments I’d rather be on than this one, so he offered an alternative, one involving a cat that belongs to him and Kimmee, our daughter.

“The nice thing about cats is you can use them for both a cat scan and a pet scan,” Drew said.

I laughed. I wish his idea would work.

The scans really aren’t that bad. I got my first cancer related CT and PET scans in June 2020. I continued to have one PET and two CTs every three months during chemotherapy and radiation until May 4, 2021, when I entered a clinical trial for Epcoritamab, a drug not yet on the market. Then the scan assignments came more often, every six weeks for the first four months of the drug trial, then every three months, and now every six months.

When I got my last dose of Epcoritamab a few days ago they told me I’d completed cycle twenty-four. So now it’s time for more scans.

The techs who do the scans are great. They smile when I ask them to try to find my long-lost friend, NED, though I’m sure they hear the joke more often than they wish. NED is an acronym for no evidence of disease. It means remission—glorious word. I love the way that word rolls around on my tongue. I think I’d like to hear someone with a Scottish brogue say it; come to think of it, I’d love to hear anyone say it to me!

The best word I’ve heard so far after my many scans is “stable.”

Just because I haven’t yet found NED hiding under the table in one of the scan rooms doesn’t mean I won’t find him tomorrow.

My assignment isn’t so bad; many assignments are tougher, like the one Shelly Hamilton has. Shelly was sitting beside the bed of her dying father. Her husband Ron, in the last stages of Alzheimer’s, lay in his bed in another room. Ron Hamilton is the well-known author of many beautiful hymns, and Shelly is his wife.

As Shelly waited for God to take her father to heaven, she wrote about her motto, the one she’d learned from her husband’s caregiver: “I’m on assignment.”

Shelly wrote, “I’ve come to understand that assignments never end. As soon as this one is done, another comes along. You’d better be content with being on one.”

I hope to be content with whatever the results are of tomorrow’s scans.

But, like Bella, my fictional horse, I hear spring calling. I’d love to get well enough to challenge the wind to a race.  

I’d like to hear a better word than “stable.”  But Bella and I will be content with stable if that’s our assignments. She’s heard glue factory before; I’ve heard “disease progression.”  I don’t expect to hear disease progression again tomorrow, but someday my life will end. It won’t matter then what happens to my body, though if people follow my instructions, it will go to the University of Michigan for medical research.

My body isn’t the real me; it’s just my house. The part of me that feels joy and wants to challenge the wind to a race around the pasture belongs to the Lord, and I know exactly what he’s going to do when the time comes. He’ll take me where joy never fades, and life never ends. I have his word on it.

“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” –John 3:16