Say hello to Koa 🙂

On August 31, 2025 I flew out to Saskatoon to pick up my puppy.

I brought him home when he had just turned 10 weeks.

I knew that adopting Koa would be the most challenging adventure I would ever embark on. While laying in my cold hospital bed following my near-fatal motor vehicle accident, for the first time I asked myself what is it that I need to be healthy and happy?

Truth is, nobody has ever asked me that question. I just tried doing everything I thought people wanted me to do.

The root of this, approval-seeking. I desperately wanted approval but that approval as far as I can tell never came. Not from me and not from others. If I had approval from anyone that approval was never communicated. At least not in a way I could hear, understand, and receive. I was a disappointment to others as well as to myself. Why should people care to hear from me and to know what I believe I need for myself to be healthy and happy? So laying in my hospital bed with nothing but time and very few visitors, if any, I began to ask myself, for myself, this question. Afterall, this is my life and at some point I am going to have to face the world and more often then not I feel alone and isolated. At the end of the day it is me who will wake up each morning and will have to decide for myself how I am going to live the rest of my life. For some unknown reason I survived. I don’t know why I survived but I did. I now have to pick up the pieces and put my life back together again.

To be absolutely and painfully truthful, the struggle is less about how I feel in the moment and more about the acknowledgment that all of this is rooted in co-dependency. For the first time I am being present to my own emotions in a way that few have been able to do for me and I am allowing myself to feel all the feels I’ve never been allowed to feel. Regardless if how I feel is rooted in reality or not, it is how I feel. What impacts us is not so much the truthful reality of things but rather our perceived truth. Sometimes it takes a whole lot of therapy to heal from our perceived truths in order to embrace what is true. Being present for myself as I give myself permission to feel all my feels, this is the genesis of healing. This is becoming our own loving parent. As we become our own loving parent we begin to listen to that child within express their needs. Only then can we move forward and become who we were always meant to be. Following my accident, I knew things were going to change or I was not going to be around for much longer.

I sometimes think people believe that I was exaggerating when I said I almost died. In the accident I had sustained a fractured larynx. This resulted in a complete airway obstruction. The fact that I was able to clear my own airway was nothing short of a miracle. Had I failed, I knew I would not survive.

The traumatic nature of my accident resulted in being diagnosed with PTSD. Diagnosis of PTSD without pre-existing mental health conditions is rarely heard of. Typically PTSD occurs because a person is already predisposed to the development of PTSD.

As a result PTSD can exacerbate pre-existing mental health conditions by intensifying symptoms making them harder to manage potentially leading to the development of new co-occurring disorders such as depression and anxiety. In my case, Major Depressive Disorder, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, and Somatic Symptom Disorder are pre-existing mental health conditions that predisposed me to develop PTSD.

As a person who lives alone and relatively isolated there came a need for a kind of support that I don’t have. I do have some support but what support I do need would leave me more dependent on others and this would become a drain to the system. The struggle to find this needed increased support came with great difficulty. I found myself needing more help than what family and our flawed system could provide. Besides, I want to be and need to be as self-sufficient and independent as possible. People around me are not walking my journey. People around me have zero understanding of what it is to walk my journey. How can they? Unless you experience what I have experienced understanding will always be limited. It would be unfair of me to demand others to understand. So I can accept the fact that some will never understand my need for a Service Dog. All I can do is keep making decisions that will keep improving my quality of life.

I get that some might just assume that Koa is just an emotional support animal. Right now he’s only 6 month. Much of this time has been more about socialization and obedience training. It has also been about integration. Integration within my home as well as extended family.

Koa is quite the character

I had a friend send me this Pixel art cartoon pic.

So far he has stopped chomping down on my nose. He did attack my ear the other day. That is, if you consider aggressively licking my ear an attack.

Koa is showing some really good positive signs that he will grow into his role as a Service Dog.

I made the decision that a Service Dog would be my best option to minimizing the negative impact of my disability and mental health challenges. He is already naturally tasking for me. He still needs training with other tasks. Socialization and obedience training is the foundation for Service Dog skills. As he grows in size he will learn how to assist with crowd management including barrier positioning. His last tasking skill will be to alert me when it is time to take my medication. Other tasks is achieved with his presence. His presence and ability to assist with deep pressure therapy enables my heart arrythmia to stabilize and it reduces the stress on my heart which is critical with my heart condition. Some people are able to manage this without the need of external support. I am not one of them. Perhaps down the road I will have that capacity.

There is also that element of emotional support. I am finding Christmas this year to be harder. I feel more alone and more isolated then ever before. Struggling with suicidal ideation comes in waves with various degrees of intensity. I am still grieving the loss of my sister. I’m grieving the loss of many things. I often catch myself thinking it would be easier to unalive myself. Some days I struggle more with that then others and then I see Koa and don’t feel so alone. Having Koa this year has saved my life. I’m not sure I would still be here. He pushes me to embrace life. My heart medication and treatment for sleep apnea got my out of bed and out of my electric wheelchair and Koa has been strengthening my endurance. I can tell that my heart health is improving, my endurance is improving, and my overall wellbeing has also improved.

With Koa in my life I have a reason to decorate my home and bring in a little bit of the Christmas spirit. So I got this desktop Christmas tree and crafted together some mock Christmas presents to place under the Christmas tree.

I also have a string of Christmas lights and listening to some Christmas classics.

And for this Christmas, it’s not just me anymore.

It’s the best time to start a new Christmas Tradition.

With me and my furry companion and helper.