For those who believe that it’s only people who come into their lives for a reason, here is a story that is going to change that perspective. A woman from Madison, Wisconsin, is indebted to her dog, and the reason will leave you amazed.
Stephanie Herfel, 53, adopted a Siberian husky named Sierra from her son in 2011 as he was being deployed overseas.
She credits the dog for saving her life, as the adorable pooch was able to detect symptoms of cancer in her not once, not twice, but a total of three times.
It all began in 2013 when Herfel started experiencing severe pain in her abdomen.
Sierra sensed that there was something wrong with her owner and began acting strangely.
“She put her nose on my lower belly and sniffed so intently that I thought I spilled something on my clothes. She did it a second and then a third time. After the third time, Sierra went and hid. I mean hid!” Herfel explained.
Herfel decided to seek the advice of a doctor, who diagnosed it as an ovarian cyst and prescribed some painkillers.
But her dog knew better. When she was back home, Sierra again behaved weirdly by curling up in a ball and hiding in the back of the closet.
“To see her become so afraid was spooky in its own right. So I made an appointment with a gynecologist and in a matter of weeks and some blood work with an ultrasound, on 11-11-13 I was sitting in the gynecology oncologist room in shock that I had cancer,” Stephanie said.
Three weeks later, she received a diagnosis: it was stage 3C ovarian cancer.
Herfel then underwent a full hysterectomy, had her spleen removed, and was administered chemotherapy.
Sierra would go on to prove that detecting the symptoms of her owner’s cancer was not a game of guesswork.
In 2015 and 2016, the dog exhibited the same kind of behavior, only for the doctors to discover that Herfel’s cancer had returned.
Herfel was then treated for her liver in 2015, and then in her pelvic area the following year. “It’s almost like the dog knows something is going on and is scared. The dog didn’t want to be near her,” Ashley Wagner, executive director of the Wisconsin Ovarian Cancer Alliance, said.
Dr. David Kushner, Herfel’s primary oncologist, affirmed that the dog’s reactions were not by chance. Certain breeds have the ability to detect various types of cancer with an astonishing accuracy of over 98 percent.
The husky’s guesses were not limited to just her owner. She reacted in the same manner when Herfel was visited by one of her friends battling ovarian cancer.
The dog also went into hiding when a worker had arrived at her house on a kitchen remodeling job.
Herfel is now cancer-free, and even though there’s a risk of cancer returning for the fourth time, she remains upbeat.
“There are things that are coming out new every day. That’s how I live my life.”
She added, “I’m going to do the best thing I can do at the time until the next best thing comes along.”
To give Sierra all the credit she deserves for the special role she played in saving her life, Herfel plans to write a book.
“I just feel like my story can let people think about their animals and think, ‘Wow, my animal did this when I got diagnosed.’ Just to give the animals credit that they are pretty smart,” she said.
Nevertheless, Kudos to Sierra for her accurate diagnosis.
