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There are many changes a 14-year-old wolf might expect while he's in the middle of puberty, but having his brilliant russet fur slowly fade to an almost painfully bright white was not one I was prepared for. Hormones, growth spurts, and changes in my voice were all things I was prepared to deal with - they all fell into what you'd classify as 'normal'.

Fur discolouration, on the other hand, didn't.

It happened so slowly at first that I didn't notice, and it wasn't until I realized that one of my shirts - normally vivid, but not quite as much as my fur when I initially bought it - was brighter than my pelt.

Now, before I go any further, let me just clarify something. No matter how nonchalant teenage boys make themselves out to be, no matter how much they don't care about their looks, let me assure you, they care. They care every bit as much as anyone else. They might say otherwise, but they're just lying through their teeth.

Having said that, I don't think I need to tell you exactly how panicked that realization - that I was losing my colour - made me, but needless to say I was on the verge of freaking the fuck out.

Scratch that, I was 100%, genuinely flipping my shit.

I'm talking about the code-red-sound-the-motherfucking-alarms kind of freak out where you can't seem to breathe in enough air to make your brain work. Apparently - according to my parents at least - it was the stuff of legends. I can't confirm or deny that, because all I remember was turning the living room inside out looking for our old photo albums so I could confirm my suspicions. And confirm them I did.

Now, premature greying isn't a health issue in and of itself, but, again according to my parents, I was in such hysterics that they couldn't convince me that maybe, just maybe, a trip to the hospital was a bit excessive. My poor addled teenage mind would hear none of it, and I was adamant in figuring what the hell was going on; if that meant spending five hours waiting in the hospital, then so be it. I remember thinking that I didn't want to be like those 60-year-olds that had to dye their fur just to try and convince themselves that they weren't growing older, that they weren't past their prime. I didn't want to be like them - I was only 14, after all.

So it came to be that I found myself in our local hospital's outpatient waiting on a physician that would probably tell me that having your fur turn grey at a young age was perfectly normal - rare, perhaps, but perfectly within the bounds of normal.

And wouldn't you know it, that's exactly what Dr. Lawrence Tailor told me and my parents.

Dr. Lawrence Tailor, or Dr. Tailor, as he preferred to be called, was an ageing pine marten with glasses that were too big for his face. He wasn't a mean physician, per se, but you could see that he took his job seriously; everything from his rigid posture to the way he squinted his eyes at you told you that he didn't mess around. The man was just all business and no pleasantries but that's just the kind of person he was.

He also scared the ever-loving crap out of me.

I've no idea how he did it, but just being in the same room as him scared me half to death. I always just chalked it up as to his demeanour, but what did I know? I was a 14 year old wolf with premature greying fur.

I won't lie, I was furious at his diagnostic. I didn't want to be grey and white, I wanted to be normal. I was about ready to leave the room when the good doctor asked me a not-so-good question.

"Do you remember hitting your head today?"

It was a strange question, and not one that had anything to do with my current condition. Why would hitting my head make my fur turn white? "Not that I remember. Why?"

"Because you're bleeding from the ears," he said in probably the most severe voice I've ever had the pleasure of hearing.

Understand that, the bleeding in this case wasn't life-threatening. My ears were bleeding about as much as if you'd pricked your thumb with a tack. It was a very small quantity, flowing very slowly, but the fact remained that I was still bleeding from my head. Oh, and did I mention that it just wouldn't stop?

Now, to his credit, Dr. Tailor knew when he was in over his head when he couldn't find the source of the bleeding, or a way to stop the bleeding. He knew that blood was dripping out of my ears but couldn't find where from. There wasn't any reason for the blood to be there, it just was. So he did the only thing he could and called in back-up. And then that back-up called more back-up, and then even more back-up was called after that when they still couldn't figure out what was wrong. There was a veritable slew of medical personnel scratching their heads and stroking their beards at me (technically, there was only the one goat doctor, and he was the only one stroking his beard, but still!), a poor 14 year old wolf who seemed to be magically bleeding from his ears. And to top it all off, my fur was turning even whiter then it was before my visit to the hospital.

Perfect. Just perfect.

I spent the next week in the hospital confined to a bed and hooked up to a surprisingly large about of humming machinery that, as far as I could tell, did nothing aside to help make my stay as uncomfortable and as miserable as it could. All while beeping and humming to each other at a volume that was entirely too loud for my liking.

Throughout that week, the bleeding still hadn't subsided, nor did it show any signs of wanting to. In fact, it had gotten worse over my stay, as my nose was the next of my orifices to get hit by whatever weird illness I had contracted.

Fortunately, I didn't hurt. I was tired, restless, uncomfortable, foul-mooded, and I was itchy all over because I didn't have the opportunity to properly bathe and groom myself, but at least I wasn't in pain.

Of course, my parents were worried sick, especially my mom. She was worried enough to take a week off from work to see to my health, which consisted mostly of hovering around my room and peppering the staff with constant questions about my condition. She was so persistent that the staff had to shoo her away on more than one occasion, something I was grateful for; it was bad enough being doted on by physicians, I didn't need my mother added to the mix.

On the eve of my seventh night, the doctors took another sample of my blood - the third one since my admission - for further analysis when I noticed that I was short of breath. Up until that time, I'd had no difficulty breathing, so I thought nothing of it; I was tired and simply had a long day.

Or so I thought.

That night, I was rudely awakened by the shrill sound that hospital machinery makes when there's something wrong mixed along with the most immense pain in my chest my adolescent self had ever felt.

It took me a second to realize that I couldn't breathe, another to notice that I was coughing, a third to figure out that the sticky wetness on my paws was blood, and a fourth to realize that it was my blood on my paws and that the reason I couldn't breathe was because my lungs were full of it. On the fifth second, it finally hit me that I was drowning in my own blood and panic fully set in.

I don't remember much of what followed after; there was lots of commotion as alarms rang and medical staff rushed into the room, but frankly, I was too busy trying to empty my lungs to care much about what everyone else was doing. The last thing I remember before being put under is looking over to a nurse who had grabbed my arm and seeing a doctor plunge a syringe into me and flooding my system with it's contents and being thankful that whatever they were pumping into my system was transparent and not white. I had had entirely enough of the color white!

How was I supposed to know that there was to be a lot more White in my future?