by Lissa Warren
Because Ting hasn’t been getting adequate nourishment, her incisions are slow to heal, so Dr. Belden advises us to leave the stitches in an extra week. That means more time in pet wrap—hot pink this time—though Ting clearly does not appreciate her mummified state. Somehow she manages to loosen her bandages enough that she literally walks right out of them. She does it again and again. We call Dr. Belden once more, and she suggests a onesie with the bottom part—the crotch with the snaps—cut off. Mom marches off to Walmart while I watch Ting, and comes back with package after package, because, really, what size onesie fits an eight-pound cat? Preemie? Newborn? Six-month-old? None of them, it turns out—especially when the cat views the outfit as the ultimate indignity.
As for me, I’m not unaware that I’ve become a thirty-six-year-old single woman who lives with her mom and dresses her cat in baby clothes. But I don’t care. I’ve shimmied far enough up Maslow’s hierarchy that it doesn’t much matter what others think about me. All I want is for Ting to be well. She has seen me through 9/11, through a long and ill-conceived war, through the end and the start of a century, and through the loss of my dad. She has spanned three decades of my life, and she has been its constant.
But mostly I want her to be okay because I love her—because she is a sweet and wonderful creature who deserves a good, long life.
It’s another week before Ting rounds the corner. During that time we keep doctors Laste and Belden up-to-date via e-mail, and even bring Ting to Bulger once because she’s losing so much weight. Dr. Belden isn’t there that day, but one of her colleagues prescribes an antinausea medication and, miraculously, it works. Finally, Ting eats some food on her own—just a little dry, but it’s a great sign.
Mom and I debate whether to continue to force-feed her—whether it’ll hijack her own efforts, or whether she needs it because the amount she’s consuming on her own just isn’t sufficient. Dr. Belden advises us to cut back on the force-feeding, but not to stop it altogether. We comply, and soon enough we can tell that Ting is almost back to her fighting weight. In fact, she gains enough energy to rip out the stitches that are holding the pacemaker in place. I hear the sound—like a zipper—during one of the rare moments we’re not watching her, but can’t get to her in time to stop her. Thankfully she has healed enough that the skin stays together.
Soon her fur grows back. She is her old self again, save for a pronounced bump near her ribs—like the face of a watch atop a tiny wrist. She is completely oblivious to it.
Chapter Seventeen
Manuscript
The only thing a cat worries about is what’s happening right now. As we tell the kittens, you can only wash one paw at a time.
—Lloyd Alexander
We couldn’t save my father, but we have saved his cat. It was a year of loss and almost loss, of sucker punch after sucker punch, of learning how best to love what’s left. But we made it.
As it says in the Talmud, “Who saves one life saves the entire universe.” It doesn’t specify the kind of life, human or animal. We didn’t save the universe by saving Ting, but to a great extent we saved our universe, because that’s what she is to us. She has always been that to all of us—to me, to Mom, to Dad.
Three years passed, uneventful. Then, on a warm day in late September, part of me went numb—specifically, my left leg, followed the next day by my left arm, followed the day after that by the lower right side of my face, followed in quick succession by the right side of my tongue. At first I blamed it on the red grapes my mom had been giving me to take to work. Some particularly toxic pesticide, perhaps? Had she gotten them at the regular market instead of at Whole Foods? She assured me I was crazy—that, yes, she had gotten the grapes at the regular market, but that she, too, had eaten them and felt fine, and that she had washed them thoroughly prior to tucking them in my purse.
Explanation two involved Monks Blend tea, which a colleague had given me as a gift, and which I’d never tried before. It was excellent, strong, fancy black tea, with the subtlest hint of vanilla—but a quick Google search revealed that it also contained grenadine. Could I be allergic to grenadine? To be on the safe side, I switched back to my old reliable, Lipton.
A week went by. Still numb. Walking was becoming a challenge. A couple of times I nearly toppled over when bending to pick up Ting. While not ruling out the very real possibility that my mother or colleague had inadvertently poisoned me, I decided I’d better go to the doctor. Truth be told, I was more annoyed than worried. I was so unsteady that I’d had to stop wearing heels—and none of my pants were hemmed for flats.
Usually healthy as a horse, I didn’t even have a primary care physician. I called the office of one who I’d gone to twenty years ago, and left a message asking if she’d see me. Her receptionist never called me back. After much nagging by Mom, I called to find out how late the local walk-in clinic was open, and on October 2, drove myself there after work.
ConvenientMD wasn’t crowded that night. There were just two people ahead of me—a little boy with his arm in a cast, and an elderly man with a gauze-covered chin. I scanned my iPhone for media hits, for mentions of my publishing company’s books. I checked the next day’s weather report. I deleted some spam from my in-box. Whatever was going on with me, I wanted to fix it and get on with my life.
When my name was called, I walked into the exam room at my normal speed, but whacked my shoulder on the doorjamb. No one saw it, so I just pretended like nothing had happened. The physician’s assistant listened intently as I rattled off my symptoms. She took my temperature (normal) and blood pressure (nice and low). She had me squeeze her hands and touch each of my fingers to my thumb. She had me close my eyes and raise my arms above my head. Everything she asked me to do, I did with ease. I appeared to be neurologically intact. She went out and talked with the doctor, came back, and gave me an EKG. I thought of Dad and I thought of Ting as she pressed the electrodes onto my skin.
Five minutes later, the doctor came in.
“Your EKG looks great,” she said.
She repeated a bunch of the tests her assistant had done, then asked if I could be drunk or pregnant.
“Neither, unfortunately,” I said. “Though I can see how one could lead to the other.”
She said I needed blood work and an MRI, but that they’d have to send the blood to a lab, and that they couldn’t do the MRI there. She wanted me to go to an emergency room, and said she’d call ahead to fill them in. I thought it was odd—I didn’t feel that bad—but said okay, so long as it wasn’t the hospital where my dad had died.
She went out and came back ten minutes later. She had called ahead to Holy Family, a small hospital close to my house, and spoken with a Dr. Cohen, who’d be expecting me. Sounded like a perfect fit for a half-and-half girl like me: Catholic hospital, Jewish doctor. As the physician’s assistant walked me out, she asked me if I wanted a wheelchair. I pretended like I hadn’t heard her.
I got lost on the way to the hospital, so deep in thought that I drove right past the street it was on. Having discarded my grape and tea theories, which the ConvenientMD doc had pooh-poohed, I had narrowed it down to four possibilities: stroke, brain tumor, multiple sclerosis, and vitamin B deficiency. I was certainly rooting for the latter.
When I finally found my way to the hospital, the registration nurse who checked me in asked if I wanted a wheelchair after watching me make my way toward a bench in the lobby. The ER nurse who called me in minutes later did the same thing as I walked through the ER’s bright blue double doors. Why was everyone offering me a wheelchair? I knew I wasn’t walking quite right, but I didn’t think it was obvious. And to an untrained eye, perhaps it wasn’t. No one at work had noticed anything. These were medical professionals, though—and their thoughtfulness was scaring me.
Two hours passed before Dr. Cohen came to see me. I wasn’t happy to be kept waiting, but I reasoned that there were probably people much sicker than I in the ER that night. What’s more, I figured I could r
ule out stroke; if the doctor at ConvenientMD had had the least suspicion of that, I’m certain the ER doctor would have gotten to me sooner, because every minute counts with stroke.
Dr. Cohen repeated the neurological exams that had been done twice at the walk-in clinic and asked me similar questions. Then he glanced at the EKG printout, which I excavated from my purse with no small amount of difficulty because the fingers on my left hand were so numb. He saw me fumbling, and asked how long they’d been like that.
“Just a few days,” I said. “I keep thinking I’ll just get better. Honestly, I’m never sick. I’m that person who doesn’t get the flu when the rest of the office has it. I don’t even have a primary care physician.”
“You should really get one,” he said. And then, seeing the concerned look on my face, “Everyone should. It’s how the system works.”
“How nice for the system,” I said. “So, blood work and MRI?” It was, after all, the reason I’d been sent here—and it was closing in on eleven p.m.
“It’s too late for that,” he told me. “The lab has closed, and we only do MRIs after hours when there’s risk to life or limb.”
“So I’m not in imminent danger?” I asked. “You’re sure it’s not a stroke?”
“It’s not a stroke, but you do need to see a neurologist to figure out what’s going on.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll Google one.” Google—my answer for everything.
“Actually,” he said, “I’ll make a call for you. I know a good one.”
A few minutes later he came back with a page from his prescription pad. On it, a phone number and the name Dr. Richard Finkelman.
“I spoke with Dr. Finkelman,” the ER doctor told me. “He said to call his office first thing tomorrow; he’ll leave word with his receptionist to fit you right in.”
I didn’t know whether to be pleased or alarmed that an ER doc was willing to call a neurologist at home at eleven p.m., and that a neurologist was willing to squeeze me in the following day, but decided I’d sleep much better that night if I went with “pleased.” I thanked the doctor and walked down the ER hallway and out to the lobby, concentrating with every step so that no one could tell there was anything wrong with me.
When I called the next morning, Dr. Finkelman’s receptionist said to come in at eleven a.m., and they’d fit me in somehow. I emailed my boss to tell him I’d be late to work that day, but would be in as soon as I could. Dr. Finkelman’s office was a few towns away, in Haverhill, an old mill town not unlike the one in which my father had died.
I found the building easily enough, parked, entered through the main lobby, and took the elevator to the fourth floor. The waiting room was crowded—lots of people with walkers, canes, and wheelchairs. I found it unsettling, but focused on the forms the receptionist had told me to fill out. They didn’t take long. I wasn’t on any medication, had never been diagnosed with any medical condition other than Raynaud’s, and the only surgery I’d ever had was to remove my wisdom teeth.
About a half-hour later, the receptionist called my name and I was ushered in. I liked Dr. Finkelman instantly. We chatted about our families as he ran me through the same silly tests I’d undergone three times the night before. He spent a long time looking at my eyes with a little light that made them water.
“Sorry,” he said. “Just trying to visualize your optic nerves. They look fine. In fact, everything looks fine. But let’s do blood work and an MRI.”
“With or without gadolinium?” I asked, trying to get a feel for what he was looking for. I’d been Googling most of that morning. I knew dye would be needed to rule things in or out.
“With contrast,” he said. “Why do you ask?”
“Just trying to figure out what you think is wrong with me.”
“What do you think is wrong with you?” he asked. I would learn later that he had dual degrees in neurology and psychiatry.
I listed my contenders: “MS, brain tumor, or maybe just a vitamin B12 deficiency.”
“How’d you come up with those?” he asked.
I explained that the company I worked for had published a memoir by a woman with MS, and that some of my symptoms sounded like hers—and that I knew that’s why he was trying to get a look at my optic nerves; that I didn’t know much about brain tumors, but that given my symptoms they seemed plausible and I’d like to rule them out; that I ate a pretty much vegetarian diet, so my B12 level could very well be low.
Dr. Finkelman seemed amused.
“Well,” he said, “we’ll know more after you go downstairs.” Turns out they had a lab and an MRI machine on the first floor. I’d walked right by them on my way to the elevator.
Having blood drawn had never bothered me, so long as they didn’t have to fish for a vein. In fact, I was so unfazed by it that I’d always thought it a shame I fell short of the 110 pounds you’re required to weigh to donate blood.
“Your veins are really small,” the phlebotomist said.
“Sorry,” I said. “I actually had a couple bottles of water on the way here this morning. I wanted to plump them up for you.”
“It’s no problem,” she said. “We’ll find one.”
After a couple of tourniquet ties and several minutes of hunting with the pads of her fingertips—reading Braille along my forearms—she located one that looked good to her.
“Let’s try this one here,” she said, pointing to an almost invisible vein on the inside of my right elbow. She proceeded to hit it on the first try.
Several vials later, I was ushered into the MRI room and told to lie down on the table that would slide me into the machine. I’d purposely worn clothes that didn’t have snaps or zippers so that I wouldn’t have to change into a hospital gown, and I’d slipped my little silver earrings into my purse. The nurse gave me a blanket, and proceeded to ask me a bunch of questions, including whether I was claustrophobic and whether I had a pacemaker.
“Confined spaces don’t bother me,” I said. “And I don’t have a pacemaker, but my cat does.”
“I didn’t know they made pacemakers for cats,” she said.
“They don’t,” I told her. “It’s a human one.”
She seemed only mildly impressed, and handed me some earplugs.
“This will be a little loud,” she said, “but should only take forty minutes.”
“When do you give me the contrast?” I asked.
“Oh,” she said, “your insurance declined it. We’re going to do it without the gad.”
“Does Dr. Finkelman know that?” I asked.
She assured me that he did. I considered protesting, but figured if he wasn’t concerned, I shouldn’t be either. And, truth be told, I felt like I’d gotten lucky in the lab a few minutes prior, and didn’t want to tempt fate with another stick.
“Do you want to listen to music while you’re in there?” she asked.
“Do you get NPR?”
“What’s NPR?”
“National Public Radio,” I said. “Fresh Air? On Point? Diane Rehm?” I could tell none of them were ringing a bell.
“Like, New Hampshire Public Radio,” I said, still searching for common ground. “The Exchange? Word of Mouth?” The local shows weren’t any more familiar to her than the nationals.
“Never mind,” I said, “it’s not important. I’ll be fine.”
And with that, I popped in the earplugs and reclined on the MRI table. The nurse immobilized my head with foam cushions, pushed a button, and in I went.
The MRI machine was indeed really loud—lots of clanking, and whirring, and an odd kind of metallic purring. I thought of Ting, whose purr was soft and comforting, and only shared with a select few. I told myself that if there was something really wrong with me, at least Mom would be there to take care of her. Who would take care of Mom, I didn’t know.
I tried not to let my thoughts turn dark. I told myself that this was probably just a lot of fuss over nothing—that I probably just needed to eat a little meat once
in a while, to get enough B12.
From time to time, the nurse used the intercom to ask me how I was doing. But then, about twenty minutes into the procedure, the machine stopped purring and she came into the room.
“Guess what? We were able to get your insurance to okay the contrast after all,” she said, as she rolled up my right sleeve to look for a vein.
“I had blood drawn from there a little while ago,” I said from inside the machine. “Maybe try the other arm?” My head was still immobilized.
She rolled up my left sleeve, then turned her attention to the back of my left hand, then the back of my right hand, then back to my right arm.
“There’s a vein beside the one they just used to draw blood,” she said. “Let’s try that.” I smelled the alcohol as she swabbed my arm, but couldn’t see what she was doing, which bothered me.
“Okay, deep breath,” she said, as the needle pierced my skin. And a second later, “Damn—no return. I missed it.”
“Don’t fish,” I said. “Take it out and try again.”
“It’s out,” she said. “Sorry, that vein blew. Let’s look at the left arm again.”
She put a tourniquet on my left arm, slapped it a bit to try to raise the vein, and told me to pump my fist. “No,” she said. “That’s not going to work.”
“Try one of my hands,” I said, from inside the tube.
She picked up my right hand and examined it again.
