This made sense to me. Mary and Blue seemed like a bit of an odd couple because Blue was actually the boyfriend’s dog. Mary was carefully put together—obviously a regular at an Estée Lauder makeup counter, meticulously coiffed hair—whereas Blue was more of a Nascar addict, NFL tailgating kind of guy’s dog. My mind was jumping ahead to “Why didn’t Danny come to this appointment? Has he disappeared and left you to look after his dog?” I kept these questions to myself and focused on discussing the torn cruciate ligament in Blue’s right knee.
“So what will he be able to do when he recovers from the surgery?” Mary asked, suddenly all business.
“Well, I’m hopeful Blue will be able to run and play and go for walks and be pain free.”
Mary huffed and said, “I don’t care so much about any of that crap, what I need to know is will he be able to jump on my bed?”
Not exactly a typical demand about my postoperative expectations. Occasionally owners are looking to get their dogs back into flyball, agility training, field trial work, or cadaver rescue. This was the first time my goal was to get my patient back into bed.
“I’d say yes. I’m hopeful that Blue will be able to jump into bed …” The relief in her eyes stopped me from adding “with you.” Her smile cracked and then she let me have it.
“See, Danny died.” The words came out and then she laughed, defending against the tears poised to ruin her mascara. “I was with him for eighteen years. He was Danny’s dog, but Danny knew I stole Blue’s heart as much as Blue stole mine. This dog hasn’t just changed my life, this dog saved my life.”
Her voice began to falter as she added, “Blue is my last connection to him. If this dog ever dies I die.”
She let the statement hang between us, making sure I felt its intensity.
“You have to understand, I am the last person in the world who needed a dog.” Suddenly the bravado was back in her voice. “I mean I was one heartless bitch before Blue. There’d be girls at work crying ’cause their stupid dog was sick and I’d be all ‘get over it and get back to work’ or I’d go over to my girlfriend’s house and there’d be piles of dog hair all over the place and I’d say, ‘How d’you live in all this shit?’ And now look at me, wearing black pants, covered in white fur, and lovin’ it! You have dogs yourself?”
“Yeah, I have a Labrador and a Jack Russell terrier.”
She shook her head, getting down on the floor with Blue.
“I mean, just look at that face. Isn’t it perfect?”
Blue’s tail found a rhythm as they found each other’s eyes. I nodded because of course it was true. The owner is always right when it comes to the innate beauty of a pet.
“It must be tough for you,” she said, stifling her smile, “having to live with inferior dogs! Poor Dr. Trout.”
And Blue managed to regard me with a pitying look as though he too was genuinely sorry.
“I mean I’ve not taken jobs for this dog because I won’t leave him alone all day. He sleeps in a blanket I bought him from Harrods of London. And you don’t even need to tell me how much this knee surgery is going to cost because I’ll give up my retirement, get a second mortgage, sell my car, do whatever it takes, whatever it costs, to make him happy.”
I nodded, feeling Mary taking her read on me. She had felt compelled to put that out there like a test, to see how receptive I was to their needs.
“So I’m guessing Danny and Blue had a pretty special bond together?”
“No shit,” she said, “a good friend of ours still comes by to walk Blue and he does it because he feels like Danny is walking with them.”
With the consultation over and a date scheduled for surgery, I showed Mary and Blue back to the reception area to check out. Mary turned to me and said, “Tell me, what’s your first name?”
“Nick,” I said. “I mean Nicholas, but the only person who gets to call me Nicholas is my mother, and then only when she is angry at me.”
“Then I will call you Nicky,” she said, gaving me a hug, and she and Blue were on their way.
Let me make it clear, as I have to Mary on many occasions, the name “Nicky” does not work for me. She is the only client who gets to use this name and she does it to make me laugh and rile me up. I tolerate it for only one reason—it reminds me that I passed her test, that I didn’t question her motives, and that I understood how certain connections between animals and humans are priceless.
BEFORE I get to the second case during this, my year of provocative thinking, I have to pose a big question—what’s with chocolate Labradors? Okay, so I should preface my mischievous reservation with a declaration of love for the breed as a whole, plenty of experience living with the breed, and current ownership of the breed (my daughter wanted yellow, seconded by my wife as a preferable color to blend in with our couch). Perhaps a better question would be, where do chocolate Labs hide their stash of speed? Are the names Java and Mocha chosen because of color or caffeine content? When do these dogs calm down enough to merit the relatively tranquil label “hyperactive”?
Don’t get me wrong, I am not a Labrador racist, but clearly I am not alone in my opinion that these dogs tend toward—how shall I put it best?—exuberance. I distinctly remember a five-year-old female chocolate Lab named Sonny who presented to me with a long-standing lameness problem. From the moment I met her I knew other sinister forces were at play. She sat quietly by her owner’s side while I took her history. Her examination was not accompanied by frantic panting, relentless squirming, or vociferous barking. She was calm, cooperative, and perfectly polite.
“Is she always this well behaved?” I asked, trying not to appear rude.
“Yes,” said Sonny’s owner. “She’s definitely become quieter over the past six months. I thought it might have something to do with her lameness.”
My point is Sonny did not appear to be unwell, she appeared to be normal, and this observation of canine normalcy for this particular type of dog made me suspicious that she was actually far from normal. I decided to test her for hypothyroidism, a disease causing a deficiency of thyroid hormone that can make dogs appear sluggish and prone to packing on the pounds (sadly not a universal excuse for Labs). It turned out Sonny’s thyroid levels were through the floor, hardly registering in her blood. Fortunately I was able to cure her lameness and provide a daily pill to correct her hormonal imbalance, restoring her to the kind of full-fledged chocolate recalcitrance we all know and love.
And if you still don’t believe me, consider this observation from a lifelong lover of chocolate Labs. When he brought in his fourteen-year-old dog for an airway evaluation, I couldn’t help but comment about the puppylike chaos that unfolded in my examination room.
“I thought you said he was fourteen?”
The owner considered me with a “d’you get out much?” glare.
“He is,” he said. “If you think this is crazy, you should have met my last chocolate. He made it to sixteen and I swear he didn’t slow down until three months after he was dead!”
But I digress. The case I need to discuss concerns a chocolate Lab named Theo, a dog proud to conform to what I jokingly consider to be his breed’s stereotype—and I’ll try to be politically correct here—curious, vibrant, talkative, and happy. Theo’s owner, Frances Cardullo, however, could not have been more different. She had me from the moment we shook hands, a handshake that stopped me in my tracks, a handshake that told me, “There are things you think you know, things you might suspect, but listen to my story because you know nothing about what I fear.”
I took note of her hands, which were too big, the nail polish enhancing, even affirming, their masculinity. I noticed her voice was too deep, a tendency toward a breathy whisper unable to mask the baritone muscle in her vocal cords. I saw the contour of her neck, the wattle of loose skin hanging from the gallows of her Adam’s apple all wrong, as was the pale shadowing across her powdered cheeks. But mainly what I absorbed was the coerced smile, driven into sallow cheeks by s
incerity and the willpower to override her pain.
I suspected this woman’s life had been a battle but that she had found a measure of happiness, contentment, and unconditional love from the dog leaving paw prints across my freshly laundered shirt. I would like to point out that I fully appreciated my role in our triangular relationship. I have been commissioned to attend to the animal’s health, not to profile, psychoanalyze, or, worse still, second-guess the owner’s private life, but what concerned me most as I shook Frances Cardullo’s hand was the aura of dread and fear hanging in the air around her. I could sense she had much to share, not because she needed a shoulder to cry on but because it was integral to what mattered most, the future well-being of her beloved Lab.
I began by gesturing to my examination room, letting Frances be guided by Theo. Unfortunately her frailty and his excitement were a dangerous combination. Frances was painfully thin, pale skin shrink-wrapped around her neck and the bones of her sternum, like that of an aging movie star determined to contend for leading roles. She probably weighed about the same as Theo but was no match for his strength as he acted like the lead dog in the Iditarod.
“Let me take him,” I said to her relief, thankful for the braking action of my rubber soles on linoleum to slow him down.
Once in the room, I gestured for Frances to have a seat.
“I’ll take his leash off,” I said. “Let him wander around.”
By “wander” I usually mean “let the dog have a casual roam about, get used to the strange smells, and start to relax.” Theo’s interpretation was more along the lines of an Olympic gymnast performing floor exercises, compelled to cover every possible square inch of space while demonstrating his gift for tumbles, jumps, and leaps. Just in case we weren’t paying attention, he decided to add in his own soundtrack.
“Theo! Stop it! Be a good boy, Theo! I’m sorry,” said Frances and every few seconds Theo would break his routine and circle back to her, aligning his head with her bony fingers, offering a cautious, healing lick to the tributary of bruised veins beyond the knuckles of her hand, meeting her eyes with the look of a guilty boy who knew what it would take to melt her heart and get away with murder.
They were like a comedy duo: Theo was the funny guy—loud, up front, in-your-face—playing it for every laugh he could get, whereas Frances was—and I dare say it because I know she would not be offended—the straight guy, apologetic, working her rueful brows as if she had any to work, keeping a smile at bay.
Between barks Theo sniffed the air, his neck extended, flaring his nostrils, and I could tell that he knew I had some dog treats to hand, invisible from his low vantage point, but emitting just enough of a fragrance for him to sense an opportunity to eat.
“I think he can smell my low-cal dog treats,” I said. “Can he have one?”
I know, I know, this tactic will have the trainers and behaviorists shaking their heads in dismay. Oral bribery will only reinforce bad manners but if I was going to find out what was wrong with Theo, I needed to be able to hear Frances talk. Besides, my little bone-shaped treats are so tasteless, I knew exactly how this trick would play out. Theo bit the treat in two and worked it around his mouth for a moment before letting it fall to the floor, covered in saliva but essentially untouched. (Only my own Labrador will devour these dry, unpalatable morsels but then she would find the lint from the inside of my pocket to be mighty tasty!) Discovering the only food on offer inedible, Theo decided to quietly focus on sniffing the floor, my shoes, my socks, my pants, and back to the floor again. Frances saw an opportunity to tell her story.
“Theo has a tumor in his chest. He’s had a CAT scan and a biopsy taken and I’m led to believe that there’s a good chance that it’s benign, that it can be successfully treated by surgery alone.”
I noticed how the fear in her reedy voice seemed disproportionate to the words she was saying.
“I’ve seen the images from the scan,” I said, “and I’ve seen the biopsy report. Theo has what is called a thymoma, a benign glandular tumor, and with any luck, if it hasn’t invaded the surrounding tissues, he’ll do great with surgery. And even if it is invasive, Theo should still have a good long-term outcome.”
For a second I thought I saw her acknowledge my attempt at optimism, but any hint of gratitude was quickly overwhelmed by something resembling a physical ache, written on her face. She drew her clasped hands into her body, making me feel as though my statement had only made matters worse.
Frances Cardullo hung her head and then came back to me with an uneasy, affected smile that cut me like a razor.
“Life is meant to be full of surprises,” she said, her delivery flat. “But no one said whether they would be pleasant or not.” She waited a beat, thought about it, and added, “I’m battling stage four colon cancer, stage four meaning it has already spread to several other organs in my abdomen.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said, feeling the absurdity and futility of my polite response.
Frances kept going, as though she didn’t want to linger on any awkwardness I might be feeling. I took note of her concern and it only made what followed all the more difficult.
“I came here today to talk about the surgery, to find out what will happen to Theo during his hospital stay and what I will have to do to care for him afterwards. But more importantly, I need to share two major concerns that worry me more than anything else about Theo.”
“Sure,” I said, noting how Theo had finally tired of sniffing the room for other mammalian life forms, contraband, or explosives and settled at Frances’s feet.
“First of all I will need to organize all of this around my chemotherapy. They’re going to be pumping me full of chemicals for the next ten months, so I’ll let you know my schedule and we’ll do this so that with luck he’s home recovering during some of my good days.”
I reassured her that I thought we could make the schedule work and that Theo would make a great patient, certain to bounce back, with that buoyant, no-nonsense optimism so characteristic of his breed. I didn’t push for the second problem. The slow welling up and overflow of a single tear from her left eye let me know she was about to tell me in her own time.
“My other fear is what will happen to him when I am gone. I know he’s a handful and he’s not for everyone, but he’s a great dog and I love him. Who will be there to look after him?”
I didn’t know what to say. Most pet owners fear the end of their relationship with an animal, the letting go and the acceptance of loss. Frances Cardullo’s candor and foresight left me speechless. This woman had the presence of mind and more than enough love to see beyond her own mortality, able to understand that in all likelihood she would be outlived by her dog. She made her own needs seem relatively trivial next to Theo’s long-term security and happiness.
Parents frequently proclaim their children will be the death of them. Do they mean more than the frustration and challenges of guiding them to adulthood? Or are they really referring to the pain they might inflict, the desolation they will leave in their wake, if they are lost before their time? As the parent of a sick child, I would say yes. But of course, the reverse is also true. The idea that I might leave my daughter in this world, that she might need my help, that I might fail to protect her is just as excruciating to consider, and I saw that exact same fear trapped inside Frances when it came to caring for Theo.
“Don’t worry,” I said, beckoning to Theo, rewarded with a sloppy grin and a body slam from across the room, “if laughter is the best medicine I have a feeling that you two are going to be together for a long time to come.”
Frances succumbed to a smile and once again, from out of nowhere, I was being reminded of Sandi Rasmussen, another woman blessed with clarity in the midst of so much pain. Do we need these dark hours to discover who we really are? For those open to discovery, is it possible that in every crisis, every struggle or tragedy, another truth exists? Perhaps the only real challenge is whether or not we have what it takes to acknow
ledge this truth and speak it out loud.
AND that’s how the next twelve months went by, memories of Cleo and Helen paying me a visit, usually when I least expected it. For Cleo, it might have been a minor anesthetic hiccup with one of my cases, some David Blaine dog who found it amusing to temporarily hold his breath. The topic of anesthetic risk kept finding its way into my preoperative discussions with my clients, and though Cleo had so much more to offer, I began to fear that this might be her greatest legacy. Her mark was a scar guaranteed to last a professional lifetime. Though it was beginning to fade, I recognized that I still felt the need to show it off.
For Helen, the flashback might have flickered when a lung tumor popped out of a dog’s chest like a jack-in-the-box, clean margins an absolute certainty. And then, every so often, when the pathologist patted me on the back with those magic words “excision complete,” I could see that refugee spaniel and wondered what became of her.
I had thought my letter to Sonja Rasmussen and her mother, Sandi, might garner a reply. But as the months passed without further correspondence, I decided they were probably trying to get over their ordeal, and distancing themselves from me was probably good medicine.
When it came to Helen my approach was completely different. To be honest, my philosophy was more along the lines of “don’t go looking under rocks if you are afraid of what you might find!” Eileen never called me back after I called her with the pathology report, and so I took the easy way out, capitulating to the adage “no news is good news.” I could have picked up the phone. And it wasn’t that I didn’t think about it. I simply chose not to place the call. The summer, Helen’s beach summer, had come and gone. I clung to the belief that she must have made it, had her moment in the sun and the sand. Then again, there had been no postcard. No photograph documenting this incredible accomplishment. Wouldn’t Eileen have shared the celebration if it had actually happened?
Love Is the Best Medicine Page 21
