Love Is the Best Medicine (28 page)

In part I wrote,

And with regard to Helen and Eileen,

I made a point of sharing Eileen’s beach dream for Helen (though I spared her my version of the event) and then finished with

I could have worked on it some more, fluffed it up a bit, but sometimes stream of consciousness feels right. The biopsy report had brought me back into the real world of veterinary medicine, denying
me the certainty of a cancer-free fairy-tale ending. Who knew what lay ahead for Helen, but I did my best to fulfill my promise to Cleo and I could only hope that even if it wasn’t good enough to save Helen, it would be good enough to bring Sandi some measure of comfort and closure.

I printed it out, signed it, and stuffed it in an envelope. I took it down to the mail room knowing it would be on its way before day’s end.

N
EW
England meteorologists love to throw out their overworked truism “if you don’t like the weather around here, wait a minute.” The same could be said of veterinary medicine, and thank goodness for that because it doesn’t matter if you’re riding success or rebounding from failure, pets will keep walking through the front door in need of a doctor who can put aside his or her ego and grapple with what counts—making a sick animal feel better again.

In the year following Cleo’s death and my attempt to surgically cure Helen, cases came and went, but two in particular caught me off guard, receptive in a way I might not have been before.

I am often intrigued by the coupling between pet and human. What was it about this particular cat? Why a mouse and not a gerbil? What did this puppy do that stopped you in your tracks and made you say, “Come home with me”? Unlike choosing a human partner, pet owners aren’t usually set up by well-meaning friends. They haven’t filled out a detailed online survey that ascertains compatibility. Rather, they rely on instant attraction and trust a gut feeling, an intangible instinct that more often than not ends up being exactly right. This fundamental connection, this palpable dynamic is usually obvious,
but when Blue, a neutered nine-year-old husky mix and his owner, Mary Pizzachino, walked into my examination room, I realized the limitations of my superficial assessment of their or any other human–animal bond.

Some degree of mutual love and affection was a given, though Blue had that whole chilly arctic reception thing going for him—big sighs of indifference, content to lie down, cross paws, and pretend to sleep so he didn’t have to engage the guy trying to wrestle with his bum knee. And all the while, Mary was animated and effusive, drawling over Blue with her strong Missouri accent.

“I’ve had him since he was five, rescued from an abusive home by a female police officer here in Boston. She was moving apartments and couldn’t keep him so my boyfriend, Danny, brought him home.”

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.

B
EFORE
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 sincerity 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.