Dog Medicine (17 page)

J
ANUARY
1997

At the stroke of midnight on New Year's Eve 1997, I was lying on the couch in the house in the darkened living room, praying. Greg and Chris had gone out to celebrate. Greg wasn't talking to me and we'd managed to avoid each other since the night of the blizzard. The roommates didn't know what was going on between us, and not talking to anyone about it compounded my confusion. Melissa came downstairs the morning after I'd failed to pick her up at the airport, walked past me, got a cup of coffee, then returned. She sat down across from me and said, “What the fuck happened? Where were you?” I had no defendable answer, so I just said, “I'm so, so sorry. I'm so sorry. I was sure your flight was cancelled. I've just fucked everything up.” She agreed and said she'd been really disappointed. She was still suffering through her breakup, and I had literally abandoned her in a storm. I couldn't tell her what was going on, that I'd probably just ruined the best chance I'd ever had at a healthy relationship. She hugged me, clearly sensing my distress, and told me it was okay. I knew it wasn't, though. I knew I'd betrayed her trust.

In the aftermath of the terrible storm, Melissa and I decided to stay home for New Year's Eve, wear pajamas, and watch TV. When the clock struck twelve, she was on the deck watching the celebration over the Space Needle. “Come see the fireworks!” she shouted through the kitchen door. “They're beautiful!”

“Okay, just a minute,” I said. Before I got up, I clasped my
hands together in front of my mouth, closed my eyes, and whispered, “Please let Bunker be okay. Please let him be okay. Please.” Bunker was having trouble climbing stairs, so I finally scheduled the vet appointment for January 2. I prayed that the veterinarian would say that Bunker was just a clumsy puppy, that he'd grow out of these scary falls. I prayed that I would figure out what had motivated me to treat such a lovely man with such disrespect. I prayed that I would be a better friend to Melissa.

I took a deep breath and joined Melissa on the deck. The fireworks were beautiful, but the noise scared Bunker, so I told Melissa I was going to watch from inside the house. With each burst of light and color, a new possible diagnosis raged through my mind: bone disease, hip dysplasia, leukemia, cancer. I sat down on the floor next to Bunker, feeling his back, pushing on his hind legs to see if he'd respond. Nothing. He was terrified of the loud booming and pushed his nose into my lap. I held him, put my head on his back, saying, “Shhh. I got you, boy. I got you. It's okay.” I listened to the strong beat of his heart.

He'd been neutered a few weeks earlier. I felt such confidence during the day of his surgery. The morning I dropped him off for the procedure, I drove to work feeling completely unworried. When I paused to examine that confidence, I decided it stemmed from a deep, abiding knowledge that Bunker was sent to me, that he was my comfort, and for him to leave me this soon wouldn't make sense.

But that New Year's Day night, before the next day's appointment, I tried and failed to stop myself from falling into catastrophic thinking. Bunker lay on the bed with me, his back curved into my belly. I opened my bedroom window to see if I could see the moon. Nothing. Just clouds. The only thing that helped was remembering that I would do whatever it took to make sure he was healthy. Anything. I held his body, calmed by
the rise and fall of his chest. I finally fell asleep with my face pressed to the soft red fur at the back of his head.

When I woke in the morning, he was sitting on the floor next to the bed, watching me like I was a present he had just unwrapped. I chuckled sleepily, rolled over, and turned off my buzzing alarm. He stood up and wagged his tail like a helicopter about to lift off. “You doofus,” I said. “You have me so worried.” He backed up, prancing, as I got up out of bed. We went to the back yard and admired our half-done landscaping job. He had no problem with the stairs on the way back into the house. I told myself to relax.

I half-assed my way through work and rushed home to take him to the vet. In the waiting room, I filled out the necessary paperwork, and Bunker sat leaning into my legs. The receptionist smiled at him and said, “Only seven months? So calm!”

I smiled and held him close to my legs, stroked him to settle my own nerves. The vet tech called us in, weighed Bunker, and said he was fifty pounds now.

“So what brings you to see us today?” she asked.

“His back legs keep failing him,” I said.

“Oh, no,” she said. I couldn't look at her and keep the tears from coming, so I just smiled and watched the floor. My palms went clammy as we waited to see the doctor. “Okay, sweet little guy,” she petted the top of his head and he opened his mouth into a smile. “We'll send the doctor right in.” She left and I wrapped my arms around Bunker's chest. I was keenly aware that I needed his touch right now. This worry was threatening to toss me backwards into a black hole of sorrow.

When the veterinarian came in, he furrowed his brow, his white lab coat crunching as he crossed his arms and listened while I explained the froggy legs on stairs, the yelping. He examined Bunker and his face seemed to darken. Each move the doctor
made sent a dose of fear through me. He asked about whether Bunker ran with all four paws or if he “bunny hopped,” running with the front two legs staggered and the back two legs together in one motion. This, he said, was a sure sign of weakness in the hind legs. This, I knew, was exactly how my puppy ran.

The vet asked if he could take Bunker to the back for “just a few quick X-rays.” I nodded, then sat alone with Bunk's empty leash, feeling like a helium balloon that had just been let go. The longer he was gone, the less oxygen there was in the room.

The technician brought Bunker back and told me that the doctor was going to read the films. “He'll be back in a few minutes, okay?” she said, her tone consoling and sad.

I sat down on the floor, not caring how much dog shit and cat piss might have once sat in that spot. I wanted to be on the ground with my boy, feeling him, holding him,
with
him, as close to the earth as possible. I felt lightheaded and spacey when the door clicked and the veterinarian returned. I awkwardly scrambled to my feet. He paused, indicating with his silence that most pet owners don't sit on the floor of the examination room. The veterinarian stood over me like a big brother and cleared his throat.

“I'm afraid I have some bad news,” he said, and his voice began a long descent through a tunnel of sound, as if the tubes in my ears had distended and bent and couldn't take in his words.
Really the worst case I've ever 
.
 . . Not even in the socket. I don't know how he manages to walk. Severe hip dysplasia. Only two options here. Put him down. Probably your most humane. Surgery is very, very painful. Difficult . . . Cost . . . Run you about four thousand dollars . . . recovery . . . carry to urinate . . . not sure what you . . . so sorry . . . We euthanize here at the office . . . won't be able to walk for much longer. Save these X-rays for colleagues . . . Just amazing to see a case this severe . . . hip socket . . . complete misalignment.

I felt stoned. I thought of Clay chasing me down the hallway. That same vein of adrenaline, reserved only for trauma, opened up and ran through my body—only I was older now, stronger. I looked at the vet through squinted eyes.

“We'll do the surgery,” I said.

He began speaking, and again I fell backward into the tunnel of this man's voice:
Several thousand dollars . . . triple pelvic osteotomy . . . months of recovery . . . sequester in a crate . . . break the pelvic bone in six places. Two separate surgeries. Long months of pain for him . . . Really the most humane option is . . .

“Thank you,” I said. “But if you mention euthanizing him one more time, I am going to scream bloody fucking murder.” My whole body shook. I thought of mothers who could lift cars off of their children. I thought of fathers rushing into burning buildings. The doctor's face registered shock and insult. I didn't care. I wanted to call my mom and scream and cry. I imagined collapsing on the floor of the vet office, Greg rushing to my rescue. Instead, out of my mouth came, “Who's the best hip dysplasia surgeon in Seattle? I want a consultation with him immediately. Where can I do more research? I don't care the cost.” In an instant, I was my father, snapping-to in a crisis. I knew how to do this. I knew how to come to someone's rescue. And whether or not this white-coated guy cared, I was going to save my dog.

I drove home, my eyes flooded with tears. The road blurred. Bunker sat in the passenger seat, his back legs splayed in what struck me as a misleadingly comfortable bearing. At a stoplight, I wiped my face and pressed my hand against my chest, trying to collect myself. I held Bunk's shoulder and felt my breath steadying. Just one touch on his body helped me slow down, collect myself. My upper lip buzzed with emotion and I drove the rest of the way home with one arm wrapped around him. The word
euthanasia
would not stop looping through my mind. Bunker
leaned down, sniffed my forearm, and licked it with a warm, slow pull of his tongue.

When I reached the house, I parked the car and cut the engine. Bunker was getting tall enough that his head was level with mine when he sat up in the passenger seat. I was panicking. The depression seemed to be threatening a return, like it was sitting in the backseat with a smirk and a knife. It would take out Bunker first, then kill me once and for all.

But when I slowed down, took inventory of how I felt, instead of being defeated or scared or sad, I was furious. I wasn't broken this time. Though the depression seemed closer than ever since Bunker had first come to me, I felt capable of tamping it down, of facing the situation and saving my boy. I wasn't broken; my dearest companion was. This situation uncorked a reserve of strength that I didn't know I had.

It occurred to me, sitting in the driver's seat, one hand on Bunker, one hand on the steering wheel, that perhaps it wasn't just Bunker who had come to save me. Perhaps we had found each other so that I could save him too. The veterinarian had said something about several thousand dollars. He kept repeating euthanasia as the best option, and that many owners choose to put down their dogs, and he bore no ill will toward them. Most people, he said, balked at the price. The veterinarian didn't know that I would've gone into lifelong debt and homelessness to save Bunker. I would've crafted a wheelchair out of sticks and rubble just to keep him alive and with me.

Parked in front of the house, I petted his soft-as-silk ears and said, “We're a pile of broken parts, aren't we, Bunk? We'll fix it.” He opened his mouth, panted, blew his warm puppy breath in my face. His breath had become my favorite scent. I was officially a goner. I inhaled, knowing logically that Bunker had no idea what I was saying or what had just happened or what pain and
suffering lay ahead for him. But part of me, that same deep-down part that had, since childhood, communed with trees and deer and birds, stirred when I held his head in my hands. I knew that our connection was not of this world, and that my determination and his pure goodness might just conquer any malady either of us suffered.

J
ANUARY
1997

I found the best veterinary orthopedic surgeon in Seattle and scheduled an appointment for the next day. There, I gently petted Bunker while the doctor reviewed the X-rays. I had come straight to the clinic after racing home after work. Bunker howled with excitement when I walked inside, led him to the car, and drove off.

Greg still wasn't talking to me, and I wasn't forcing it. I wanted to give him space, and I needed time to consider what I wanted. Jason blew me off the next time he delivered a package to my office. “That was fun, huh?” he said. “Just a fun night is all.” I got the message loud and clear and sat down at the reception desk with a clawing emptiness in my gut.

Sitting on the cold table at the vet's office, Bunker's disappointment was palpable. This was no romp in the park; this was more poking and prodding from a stranger. Bunker was tolerant as the veterinarian pushed and pulled on his legs, pressed his back, and tested his range of movement. As he manipulated Bunker's hips, he made “hmm” sounds, and a few times said quietly, “Okay, all right.” This doctor was in his fifties, fit, with a salt-and-pepper beard and hair, and he acted more like a doctor for humans than animals. I wondered if he had an older brother who was an MD, who teased him for doctoring less-important beings. I appreciated his demeanor, his furrowed brow, his sensitivity to my boy's condition.

He began speaking, and after his first few words I lost focus. My hearing muddled again, like I was underwater. This was bad.
I saw his frown, his concerned brow, his crossed arms creasing his white coat with the blue cursive letters spelling Dr. So & So in fanciful font that looked too old-fashioned for someone who was saying that our only hope lay in two drastic, highly technical surgeries. Six weeks apart, two complete triple-pelvic-osteotomies. “Repeat that?” I asked. I wanted to know the term. I wanted to brand it into my brain, the fix for this problem: Triple. Pelvic. Os-te-ot-o-my.

“Without the surgery, I'm afraid Dr. Vance is right. He will be immobile before he's two years old. I'm sorry,” he said, rubbing his chin, leaving the skin pinkened under his spiky silver goatee.

What did this veterinarian see when he looked at me? A young nervous girl? Could he see my panic, the lump in my throat rising as the situation began to feel more and more dire? Did he feel anything for us? Could he understand just by smelling, or feeling with his sixth doctor sense, the immensity of this situation?

I wanted to tell him that this animal was my lifeline. Without him, I would be confined to an emotional prison cell. I would never know how to lift myself out of the blackness again. I was hurling these thoughts across the room, as if they might enter his ear canal and worm their way to his sympathetic brain center.
Please, please, please,
please help me. Please don't make this happen. Dear man, please save my dog.

“. . . shave his entire backside. Two plates and six screws, some quite long, inserted into the center of the hipbone, which has been sawed apart into three sections. Then the bone heals in a whole new shape. But the immobility is essential and the healing process is extremely arduous.” He actually used the word
saw
, as in chainsaw. I nodded, my brain a fuzz of static. I searched for consolation and failed, like this were a pitch-black room with the light switch installed on the ceiling. I tried my best to listen from the darkness.

I gasped when the vet told me what I should've anticipated,
that each surgery would cost over two thousand dollars. I began nearly chanting it in my mind.
Four thousand dollars.
I had less than four hundred in my bank account. I'd just paid my third month's rent and was feeling flush with more than a hundred bucks sitting around. Where the hell was I going to come up with that kind of cash? I couldn't possibly ask my parents for more money. I didn't want to need my parents anymore. I wanted to survive on my own, and I had, so far, succeeded. But with the price tag on this turn of events, here I was, once again, desperately needing outside help.

Out in the parking lot, I stood and blinked, perhaps hoping I would wake from this nightmare. The dim, cloudy light slowly pulled me back into the moment. There would be no waking up from this. Behind my truck, I knelt down next to Bunker, his sweet, happy energy a contrast from the surgeon's office. I tried to remember what the vet said. There was hope that Bunker could be healed. It would be arduous, painful, and difficult to witness. Each surgery would last at least five hours, and Bunker would have to be confined to a crate almost twenty hours a day for eight weeks, carried up and down stairs.

The vet said he would want to walk soon after the surgery. His mind would be ready, but his body wouldn't. I sat listening, distinctly aware of the parallel between this prognosis and mine. I could move someplace new, convince myself that I was better, but my broken spirit still wasn't healed. I still made terrible mistakes, hurt kind people, acted stupidly and self-destructively. There was an internal cascading then, a falling out or down or through, and I turned inward. I would heal Bunker, I promised. And maybe if I just focused on helping him, I could stop hurting everyone else.