Love Is the Best Medicine (33 page)

His tone was warm, more fatherly advice than disciplinary action. Even so I just stared back, letting him know I was waiting for more.

It took another beat before he capitulated.

“I’ve had dogs all my life,” he said. “Beagles. Best dogs in the world. Over the years I’ve had eighteen of them.”

Funny, I thought to myself, the way we never forget the animals in our lives. It’s like asking a mother who has lost a child how many children she has. No mother ever does mental subtraction before she replies. The number is a constant, homage to the memory. And for so many pet owners, a similar logic applies.

“Every one of my beagles lived outside in a dog pen I built special. Every one of them,” he paused, “except for Bee-bee.”

“What was so special about Bee-bee?” I said.

And he smiled the smile of someone who doesn’t have the time or the talent to put it all into words, but a smile that says it all. I smiled back.

“You let her in, didn’t you?” I said. “You let her into your house and you let her into your heart.”

He said nothing.

“When you say that,” I said, “when you say ‘never breathe your soul into a dog,’ it sounds like you’re defending yourself against the pain of having lost something special.”

I saw a glint of something in his eyes, perhaps a memory of this dog, his favorite, abiding dog, talented and relentless, scenting a rabbit, barreling through the woods; or maybe it was a simple recollection of his late wife seated in front of the TV, Bee-bee, the lucky conscript, curled into a ball at her feet. And then he was back, pretending not to have
heard what I said, quickly changing the subject to safer, less tender territory.

So here’s the thing. How many of us can share our lives with animals and
not
become attached, involved, committed, or even, for some pet owners, infatuated? I’m not talking about turning cats, dogs, rabbits, or ferrets into so-called fur babies. I’m talking about the normal, natural, unavoidable, inevitable, and wonderful attachment that develops through time spent doing what it takes to properly care for an animal. Even Jim, old-school, hardnosed dog lover that he was, couldn’t resist, broke down, and became infected by the love of a dog, and, at ninety-one years of age, he was still paying the price.

Perhaps Jim had it the wrong way round and what he should have said was “never let an animal breathe their soul into you,” for once we become smitten, true love will always come at a price. For all the smiles, the laughter, the simplicity, certainty, and ease of sharing each other’s company, at some point in the relationship, the price that must be paid will take the form of emotional pain.

Okay, so maybe love and pain are not conjoined twins, but frequently they are inextricably linked, an unwanted twofer, and sometimes it can be hard to tell where one ends and the other begins.

Pain will come for us when we are parted from our loved ones, cheated by our loved ones, face the fear of losing our loved ones. Sometimes it is this awareness of pain that makes us realize we must be in love, pain that signifies a love worth fighting for. It can make you wince, buckle, and scream. It could be a niggling ache, a stab of cold steel to the gut, or a heavy, intransigent weight, impossible to crawl out from under.

While I was trying to straighten this out in my head, hoping to divine the power of Sandi’s take on life when it came to losing Cleo, I received a letter from a woman whose sister has cystic fibrosis like my daughter Emily. It struck a chord, perfectly tuned in to the heart of Sandi’s philosophy:

“The doctor told my mother (a widow at the time) that she should tell my twelve-year-old sister that she will die. My mother said, ‘Doctor, you are going to die, I am going to die, we are all going to die. I will not tell her she will die because right now she’s too busy
living!’”

And isn’t this what it’s all about? It doesn’t matter whether you’re talking about time spent with a child or an animal, the message is clear—savor the moment, big or small, and get busy with the joy of living.

The letter concluded with the kind of told-you-so statement parents of sick children live for.

“Paulette is now forty-six years old with two children of her own.”

B
EYOND
living in the moment, I wish I knew how to defend against the pain, how to make it bearable, make it possible to love and not get hurt. In these last twenty years of working with sick animals, Sandi Rasmussen has arguably come the closest to offering me an answer because she was able to see what lies beyond the pain. She appreciated that loss is a part of life—not an end of life. She
chose
not to dwell on the unfairness of losing Cleo. She
chose
not to let it become the catalyst for anger, resentment, or self-pity. She never saw Cleo or her daughter or herself as a victim. There was no “poor me,” no “poor Sonja,” no “why did it have to be my dog?” She had every right to harbor resentment, to feel aggrieved, to want to avenge her loss. Cleo had died on my watch and inadvertently, indirectly, and unceremoniously I had compelled Sandi to react. She could have gone either way, and most of us would recognize anger as the natural, reasonable response. But Sandi opted for something far more difficult. I don’t know how she did it, how she had the strength to resist its allure, but somehow she saw anger for what it was—an all-too-familiar siren, its rewards transient and hollow. Perhaps the answer lies rooted in her childhood, in the lessons she learned from
the stray and abandoned animals that more than paid her back for her kindness and devotion. For whatever reason, Sandi chose to surrender to the pain, to say “I will not be defined by the events of my life, by what happens and is beyond my control.” She didn’t fight her loss, she accepted her loss, she saw that the loss had a purpose, a purity, an impact, and a lesson from which many might learn. In essence, Sandi Rasmussen let go, and as she already knew, letting go can be a powerful thing. The pain became tolerable and, for those of us who witnessed it, even inspirational.

I
WISH
I could tell you that Helen was still with us, but some twenty months after I performed her thoracic surgery, her cancer returned and she passed on, at her home with Eileen and Ben by her side. For a while I succumbed to sadness, but only for a while because every recollection I had of this dog brought me right back to her greatest attribute—Helen was a survivor. She had already achieved the medical holy grail of “miraculous.” What did I expect, “everlasting”? This was cancer after all. There are no rules of fair play. Cancer wants to have the last word but I won’t let it. You can look at this story from all sorts of different angles but I choose success and a remarkable victory. Thanks to veterinary advances, dedicated owners, and a whole lot of love, Helen got to enjoy more than two years as part of a family who doted on and adored her. Somehow this crafty, determined little dog had beaten the odds but eventually her luck had run out. Our pets will never be with us for long enough, at least not physically, but when they have been blessed with opportunity and been able to live a full life, how can we respond with anything less than pride and celebration?

One of the things that struck me about Helen’s story was her wonderfully agreeable temporal distance from the physical and chemical intrusion of our veterinary medicine. This far out from surgery, from the bouts of chemotherapy, her survival had become all about her.
We may have played our part, but ours was only ever a cameo performance. Helen had been the one beating cancer, and she and her family were the ones who deserved the credit.

If you are still curious about the final pathology report on Cleo’s postmortem, no specific cause of death was ever defined. I wasn’t surprised or relieved. I didn’t know whether Sandi would feel any differently if she had an answer, if she had someone or something to blame. Given my read on her, I imagine it no longer mattered. Perhaps it never did, pointing fingers was not her style. Truth is, more often than not, unexpected or accidental death fails to leave a calling card. In my experience speculation and inference rarely coincide with the pathological equivalent of a smoking gun. Maybe the element of mystery in life’s disasters and miracles packs a bigger punch. When we are left to wonder, uncertainty becomes a clinical terrorist, a permanent threat meant to keep us vigilant.

I
F
writers of crime fiction are to be believed, detectives are sensitive to, and leery of, coincidence. Too many connections, mutual friends, and chance encounters, and suspicious minds become aroused. But for those of us traveling through life’s more mundane destinies, when does coincidence become fate? What were the chances that Cleo and I were destined to cross paths? Looking back over the events leading to our encounter I began to realize the odds were far shorter than I first imagined.

Cleo’s leg could just as easily have fractured for the third time in Canada rather than Bermuda but this particular Min Pin had a penchant for living the island life. If such an injury were to occur, there was a fair chance it might transpire in a land of quaint shorts and gauche socks.

Bermuda lies about seven hundred miles from Boston and there are many direct flights to closer veterinary referral clinics capable of performing her surgery along the East Coast. Sonja could have
picked the Carolinas, Virginia, or New York. However, the island’s pet population is served by two major veterinary practices, both of which regularly refer their tricky surgical cases to yours truly. Of course I don’t have a monopoly on Bermuda’s surgical referrals, but the odds favor me.

This leaves the minute probability of anesthetic risk mentioned earlier, small but not nearly as small as all of us would prefer. When I tally these variables, consider my and Cleo’s flight path, the choices made, the chances that things would turn out the way they did, the odds are long, but nowhere near as long as picking a Powerball winner. Clearly, not everything that impacts our lives will be good or pleasant, but if we are open to learning from our experiences, regardless of their nature, they can at least be meaningful. Cleo’s clinical outcome may be the epitomy of failure and yet for me, thanks to Sandi, her legacy has been powerful and far reaching. Call it coincidence, fate, or whatever, sometimes it feels as though we live our lives like an iPod Shuffle—we may think that everything comes at us in a random fashion but every so often a particular sequence feels just right because, when you get right down to it, we are the ones programming the tunes!

T
HE
only question that remains is, what part, if any, did Cleo play in Helen’s recovery? I know what you’re thinking: here he goes again, cooking the emotional books, contriving a transcendent connection for his happy ending. If I am, then let me argue my point with the story of a much-loved German shepherd called Lucy. Lucy and I had met several times over the years—two knees, numerous lumps and bumps—and so a phone call from Lucy’s owner, Ava, to schedule an appointment so I could examine a troubling growth on Lucy’s lower eyelid came as no surprise.

“I have something to ask you,” said Ava when we met, “and please, feel free to tell me if I’m being stupid.” She hesitated, letting
the tears catch up, injecting a tremor into every word. “But, my father died recently. He had a pacemaker, you see. The battery pack was brand new and he had insisted it be removed before he was cremated. I can’t tell you how much he loved Lucy, how important she was to him.”

She smiled into the pain, trying to master it, failing dismally. I took my cue.

“You don’t have to tell me,” I said. “A lot of grandparents make soft targets for dogs in search of treats and table scraps. I can guess where most of Lucy’s nutritional love came from!”

She laughed, intoxicated by that familiar unashamed cocktail of truth and the memory of what she had lost.

“You’re right. Dad was awful and no matter how much I tried to tell him, Lucy could always win him over when it came to food.”

She waited a beat and went on.

“One of his dying wishes, and like I say, it could be silly, was to see if some animal could use his pacemaker. It would have meant the world to him to think his loss could be another creature’s gain.”

People never cease to amaze me. Talk about giving from the heart. Once again I was floored by human generosity when it comes to the animals in our lives. Without hesitation I applauded what her father had done, and his intent, and promised I would look into the plausibility of what he wanted to achieve after his death.

If I really was guilty of fashioning a fairy-tale ending, we all know who should have been the lucky beneficiary of the pacemaker. Lucy may have become a gourmand Alsatian but fortunately her heart was in perfect working order. In fact, after consulting with several cardiologists, I discovered that relative to the price tag of pacemaker implantation, the cost of the battery pack itself is a relatively trivial fee. Most owners would prefer a brand-new battery at a cost of $150, rather than settle for a used version.

When I contacted Ava to share my disappointing news, part of me still hoped a needy case might come along, perhaps a shelter dog, a
stray, a creature abandoned by someone for whom $150 may as well have been $150 million. And part of me still does, only now I realize there was something far more important to learn from Ava’s father’s request.

After my experience with Cleo and Helen, I can see it doesn’t really matter whether we get to use the pacemaker or not, because what does matter and what will never be lost, is the spirit of the offer. The act of generosity is set in stone. It will never wear out, fade, or go away. And to me, the exact same generosity exists between Cleo and Helen. It doesn’t matter one iota whether it made a difference or not. The intent was positive. The outcome for Helen was wonderful but essentially superfluous. The reward comes from what was let go and not from what we got back.

It’s probably fair to say we all want to leave some sort of mark, some sort of legacy from our time spent on this earth. I’m not talking about an entry in
The Guinness Book of World Records
or a Pulitzer prize or an Oscar or summiting a mountain high enough to require supplemental oxygen. I’m talking about what counts, what sets certain people apart, like Ava’s dad and his pacemaker, a regular guy whose succinct, humble, whispered appeal still resonates loud and clear. I’m talking about the poise and understanding of Sandi Rasmussen in the immediate aftermath of losing Cleo. I’m talking about the selfless desire of Eileen and Ben to give an abandoned dog a chance. These marks are real. These are the marks that count. On the crowded beach of my years of clinical experience, these are some of the people who have left permanent footprints in the sand.