Love Is the Best Medicine (9 page)

Anything could happen from the moment I pull into my
parking space and turn off the engine of my car. I practice (and few words could be more appropriate) at the Angell Animal Medical Center, located on the fringe of Boston’s hospital district, yet another enormous brick building that from time to time attracts disoriented humans looking for a “real” doctor. Working with seventy other veterinarians, my days in this state-of-the-art facility are, by definition, design, and desire, unpredictable to say the least.

It may be no more than fifty yards and twenty seconds from the click of my vehicle’s central locking mechanism to the swish of the automatic doors at the hospital’s entrance, but there is ample opportunity to be accosted. It could be an anxious owner who has just dropped off his or her pet for surgery, armed with more pressing questions, eager to ensure that I have brought my A game, my mind sharp but not overly caffeinated. It might be my first appointment of the day, early and wandering the perimeter of the lot, a gimpy canine patient staking claim to a patch of yellow snow as his owner looks my way and juts a sharp chin in my direction as if to say, “Ready to see us or what?” But on one mean morning in January, nothing but black ice and a dusting of pet-friendly ice melt stood between me and the warmth of our vast reception area.

“Is it Friday the thirteenth?”

Sweeping in from my left, keeping pace as I headed to my office, came one of our interns, Dr. Elliot Sweet, greeting me with that question.

“Because if it’s not, last night had to be a full moon.”

We were walking together, as though he happened to be going my way, and it seemed obvious that he needed to confide. In fact it was a Tuesday, though I could forgive his disorientation. The telltale stubble on his cheeks told me all I needed to know. Dr. Sweet had been working the overnight shift.

“Did one of your clients appear overcome by the Roman goddess Luna?” I said.

He stopped me with an enormous hand on my shoulder and a smile that said this would be worth my while, and he set the scene.

The doors to our emergency service are open 24/7 and last night the waiting area had been packed with a variety of patients hoping to be seen. Among them were a Persian cat who had mistaken his owner’s stash of pot for his own stash of catnip; a Weimaraner puppy with a cut pad, blissfully ignorant of the bloody crime scene he was creating across the hospital floor; and a Pomeranian with a chronic, greasy, malodorous skin problem that, according to his cranky owner, simply could not wait until tomorrow.

And then there was Mr. Turret and his dog, Dillon. Mr. Turret’s resonant mantra had been heard long before he breached the automatic doors, his arrival all the more dramatic for the silence that ensued as he stormed into the center of the waiting room.

“Rabies,” he boomed, dropping the piece of twine that loosely tethered his placid mutt, his great hands extending before him, joining his eyes in pleading to the audience, circling before the waiting room turned theatre-in-the-round.

Mr. Turret commanded attention. He was an enormous barbarian of a man with untamable black hair contiguous between head and beard through which poked a bulbous ruddy nose and quick menacing eyes. Only the horned helmet and the evidence of rape and pillage were missing.

“For the love of God, it is rabies.”

He stressed every word, enunciating with Pentecostal precision.

“Rabies, the Lord’s blight upon man and beast. I know it and you know it. Just look at him.”

Suddenly he strode toward the strung-out guy clutching the floppy Persian cat.

“Look before you,” he said, gesturing dramatically in the direction of his dog, like a magician’s assistant accentuating a trick, the cat and its owner too stoned to feign interest.

“You see it, sir. I know you do. See the devil’s froth and spittle, see it pouring from his innocent lips; see those kind and devoted eyes possessed by Satan’s defiant stare.”

Dillon sat perfectly still, unperturbed, watching his master’s every move. However, to the trained eye, Dillon swallowed with increased frequency, effort, and considerable discomfort. The corners of his lips were wet and accumulating saliva, in a manner remarkably similar to those of his ranting owner.

“Rabies. Can there be any doubt?” Mr. Turret scanned his audience and, getting no reply, leapt to Dillon’s side, squatting beside him.

“Can you smell it? Well, can you?” He cocked his head back, forcing a long sniff, in and out, copious nasal hair caught in the flow, and to his delight one or two in the audience cautiously joined in.

“Am I right?” Mr. Turret nodded and kept on nodding as he encouraged the tentative in an olfactory investigation that yielded little more than confirmation of the new and pervasive aroma of alcohol in the room.

“Of course I am right. It is the devil’s virus. The rabies. And mark this.” He stood towering above them, holding out the back of his hand for all to see.

“Satan has bit me too.” He pointed to what looked like an innocuous scabby cut near his thumb. “That’s right, he has possessed my dog and now he comes for me. Now, my friends, on this very night, he is coming for us all.”

His final words might have stretched into a maniacal cackle if it were not for the attempts of a hospital supervisor to take Mr. Turret by the arm and steer him, and his ambivalent pet, toward a wooden bench.

Even from his sitting position, with the dog lying at his feet, the sermon continued, spittle flying, his arms gesticulating far and wide regarding the plague that Dillon would unwittingly inflict upon mankind.

Enter our bright and shiny overnight doctor, Dr. Sweet. Elliot may
have been a relatively new veterinary graduate, fresh-faced though prematurely balding, yet despite his awkward, gangly, mumbling and bumbling manner, he possessed a dedication to animals and owners alike that was fueled by a heart of gold.

The supervisor collared Elliot, shoved a hastily created record into his hand, and insisted, with an enigmatic smile, that he take the madman and his dog off into an examination room. Elliot did as he was told, guiding patient and owner, though failing to halt the incessant, vociferous sermon that condemned poor Dillon to a slow and gruesome demise.

“Rabies, rabies, my dog’s got rabies.”

Mr. Turret would not be pacified. His belief in his diagnosis was total, unwavering, although eventually simplified to a single word that he repeated over and over again, in a whisper that softened while Elliot began to perform a physical examination on Dillon.

“Rabies, rabies, rabies.” Two syllables merged into one wobbling, hypnotic sound, a rhythm percolating into the tired and sleepy gray matter of this hardworking intern, as Elliot stretched open Dillon’s mouth and found exactly what he had suspected he would see in the back of the dog’s throat.

Mr. Turret leaned forward in his chair, the whisper reduced to repetitive lip sounds as he waited for the verdict.

Conversely, Elliot leaned back in his and took a deep, cleansing breath.

“I am one hundred percent certain that your dog does not have rabies” is what Elliot had
meant
to say. But, unfortunately, he did not. Chalk it up to brainwashing, sleep deprivation, or some inherent phonetic deficiency—Elliot left out, forgot, or slid by the single most important word in his sentence:
not
.

There followed a brief moment of silence in which neither man spoke. But just as Elliot realized the absolute horror of his mistake, divine judgment, swift and final, descended upon Mr. Turret.

Even the Persian cat, now munching his way through his second
bag of Cheetos from a vending machine, sat up when he heard the relentless screaming headed back toward the waiting room.

“The devil’s benediction! He is rabid, he is. Dillon is rabid, and I am rabid too. Dear God, you have forsaken us both.”

Mr. Turret dropped to his knees, shoulders pitching forward in time with his sobbing; drool, mucus, and tears trapped in luxuriant whiskers as he heaved, wailed, and swiped at his face.

It was another twenty minutes before Mr. Turret finally accepted that the cause of Dillon’s problems had been a chicken bone lodged in the back of the poor dog’s throat.

A
NGELL
boasts twenty-six examination rooms—all fully equipped, basking in fluorescence, and uniformly painted “yellow finch” with a tinge of institutional green. Room 12 is my domain when it comes to most of my interactions with the public, a room tucked away in the far reaches of the building, a room with a tiny examination table and large floor space, an arrangement that encourages me to interview my patients on their terms, at ground level.

Up until my follow-up consultation with a twelve-year-old female yellow Labrador named Rory, I had not given Dr. Sweet’s speculations about the lunar cycle a second thought. Cats and dogs had come and gone; advice and medications were dispensed, elective surgeries scheduled. Their owners had been attentive, with questions smacking of meaningful Internet surfing. Nothing we discussed had been remotely wacky or verging on irrational. Little did I know that Rory, and her “mom,” Mrs. Nadworny, were about to buck this trend.

As it happened, Rory was well known to me, for two very different reasons. First of all, where I come from, “Rory” is a male moniker (in fact, Celtic in origin, it means “red king”). Consequently I kept referring to
her
as
him
. Gender confusion is a huge faux pas for any veterinarian and after countless slipups and polite reprimands
Mrs. Nadworny finally pointed out that the name “Rory” was short for Aurora, from aurora borealis, the northern lights.

Secondly, and most important, for the last eighteen months poor Rory had been living with a significant lameness in her left front leg that I had failed to define, let alone cure. As I walked to the waiting room, I promised myself that the least I could do was make sure I kept Rory’s gender correct.

Mrs. Nadworny, professionally dressed, seemingly on her way to or from some sort of high-powered job, humbled me with her enthusiastic handshake, bright eyes, warm smile, and easy conversation—the kind of greeting usually reserved for a success story, the kind of greeting that reminds me how lucky I am to work with pet owners who appreciate my intent to heal even when my results fall short.

Her four-legged companion was equally forgiving. Though not a fan of hospital visits and prone to bouts of trembling during examinations, Rory relinquished a coy tail wag when I tickled under her chin. She led the way back to my room, her head bobbing with each stride, a patent reminder of her unsolved ailment.

In these situations, I like to start by backtracking with the owner and refreshing my memory of the chronology of the workup. It gives me a chance to step back and take a new look at the big picture, secretly praying for a bolt of inspirational lightning. I hope it gives the owners a chance to see that I have been methodical and conscientious in my quest. I also imagine it gives them a chance to reflect on how much money they have spent on my clinical dead ends.

Mrs. Nadworny reached into her Marc Jacobs handbag, silenced her BlackBerry, and leaned forward in her chair to narrate Rory’s history while the retriever at the center of it all cowered by her side shedding fur, hairy tumbleweeds gathering at their feet. I noticed how evenly Rory balanced the weight on her front legs, as though she were faking a miraculous intervention that must surely enable her to go straight home.

“If you remember, you started with her elbow,” said Mrs. Nadworny, matter of fact, nothing accusatory in her tone.

“Yes I do,” I said. “The X-rays confirmed a mild case of elbow arthritis, but not bad enough to account for the severity of her lameness.”

Mrs. Nadworny nodded her agreement.

“So that was why you started to worry about her shoulder. You took more X-rays, you took some fluid from the shoulder joint and injected it with steroids.”

I found the appropriate section of the cytology report, the cellular analysis of the joint fluid.

“Mild chronic inflammation in the shoulder joint,” I read, “yet I see a note here that says the steroids failed to improve the lameness.”

“Nothing earth shattering,” she said. “Juicing my dog didn’t make that much difference.”

She smiled, as though enjoying the narrative and I wondered if this was cathartic for her.

I went back to the record and here Rory had disappeared, fallen off the radar, lost to follow-up, hovering in a state of limbo in which the veterinarian might make believe “no news is good news.” I could imagine Mrs. Nadworny gave up on me, sought a third opinion from a better clinician than I. Or perhaps the problem resolved itself with a tincture of time. Based on the little of Rory I had seen so far, none of these conjectures was correct.

“What’s been going on since then?”

Mrs. Nadworny looked at Rory, looked at me, and said, “Promise you won’t laugh.”

She hesitated for a moment and I wondered whether I was required to make a verbal promise or perhaps a pinky swear.

“I took her to a chiropractor.”

If she imagined I would be amused, appalled, or offended she would have been disappointed.

“Really,” I said, all morning-show smiles, business as usual. “How did it go?”

Many of my clients worry that I will be skeptical about alternative treatment options. Maybe an image of Rory lying on a table, relaxing into her neck adjustment, the vertebral crack just shy of a fracture, does give me pause but who am I to criticize? After all, it’s not as though a chiropractor could do any worse than me. Or at least I hope not.

Mrs. Nadworny wrinkled her nose.

“Hard to tell. Maybe it helped a little. Anyway, we moved on to acupuncture.”

Her sentences were interspersed with a tinge of nervous laughter, but once again I nodded and maintained serious eye contact. Truthfully I was far more intrigued by the notion of acupuncture. I wasn’t at all sure how Rory would tolerate having the polarities of her chi restored with tiny needles, and I have read that when you get really critical of the scientific data supporting the use of acupuncture in animals there is little compelling evidence either way. But I am comfortable with the notion of stimulating the body’s natural endorphins to relieve pain, and besides, it’s hard to argue with five thousand years of Chinese medicine.