SubscribeThis summer we have been in a larger-than-normal number of pet hospitals, which begs the question, “Is there a normal number?”. Irene and I think that, if you have multiple animals, (we had four at the beginning of the summer), you will be in a veterinary hospital at least once a year. Keeping in mind that I say, here, pet HOSPITAL” and not just your normal give-’em-a-checkup-and-booster-shot veterinary clinic, once a year signifies some kind of emergency that a normal doctor can’t handle and, unfortunately, there is always something that falls into that catagory. In Truckee last year, for instance, we scored a rare double and got both Spyro and Rocky into a hospital at the same time, due in part to a very large mountain porcupine who rejected without much consideration the idea that his den in his bush was something that could be shared by others, especially if the others are dogs. This visit was particularly costly as I think they charged for quill extraction by the quill and Rocky had about the same number of quills in her muzzle as there are grains of sands on Monterey Beach. Spyro, being intrinsically more cautious than Rocky and half her size, only had quills equal to half the beach, but it was still, in the vernacular, a poop-pot full of quills. Interestingly dogs never seem to acknowledge that they’re sick or hurt unless really pressed and both of them sat still as little soldiers on their way to the hospital, and the next day, after the anaesthesia wore off, the first thing they both wanted to do was to go find Mr. Porcupine for a rematch, so I guess no permanent harm was done to either body or psyche.
Those visits turned out to be the opening of a floodgate of sorts and, since then, Rocky was in the hospital three more times, all around her diagnosis as having metastasized organ cancer and her eventual euthanasia, Spyo did what he could by contracting a still-to-this-day-unexplained super-infection that came within an inch of killing the poor mutt and took three days of intravenous live-in care to overcome, and Jake contracted liver cancer and as we speak is just out of his third hospital in three weeks, with this last time having him returned to us tumor-free although very sore, grouchy and without much appetite yet.
We could write volumes on the differences between these hospitals, on the high quality of some doctors and the mediocrity of others, on the up-beat and positive vibes thrown off by some, on the rundown nature of their brothers. Animal hospitals, like animal clinics, people hospitals, and people clinics, are, by nature, profit-making enterprises or should be. I suspect the ones that seem the best and the brightest DO the best from a fiscal point of view but uniformly I can’t prove this.
The quality of time one spends in a veterinary hospital is similar to that spent in a regular hospital if you are waiting around. There is nothing to do. You bring your lunch, your drinks, your book, your cell phone. Sometimes you bring another animal, just to wait with you. You make small talk with the people in the waiting rooms, and if they have animals you “ooh and aah” over them, even if you really think they are scruffy and ill-behaved (the dogs, not their owners, at least usually), which I suppose you’d expect in a hospital where no animal can be at its best. You look at your watch, go heads-down and read for awhile. put your head back, sunglasses down and try to nap. You think. You worry. You get up, walk around outside, get water you don’t want, check your cell. Maybe call somebody you don’t really want to talk to. You come back, sit down. Your partner looks at you expectantly like you are going to have some news to relate. You talk about literally nothing, repeating nothing over and over as if by repeating it, it can become new or it will somehow become more significant.
The doctor, when he or she comes out, tells you all you really need to know simply by the way they walk and the expression on their face. Our Aburn doctor, Ralph Henderson by name, has so far communicated good news to us, so we like to see him coming. He’s a kind, gentle, sometimes-funny and always- intelligent man anyway, with little of the apparently-Southern polite evasiveness about him…he’s very direct, although soft in his communication. He wears orange Crocks and an orange-and-brown headband with blushing doggies on it, and always sports a large stethascope over his very traditional white lab coat and green uniform. I can’t imagine a guy who looks more like what he is…a very fine animal oncology surgeon…and he almost makes all the waiting worth-while as he takes all the time you want, talks about every aspect of the upcoming or just-past operation, talks about post-care endlessly, discusses dental hygine, pooping habits, the amount of exercise a dog should or shouldn’t get and makes cute little analogies up about relationships with spouses and what that means to our care of dogs. He says, for instance, that Jake will be an “all-new-dog” in a week or so and our principle problem at that time will be to keep the little guy a bit calm, still, so he doesn’t damage still-healing sutures.
But nothing Ralph or anybody can do changes the fact that waiting in any hospital and/or caring for any still-recovering out-patient, animal or human, is stressful, and at the end of each day, now, Irene and I are exhausted and fall into bed knowing that, at best, tomorrow we will do it again, hoping to see some incremental progress. Nobody can make a hospital a fun place to visit, although they certainly can be good places to save a life. Jake’s already a good example of that, come what may. And, stress or no stress, we’re grateful…for the doctors in general, for Red Bay’s Dr. Odie who got out of bed in the middle of the night to see Jake, to Mississippi State’s Dr. Johnson for her diagnostic skills and friendship, of course for Auburn’s most-excellent Dr. Henderson, for God’s giving the little guy another chance, and, overall, for the hospitals that we find along the way.