I just lived an episode of Emergency Vet. Tune in.
The star is Lucy, my old golden retriever, who is still rockin’ after thirteen years. Her eyes, brown as bittersweet chocolate, remain bright, though her step has slowed and she scuffs around on dust-mop paws. Her fur, which used to be a thick russet color, never grew back after a shave last summer, so her coat sprouts in crazy patches, like onion grass.
Lucy’s a Bad Hair Dog.
Our story opens when I notice that Lucy has a wound on her chest. It’s hidden by matted chest hair, and it’s yucky, a medical term you may know.
So I take her to our vet who biopsies the yuckiness and it turns out to be skin cancer, though an X-ray shows that it hasn’t spread. This qualifies as good news, except that during the week after the yuckiness, Lucy ages in fast-forward. She walks so slowly she’s almost in reverse and sleeps so deeply I hold my breath until I see hers. By Wednesday, I worry that this is The End. By Friday, Lucy cannot stand up without help, and I take her to the vet.
I’m sure this is The End.
But my vet is the greatest in the world, and he thinks it may be a spinal degenerative condition. He puts her on steroids and tells me to worry only if there’s a downturn. He thinks it’s not The End, and I love him for that. I believe him until the next morning, when Lucy’s front legs fail, too.
Your basic downturn.
She breathes more heavily, blinks all the time, and seems disoriented. I have seen dying before, and it looks just like this.
Complicating the plot is that daughter Francesca is in California on spring break, and she is devoted to this dog. If this is The End, she has a right to know. So I call her, and she gets on a series of planes, spending almost fifteen hours in the air to get home in time to say good-bye. When I meet her at the airport on Monday afternoon, estrogen flows freely.
On Monday evening, we take the dog back to the vet, who examines her while I give the headline. Francesca fills in the details, about how the dog’s face is so different, which is new since our last visit. I hadn’t noticed it at all; I was too focused on Lucy’s other problems. That she wasn’t so cute anymore didn’t matter.
“Interesting,” the vet says, poking around, and as Francesca goes on, I’m hearing a child talk about her dearest pet. She loves everything about this dog, and if there is such a thing as a novelist’s keen eye for detail, she has it. I don’t. To me, Lucy is a red dog who needs Rogaine.
Francesca is saying to the vet, “She’s a beautiful dog. She doesn’t look like this. Something’s wrong with her face.”
“Like what?” asks the vet, whom I sense is humoring her. I marvel at how kind people are, when it counts.
Francesca continues, “Her smile doesn’t pull back that way. See how her lips are tense? Like they’re frozen?”
The vet looks up. “Please excuse me a minute.” Then she leaves the room and returns five minutes later with a book that she sets down on the examining table. She points to a picture on the open page, and it shows a black dog, smiling exactly like Lucy.
“That’s what she looks like!” Francesca says, and the vet nods.
“It’s called risus sardonicus, which is Latin for sardonic smile. Your dog has lockjaw. Tetanus. That’s why her back legs are failing. The smile tipped me off.”
I look over, amazed. “Dogs get tetanus? How?” I’m thinking of rusty nails.
“They do but it’s incredibly rare. I’ve never seen a case. They get it from an open wound.”
I’m remembering the yuckiness, prior. “So now what happens?”
“You need to see a specialist.”
So the next morning we’re at a specialist, who qualifies as the nicest doggie neurologist in the country, because he takes one look at our wacky hairless dog and says, “Hello, gorgeous.”
You know what I checked. Of course, he’s married.
He confirms that Lucy has tetanus, which is so rare that he wants to take a video of it. He tells us that antibiotics will cure her. That not only is she going to live, her paralysis will arrest and she’ll be able to walk again in a month.
We are smiling. So is Lucy, albeit sardonically.
Francesca is going back to school.
I am going back to work.
Not The End.