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March 2005

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"Guess Who's Home!" - March 5

The picture is my favorite one of my mother, and of Malcolm. A while back I told this story about Malcolm to a friend. I thought you might like to read it, too.

Mother and Malcolm

Malcolm was Mother's dog first, then became a shared critter when I had to go home to take care of her in 1990. He had a truly awful allergic reaction to a flea preventive that an idiot veterinarian put on him in 1989, when he was ten (idiot was our regular vet's partner; regular vet was out of town that week). When Malcolm got home from the vet visit, which had been for a regular check-up, he wouldn't eat, would barely drink water, and stayed in the bathroom on the cool floor. And, of course, it wasn't obvious what was wrong.

Mother took him back the next day, with some help from a friend since I was at work in Chapel Hill. Idiot vet wanted to euthanize him, saying it would cost too much to treat him. Pissed Mother off. She insisted that she owed it to the dog to at least find out what was wrong with him. She also pointed out, none too gently, that she had never left their office owing money and had no plans to start doing so.

Turned out this flea preventative was not to ever be used on dogs without doing certain blood tests, which idiot hadn't done. IV fluids and a blood transfusion, along with a bath to get the stuff off him, did the trick. Two days later, Mother called me and said, "Guess who's home!" Before I had a chance to say anything, Malcolm barked. You know, just in case I didn't guess right.

Mother's next act was to find a new veterinarian. New vet was excellent. Malcolm had been having seizures whenever he'd had to go to old vet's office...never anywhere else. He never had one again, and he lived to just past his fourteenth birthday.

Eerily, when Mother was first in the nursing home after her second stroke, there came a Sunday when she couldn't urinate. The staff asked me to come to the nursing home and go with her to the hospital for tests to find out why that was, after making sure I wanted them to seek a diagnosis (a rant for another day).

Mother had expressive aphasia after that stroke, and a lot of what she said didn't make much sense. But when I walked in her room that evening, she looked up at me and said, "Malcolm." I didn't have to think twice what that meant---that some twit had mentioned I would have to make a decision to seek treatment. I told her we were on our way to the hospital to find out what was wrong. It turned out that a side effect of that stroke was a problem with the bladder sphincter, causing it not to release. A medication easily took care of that.

And although it took a few months, I found her a new group of health care professionals, just as she had done for Malcolm. And just like his new veterinarian delivered, these new people gave excellent care.

Text © copyright 2000-2005 Becky