asleep, if I get up in the night to go to the bathroom, she’ll wake up and start sniffing along some invisible trail until she finds me.”
“Good thing she still has a decent sense of smell,” said Dr. J., lifting up a weighty black ear and peering into the pink cauliflower folds within. “Because I can’t imagine she hears very well. For all intents and purposes she has to be nearly deaf after a lifetime of neglect for a classic cocker spaniel ear problem. I’ll leave you with some ear cleaner and topical and oral antibiotics. We’ll see if they help her out.”
Dr. J. lifted up on Helen’s upper lip, inspecting the dental arcade below, and the dog took this as a cue to pant directly into the veterinarian’s face.
“Whoa,” she said, “that’s impressive. Nothing personal, but I think I might pass on sharing some spaniel kissy-face.”
“It’s awful, isn’t it? Sometimes I’ve seen the poor thing rubbing her face along the ground and pawing at her mouth as though something hurts inside.”
Dr. J. placed a finger on Helen’s lower incisors and gently induced her to “open wide.” Chipped canines, stone-ground incisors, and molars caked in a lime green frosting of fetid plaques smiled back at her.
“She’s going to need some serious dental work, I’m afraid. It’s amazing that she eats as well as she does despite her bad teeth.”
The history of tick infestation prompted a test for Lyme disease, Helen stoically accepting the needle in her jugular vein as the blood sample was obtained. More injections followed, in her neck and her right thigh, providing the vaccines that had either lapsed or were never given in the first place.
It was while Dr. J. was listening to Helen’s chest with a stethoscope that the doctor had her first and only moment of hesitation during the entire examination. Gliding across the right side of Helen’s chest, Dr. J. could detect the whisper of air drifting back and forth through healthy lungs. Off in the distance, she could hear the faint “lub-dub” of a strong heartbeat. However, when she switched sides, placing the diaphragm of her stethoscope behind Helen’s left armpit—an optimal position to hear blood rushing through the heart’s different chambers—her ears were greeted by relative silence.
Helen stood patiently, clearly unfazed by the apparent absence of a beating heart.
Dr. J. looked puzzled. She looked at her stethoscope, double-tapped the diaphragm with her finger, and heard two deafening thumps on a snare drum inside her head. There appeared to be no technical problem with her equipment.
She listened again, roving around an imaginary silhouette where Helen’s heart might be inside this compact chest, looking like a safe cracker who can’t quite dial up the correct sequence of numbers.
“Is something wrong?” asked Eileen.
Dr. J. raised her eyes, hearing the question but not daring to speak, as she finally picked up the heartbeat but somewhat more muffled and from slightly farther away than expected.
“Weird,” she finally said. “I was having a problem hearing her heart on the left side of her chest.”
“Is it something to worry about?”
“Hard to say,” she said. “The heart itself sounds normal. I don’t hear any dropped beats, murmurs, or abnormal rhythms. It’s just a little dull and indistinct in that one area.”
She gently patted the left side of Helen’s chest.
“It’s probably nothing. Overinterpreting any variation from normal in a dog with no history is easy. Who knows what might have happened in her medical past?”
T HE severity of Helen’s hearing impairment became increasingly apparent over the next few weeks. Both Ben and Eileen found themselves calling her name to no avail, inadvertently creeping up on her and making her startle with their touch. Only the loudest noise, like the screen door slamming shut on a whipping wind, penetrated her head and pointed her snout in the direction of the sound.
On
“Good thing she still has a decent sense of smell,” said Dr. J., lifting up a weighty black ear and peering into the pink cauliflower folds within. “Because I can’t imagine she hears very well. For all intents and purposes she has to be nearly deaf after a lifetime of neglect for a classic cocker spaniel ear problem. I’ll leave you with some ear cleaner and topical and oral antibiotics. We’ll see if they help her out.”
Dr. J. lifted up on Helen’s upper lip, inspecting the dental arcade below, and the dog took this as a cue to pant directly into the veterinarian’s face.
“Whoa,” she said, “that’s impressive. Nothing personal, but I think I might pass on sharing some spaniel kissy-face.”
“It’s awful, isn’t it? Sometimes I’ve seen the poor thing rubbing her face along the ground and pawing at her mouth as though something hurts inside.”
Dr. J. placed a finger on Helen’s lower incisors and gently induced her to “open wide.” Chipped canines, stone-ground incisors, and molars caked in a lime green frosting of fetid plaques smiled back at her.
“She’s going to need some serious dental work, I’m afraid. It’s amazing that she eats as well as she does despite her bad teeth.”
The history of tick infestation prompted a test for Lyme disease, Helen stoically accepting the needle in her jugular vein as the blood sample was obtained. More injections followed, in her neck and her right thigh, providing the vaccines that had either lapsed or were never given in the first place.
It was while Dr. J. was listening to Helen’s chest with a stethoscope that the doctor had her first and only moment of hesitation during the entire examination. Gliding across the right side of Helen’s chest, Dr. J. could detect the whisper of air drifting back and forth through healthy lungs. Off in the distance, she could hear the faint “lub-dub” of a strong heartbeat. However, when she switched sides, placing the diaphragm of her stethoscope behind Helen’s left armpit—an optimal position to hear blood rushing through the heart’s different chambers—her ears were greeted by relative silence.
Helen stood patiently, clearly unfazed by the apparent absence of a beating heart.
Dr. J. looked puzzled. She looked at her stethoscope, double-tapped the diaphragm with her finger, and heard two deafening thumps on a snare drum inside her head. There appeared to be no technical problem with her equipment.
She listened again, roving around an imaginary silhouette where Helen’s heart might be inside this compact chest, looking like a safe cracker who can’t quite dial up the correct sequence of numbers.
“Is something wrong?” asked Eileen.
Dr. J. raised her eyes, hearing the question but not daring to speak, as she finally picked up the heartbeat but somewhat more muffled and from slightly farther away than expected.
“Weird,” she finally said. “I was having a problem hearing her heart on the left side of her chest.”
“Is it something to worry about?”
“Hard to say,” she said. “The heart itself sounds normal. I don’t hear any dropped beats, murmurs, or abnormal rhythms. It’s just a little dull and indistinct in that one area.”
She gently patted the left side of Helen’s chest.
“It’s probably nothing. Overinterpreting any variation from normal in a dog with no history is easy. Who knows what might have happened in her medical past?”
T HE severity of Helen’s hearing impairment became increasingly apparent over the next few weeks. Both Ben and Eileen found themselves calling her name to no avail, inadvertently creeping up on her and making her startle with their touch. Only the loudest noise, like the screen door slamming shut on a whipping wind, penetrated her head and pointed her snout in the direction of the sound.
On
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