Lab Results - Chapter Three

This is the final chapter in the story "Lab Results."  I hope that serializing the story has made it more consistent with the traditional style of this blog.  There will be some of both types of posts in the future because sometimes there is simply more to say than can easily be captured in one post.  Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy the stories.  Now for the conclusion:

Lab Results - Chapter 3

Puppet, good friend, guru.

Days later, after the funeral, I finally returned home.  Puppet had spent all of those days beside the door.   She leaned into my leg.  Stood when I stood, walked when I walked.  She stayed closer to me than my noonday shadow.  She wouldn’t chase the Frisbee.  Instead, she would make four or five concentric circles right in front of my chair and settle her head on my feet.  I began to worry because she wouldn’t finish her food if I left the room.  Instead of doing the Labrador inhale where a bowl full of food is consumed in seconds, she ate with her head bobbing up and down, her eyes tracking my every move. 

Time’s magic helped.  Pup knew when the time was right.  As I sat in my chair on the back porch, she brought the Frisbee and sat looking up at me.  She gave that half wag of her tail and dropped it on my feet.  Time to play.

Years passed faster than Pup could vacuum up cups of spilled kibble.  We played Frisbee, took long walks and talked.  Pup saw me through other times when the daily journey wasn’t smooth.  She hated to travel but endured the stress to keep close wherever I went.  We talked.  That is I talked.  If she didn’t understand, she hid it well.  Our pact grew to absolute commitment as more years became memories and I learned her lessons.

Mud season, late March in Missouri, was upon us.  For Pup, now 11, a simple trip out to take care of business led to a half-bath and a three towel dry off.  I took her to her annual physical.  In 24 hours the test results were back.  Only one lab result was out of normal range – liver enzymes.  Dr. Dyer called me and said that Puppet needed to start some aggressive medications.  I okayed it.  I knew from the tone of Dr. Dyer’s voice the prognosis was poor.

When I gave Pup her first pill, I knelt down and whispered that she needed to take this medicine.  She cocked her head to the left and looked me straight in the eye.  I paused and looked back at her and said, “I know.  The pact we made still goes.  But take this medicine to help your liver work better.  We have to try.”  She dropped her head.  Her hind quarters remained on the floor but she raised her tail and gave me the half wag as she swallowed the pill.  Until that moment, she had never revealed a single sign of the pain she was enduring as her liver slowly failed.

In those final three months we played less and sat together more.  With each new day Pup surrendered another activity to memory.  The Frisbee tossed gently would lay untouched merely inches from her nose.  Folding a Frisbee like a taco between her front paws would not happen again.  Her head would drop into the crook of my ankle and I would bend to lay my hand on her head. 

Needles pricked every inch of her forelegs to draw blood on our weekly trips to the vet.  More tests, more lab results; more medicines accompanied by soft medicinal food. Each time we sat together waiting for Dr. Dyer, Pup would look at me as if to say, “I want to go home.”  I’d whisper, “I know.”  We did know where this was headed but I couldn’t give up yet and I implored her to fight on.  “Give this new medicine a chance.  The doc says it can help.”  The half wag followed but she looked away.

By the first week of June, the pills and food weren’t helping.  Dr. Dyer suggested an overnight stay with intravenous medications.  For the last four nights I’d slept beside Pup on the floor near the door to the back yard.  Each time I could help her out, mostly by carrying her, she would avoid the embarrassing indignities of cleanup.  I reluctantly agreed with the vet.

I didn’t sleep that night.  The morning arrived darkened by an ominous cover of thunderheads.  The phone rang early.  “Sir,” the voice said, “you need to get to the hospital as soon as you can.”  Winnie and I covered the five miles in six minutes.  I don’t remember the words that were said, but the message was clear.  Pup’s pain was great.  Every bodily system was shutting down.  She couldn’t control her bowels or bladder.  It was time.  All I could do was nod. 

The vet techs had her on a stretcher and covered her with a gray institutional blanket.   They helped me carry her to a quiet room in the back.  We sat on the floor beside her as the vet inserted the catheter for conveying the euthanasia serum.  I rubbed her still velvety ears between my fingers and laid my other hand to feel the shallow rise and fall of her chest.  I whispered, “It’s time. “  The tip of her tail may have raised to try for the half wag just as her chest rested.

In every life the difficult moments will find you.  You will be called upon to do the thing that is right but there isn’t anyone who can tell you what that is.  It might be choosing between courage and fear, between pain and freedom, or simply choosing to act rather than run.  When you decide, no one else can release the bands that tighten your chest nor can they send sunshine through the rain.   I was lucky.  A beautiful Black Lab leaned on my leg and led me through.

The pain and the joy in life’s moments are etched in my memories. I can’t know when the next one will arrive and accept I won’t be ready.  But for right now, it’s time for Eva, a Labradoodle – more doodle than Lab, and Quincy, a Labradoodle – more Lab than doodle, to learn how to chase a Frisbee and maybe fold it like a taco.

                                                                                                                 --td