The Gift of Pets: Stories Only a Vet Could Tell

by Bruce R. Coston

  I knew immediately what had happened. The tumor had burst! As often happens with rapidly growing masses, it had filled with blood and become exceedingly fragile. Though I was feeling it very gingerly, the capsule had broken like a balloon filled with Jell-O. I knew it was now bleeding unchecked into the abdomen.

  Things really began to hop at that point. Muffin was taken directly into the X-ray room for abdominal X-rays. Her leg was shaved and prepped, an intravenous catheter was placed into her vein, and fluids were started. I instructed Lisa to take some blood for testing, then to start shock medications and sedatives in preparation for surgery. As she hurried to follow my instructions, I dialed the Ardens’ number. They needed to know the seriousness of the situation. Mrs. Arden answered the phone.

  “Hello, Mrs. Arden, this is Dr. Coston. In examining Muffin prior to surgery this morning, I discovered a mass in her abdomen. I’m afraid the mass has ruptured and I think she is bleeding internally.”

  There was a moment of silence on the other end of the phone. Then I heard Mrs. Arden chuckle quietly. “Yes, it is a nice day outside, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, it is,” I replied. “But did you hear what I said about Muffin?”

  “No, Muffin’s not here. She’s getting her teeth cleaned at Dr. Coston’s office. He’s such a kind doctor, don’t you think?”

  “This is Dr. Coston,” I virtually yelled into the phone.

  “Oh, Dr. Coston. Is Muffin all right?”

  “No, Mrs. Arden, she isn’t. She has a tumor in her tummy that has burst and I need to take her to surgery right away.”

  I heard her speaking loudly to someone else in the room. I could hear the sudden strain and fear in her trembling voice.

  “They have found a tumor in Muffin and she’s not doing well. Oh, Jim, what are we going to do without her?”

  I heard the phone change hands, and then Mr. Arden’s voice came on the line, bright and full of courage and optimism. I was relieved to hear clear cognition in it that day, as well.

  “My wife is all undone, Doctor. Tell me what you’ve found.”

  Quickly, I went over the findings of my physical examination and the current condition of his beloved companion, concerned that the details would not be fully understood. I heard an initial sigh of concern and resignation; then Mr. Arden’s resolve returned.

  “Okay, Doctor, do what you have to do. My wife and I will be right over. We’ll just wait in the lobby for news.… And Dr. Coston, uh … what do you think the chances are?”

  “At this point, I think they’re about fifty-fifty. It could go either way, but we’ll do our very best.” I was glad that Mr. Arden was completely aware of the situation and its ramifications.

  Within five minutes, the Ardens were waiting in the lobby. By this time, Muffin was anesthetized and being readied to go into the surgery suite. Quickly I poked my head into the waiting room and gave the Ardens some encouragement. Mrs. Arden put her head in her hands and sobbed. I had time only to offer a hug and a quick prayer before I had to leave them and attend to my patient.

  In surgery, I found a large tumor attached to the spleen. As I had suspected, the tumor had burst and there was a large volume of blood pooling in the abdominal cavity, with more blood flowing freely from the fractured surface of the mass. As quickly as I could, I stopped the bleeding, then proceeded to remove the spleen.

  With the spleen and the angry tumor in a bin, there was finally room for me to explore the rest of the abdominal organs. No other tumors were visible. With a sigh of relief, I flushed her belly with a liter or two of saline solution before suturing Muffin’s abdomen closed. The procedure had taken about an hour and Muffin had held her own well. Now she just needed some time to recover.

  I made my way down to the lounge, where the Ardens were waiting for me to finish my work. As I sat down beside them, drained from the unexpected stress of the morning, I noticed a woman I didn’t recognized. Mrs. Arden, wringing her hands with anxiety, introduced us.

  “Dr. Coston, this is our next-door neighbor, Ruth Madsen. When she heard about Muffin, she came over to sit with us. Everyone loves Miss Muffin, you know. How is she?”

  “Muffin is doing well as of right now. The tumor involved about half of the spleen and had, as I feared, ruptured and was bleeding into the abdomen. It weighed almost a tenth of Muffin’s body weight. We’re fortunate! Had we waited even fifteen minutes more, I don’t think she would have made it. But surgery went very well and I was able to get all of the tumor. She came through the surgery like a champ and is now in recovery. I think we’re very fortunate to have a live patient at this point. Good thing she’s a fighter.”

  “We’re so grateful to you, Dr. Coston. So you think she’s going to be okay?”

  “Well, we’re not completely out of the woods yet, but we’ve done everything we can at this point. The rest is up to her. But I am optimistic. We do have to wait for the biopsy to come back before we can breathe easy, but a good percentage of these tumors are benign. If this one is, surgery will likely be curative. We’re very lucky! As fragile as that tumor was, it was not a matter of if it was going to burst, but when.”

  “And I just bathed her yesterday. What if it had happened then?” Mrs. Arden was rightfully frightened.

  “Fortunately, it didn’t,” I replied. “But if this had happened at home, she would never have survived it. It could easily have ruptured during a bath or when you were drying her. It could have happened just lifting her to take her outside. It was literally a time bomb waiting to explode.”

  During the next twelve hours, Muffin’s recovery progressed well. Because she was tenuous that first night, I took Muffin home with me. She slept beside my bed, where I could check on her every hour. Our senior citizen kitty, Rush, ever the nursemaid, lay beside Muffin’s bed and meowed each time she awoke. By morning, Muffin was much brighter, and I was confident that she would recover fully.

  The Ardens were at the hospital bright and early the next morning to check on their friend. Muffin greeted them excitedly.

  “You wouldn’t believe our neighbors, Dr. Coston. They were great. They took turns sitting with us all evening long. They even brought in supper for us. They were as concerned about Muffin as we were. She looks so much better this morning. She is going to be okay, isn’t she?”

  “Yes, I believe she is. If her progress continues at this rate, I expect to send her home to you this evening.”

  “When will we hear about the biopsy results?”

  “I expect to hear in about five days. I’ll call you as soon as I know anything.”

  Muffin did go home that night. In fact, with the tumor gone, her appetite and activity increased to levels well above what they had been for several months before the crisis. The biopsy came back benign, and Muffin lived several years after that fateful day.

  I have thought of Muffin often since then, reliving the stomach-churning feeling of that tumor crumbling in my hand, the realization flooding me that what had begun as a mundane event had erupted in an instant into a full-throated emergency, thrusting a beloved life into the balance. It was a defining moment, one of many that separated me from my nonchalance and reminded me that few things in life are truly routine. Every trip to the grocery store, every interaction with friends, each moment of every day overflows with an abundance of promise, of adventure, of risk. An event, a life is routine only when we fail to appreciate its potential. Succumbing to the habit of experiencing everyday activities as drudgery or routine is simply too expensive a price to pay, for it sentences the whole of life to complacency. Embracing the excitement in the mundane, however, transforms each task into an adventure. Routine living occurs by default. Living life fully in the moment, fully alive, requires a conscious choice.

  Muffin was no prettier after the surgery than before. Because of the turn of events, we did not get her teeth cleaned that day. Her tongue still hung out, her eyes were still shaded with age, and her face was still marred by warts. Because she felt so m
uch better after the surgery and her devoted owners were that much less inclined to deny her anything, she became even a bit pudgier. She was, if anything, even less attractive to my eyes. But it was not my eyes that gazed at her with ever more unbridled affection. And it was the glint of that undaunted devotion so clearly evident in the wizened expressions on the faces of Mr. and Mrs. Arden as they looked at their old friend that was responsible for teaching me anew the lesson of immediacy.

  When Muffin passed a year or two later, I thought that was the last I would see of the Ardens. But several weeks after her loss, they bumbled into the office one afternoon without an appointment, a tiny teacup Yorkie riding proudly in the crook of Mr. Arden’s arm.

  “What have you got there?” I asked, taking the tiny pup from him. The two of them beamed proudly at me as I fawned over the dog, which tipped the scales at barely two pounds.

  “This is Muffin.” Mr. Arden said, smiling broadly.

  “No, Jim!” his wife corrected loudly. “Muffin died weeks ago, remember. This is Ginger!”

  “Well, she is precious,” I said, enchanted with the pup as she wiggled and licked at my earlobes. “Where did you find her?”

  “She’s about ten weeks old now, right, lovey?” Mr. Arden’s smiling face revealed no hint that he had answered some other question.

  “No, not ten, darling,” Mrs. Arden responded sweetly. “I think there were only four in the litter.”

  Ginger grew into a carbon copy of Muffin, even developing many of the same personality traits. Her feet saw the ground no more often than had her predecessor’s, though she remained petite at four pounds. And the Ardens demonstrated the same unswerving devotion to her in her first years of life.

  Then one day, she was brought in by a middle-aged couple I did not recognize. Jim Arden Jr. and his wife were taking her to their home in another state and had stopped by the office to pick up copies of her medical records. They told me that both of his parents had passed away within a week of each other. The memorial service for both of them had been held the day before in town. It was the last time I saw Ginger.

  Bunny Demise

  Every year two events in our community bring a dramatic upsurge in the popularity of pet rabbits. The first is Easter, when advertisers feature cute bunnies dressed in pastel doll clothes that speak with cute cartoon voices and extol the virtues of a myriad of completely indispensable commodities. Those commercials pedal not only candy and toys and baby dolls; they also sell bunnies. Children seven years old and younger solicit from their doting parents those commodities, but they are especially insistent about the bunnies.

  I can understand this desire. When I was a young boy growing up on Merritt Island in Florida, we drove past a house every day on South Tropical Trail that had a sign out front advertising RABBITS—DRESSED TO ORDER. For years, I dreamed of exactly how I wanted my pet bunny to be dressed. I waffled between a swashbuckling Robin Hood outfit and a pastel blue Peter Rabbit costume. Either way, I knew my bunny would look beautiful. My folks, though, never gave in to my pleas for a costumed rabbit. It was only after years of incessant requests that they told me just what “Rabbits—Dressed to Order” meant. Imagine my horror!

  The other event in our county that increases rabbit ownership is the annual Shenandoah County Fair. The County Fair is a big event in rural Virginia communities, drawing thousands to the midway and providing a common congregation point for the 4-H clubs and the farmers. When our boys were young, the Shenandoah County Fair was an opportunity for them to see every flavor of agriculture up close and personal. They saw pigs the size of small boats with litters of squealing piglets competing for one of the hugely engorged teats. They saw woolly lambs so young they teetered on spindly legs. They saw muscle-bound Charlois and Black Angus bulls so large that they towered over them, twice their height or more. Goats, chickens, pigeons, guinea pigs, rabbits, and even emus are all farmed in our county and make their annual appearance at the stock shows at the Shenandoah County Fair. Held around the week of Labor Day, it is the last summer bash before school starts again in early September.

  Between the rides of the midway and the barns housing the livestock, you pass the rigged games of chance that heavily tattooed and chain-smoking roadie hooligans man, calling to you through bullhorns. Every year, at least one of these games gives away as prizes young rabbits. They are usually physiologically stressed to the max and come with no prior health care and are loaded with parasites inside and out.

  At these two times of the year, parents across the county succumb to the pressure placed on them by their rabbit-coveting kids without giving much thought to the care these animals might need. Without proper nutrition, housing, or the slightest nod to appropriate rabbit husbandry, these families trail their ne’er-do-well bunnies through the offices of the county vets for weeks after Easter and the fair.

  Rabbits can make wonderful pets when given adequate attention and training. I have rabbit patients who know their names, come when called, use litter boxes, and interact with the family in much the same way that cats or dogs do. They can be playful and mischievous and have wonderful, engaging personalities. They are solicitous of their owners’ time and attention, following them around the house and lying down at their feet. They beg for food and treats, get spoiled and naughty, and wrestle with the family dog.

  But rabbits as pets have some drawbacks, as well. Their life spans are so much shorter than a dog’s or a cat’s, averaging five or six years, that loving families experience the awful sting of loss much more quickly. They also hide their illnesses to a much greater degree than do dogs or cats. Since in the wild—and domestic rabbits are closer to the wild than most companion animals—a sick bunny is quickly picked off by predators, masking their illnesses is an important survival strategy for rabbits. But it makes treating them all the more difficult. A bunny that acts sick is a sick bunny indeed. In some cases, by the time they are showing symptoms, it is too late to intervene.

  Add to this the fact that we don’t know as much about rabbit diseases as we do about the diseases of other species and that, since many rabbits are considered of little monetary value, families do not often choose to invest much in their care, and you can see why we vets treat few rabbits. And rabbits are not good patients. They are designed for one thing—hopping. This they do very well, but their spines are so weak and their thigh and back muscles are so strong that they are liable, with one mighty kick, to literally break their own backs. You would think they would know this about themselves and take strict precautions to prevent it. But during the heart-racing stress of a physical examination by strange white-coated people, they have been known to do exactly that—a fact which makes examining them exceedingly tense.

  I have known a few rabbit enthusiasts over the years whose devotion to and love for their pets has been legendary, and who have allowed me to practice quite sophisticated rabbit medicine. At the very top of this short list is Sue Anne Montgomery. Sue Anne is an attractive woman in an earthy sort of way. She has long, straight, dark hair that settles around her shoulders and reaches to the middle of her back. She is thin and shapely, with a pleasant, sun-darkened face. She works as a food producer on a small plot of land supplying vegetables and fruit to the local produce market. She keeps a few head of beef cattle and some goats, which supply the milk from which she makes cheese. A couple of horses are also part of her menagerie and add to her long list of daily chores. This is hard work, and though you can see the effort in her strong and seasoned hands, she still somehow maintains an appealing feminine quality.

  Sue Anne used another veterinarian to care for the health needs of her farm animals. But she had a passion for rabbits that elevated them well above the agricultural purposes for which she had begun keeping them. They were her pets. They lived in her house and shared her life in ways most often reserved for the family dog. For these family members, she wanted health care from a family doctor. She brought her bunnies to me.

  I suppose I saw four o
r five of her pet bunnies over the years, but there was one rabbit that was Sue Anne’s absolute favorite. Meisha was a female Angora with long hair and a personality that set her apart. I saw her often, as she needed to have her incisor teeth clipped periodically. Rabbits have continuously growing teeth, which, if they do not meet precisely, will overgrow, making it impossible to chew or eat. A quick snip with a sharp clipper keeps them from causing problems, so Meisha came in every four to six weeks.

  On one such trip, Sue Anne asked me to check out a little lump she had noticed on Meisha’s tummy. It was the size of a pea and nonpainful, but it had been getting larger over the two-week period she had been watching it. This history alarmed me. Rabbits have a relatively high rate of tumors, and I was concerned that this was a malignancy of the mammary tissue.

  “Sue Anne,” I said, “I think you should leave Meisha with me today and let me remove that growth.”

  “Oh, I think that’s probably an overreaction, don’t you? It’s just a little thing. Why don’t I just keep an eye on it?”

  “We can, if that’s what you want, but I would recommend it be removed.”

  “Do you think it’s something serious?” Sue Anne’s eyes rounded and concern rose on her face.

  “I think it could be. I won’t know for sure without a biopsy, but I’m concerned about breast cancer.”

  The words could not have had more of an impact on Sue Anne had I told her the bank was foreclosing on her mortgage. Immediately, her face clouded over and the precipitation began. She scooped Meisha up in her arms and buried her face in the long silky hair. They stayed that way for what seemed a long time before Sue Anne turned to me again, resolve now marking her face.

  “Okay, get that thing off of there right away! I’m glad I brought her in.”

  Anesthesia in rabbits is a tricky thing and is not to be trifled with. The species is so tenuous that the specter of putting one under the knife is something that gives me nightmares. But I knew that if I was right, Meisha’s best chance was for me to remove the growth as soon as possible. That afternoon I took her to surgery and removed the small nodule, making sure to remove a wide swath of normal tissue surrounding it so no tumor cells remained. I also spayed her, in the hope that removal of the ovarian hormones would decrease the likelihood of recurrence. Fortunately, Meisha came through surgery well and was released into the capable and loving care of Sue Anne that evening.