A Dog Named Leaf: The Hero From Heaven Who Saved My Life

by Allen Anderson

  Before the mask reached my mouth and nose, I again had a vision of Leaf’s face. He still carried a sliver of paper in his mouth, as I had seen him do at home and in the reflection in the waiting room fish-tank glass. In that split second my sweet cocker spaniel dropped the piece of paper he had gripped so tightly in his mouth.

  In my inner vision I reached for the paper Leaf had dropped. When I touched it I suddenly knew without a doubt what it was, and a calm understanding flooded my consciousness. Leaf had brought me my ticket. He’d been trying to deliver it to me all this time. Along with family and friends, I would awaken and enter the Building of Life.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The Surgical Procedure

  LINDA LATER TOLD ME THAT WHILE I WAS IN SURGERY, AT A TIME WHEN my life engaged in a dangerous dance with mortality, a memory surfaced in her mind. Every spring large black crows perched in the tall oak and pine trees in our backyard. Their loud caws to one another were unnerving. Ever since we interfered with their natural cycle the previous spring, their caws had become louder whenever we walked from our house to the garage.

  It happened on a walk with our yellow Lab, Taylor. We found a baby rabbit who had escaped the crows when they raided a bunny hutch. One of the birds probably dropped the bunny from his claws. The baby lay in the grass, eyes closed, but still alive.

  With Taylor watching curiously, I scooped up the small rabbit in my hands and immediately became aware that the atmosphere bristled with fury. “You stole that crow’s lunch,” Linda said. She pointed to a crow about the size of a hawk. He screeched at me from a nearby tree branch. His buddies gathered with him and joined in a rage-filled chorus.

  We brought the baby rabbit inside and made him a nest in a cardboard box. Then we placed the box with some water and chopped-up vegetables and fruit in a secure area under our deck. We hoped that the fencing around the bottom of the deck would keep him safe, until he was strong enough to return to his hutch or his mother found him. We replenished the nest and water for the baby frequently. After a couple of days, the box was empty. We never saw the bunny again.

  A year later, after rescuing the baby rabbit from the crows, we now had a twenty-five-pound cocker spaniel hanging out in our backyard. He made sure nothing there would harm him on the ground level. Unfortunately, he wasn’t in the habit of searching for predators in the sky.

  One morning Linda let Leaf out in the backyard to take care of his bodily needs. She went back into the house but suddenly had an inner nudge to check on him. From our back deck she watched Leaf sniff the dew-coated green grass. Then she noticed a huge crow hovering on a high branch of our old oak tree. He glared down from his perch, ready to nosedive on to the back of our unwary little dog. The crow focused silently on Leaf as if he were thinking, There’s breakfast!

  Linda immediately called to Leaf to come back in the house. Our little guy remained oblivious to the fact that he might have been a tempting target. Could this have been the same bird whose bunny I had stolen a year ago? Was the look he gave Linda conveying, You took something I wanted. Now I’ll get something of yours?

  Part of the responsibility of being a pet parent is to teach our young ones how to protect themselves. We sat down to have a talk with Leaf about the facts of life in a neighborhood filled with crows. “Leaf, every time you go outside, stand on the deck and look up into the sky,” Linda instructed him. “Make sure no crows are in the trees before you run out into the backyard.”

  Odd as this may seem, Leaf became even more aware of his surroundings. Before venturing into the backyard, he always stood at the top of the steps on the deck and surveyed the sky and tree branches. After he was certain no crows were around, he enjoyed his outing. I had been pleased to see that our pup, even early on, was a quick study in the ways of a natural world.

  As I was lying vulnerable on the operating table, Linda didn’t know what would happen next. She also didn’t know that Leaf had delivered my ticket.

  Fortunately, Arlene joined her at the hospital chapel, where they sat together in quiet contemplation underneath shafts of gentle sunlight. Linda felt an overwhelming sense of peace. She sensed the surgery had begun.

  When she returned to the waiting room, Linda heard Nurse Jody being paged, “Come to surgery. Stat.” Knowing that Jody was Dr. Nussbaum’s main nursing assistant, and I was his only surgery patient at that time, she felt a wave of panic pass through her body as she watched Nurse Jody rush down the hall, past the waiting room, to the surgery suite.

  By now, surgery had stretched from the two hours Dr. Nussbaum had expected it would last to four hours. He had sent no information about what was happening or why it was taking longer. The delay created fertile ground for my family and friends to imagine trouble. People were already calling Linda’s cell phone, thinking the surgery would be over by now. In a tremulous voice she’d had to report, “No word yet.”

  My wife and everyone who loved me endured the torturous wait. Naturally they wondered if there had been complications. Or worse, that maybe I’d had a stroke on the operating table.

  Nearly five hours later Linda sat in another part of the waiting room, talking to her mother on the phone. She glanced over at my mother and sister. Worry clouded their faces. Our daughter Susan paced the room, trying to stay calm, and said positive things every time anyone speculated about why the hours were ticking away. Because Linda didn’t want to increase everyone’s anxiety, she only told Arlene that she’d seen Nurse Jody rush to the surgery suite.

  Finally, with the surgery over, Dr. Nussbaum and Nurse Jody entered the visitors’ waiting room. Linda quickly ended the phone conversation with her mother and hurried over to them. Dr. Nussbaum told Linda and my family that the surgery had started late. It had lasted longer due to its difficulty. The aneurysm was extremely tricky to clip, because my vessels were very thin. The shape of the aneurysm was ill defined, which we knew from the X-ray.

  Each time Dr. Nussbaum clipped the aneurysm, the clip would slip down onto the main artery. He couldn’t leave it in that position, or the clip would impair blood flow to the brain. “I had to try three different ways of clipping it before I found one that would last,” he said. He had called for Nurse Jody to help him finish up the operation.

  When we had first seen Dr. Nussbaum, he’d explained that some people don’t choose to have an aneurysm clipped right away. They wait to see if it gets bigger. Now the doctor reassured my wife that I’d made the right decision to proceed with the surgery. The aneurysm’s shape and location indicated that at some point it would probably have burst. Then he said something Linda will always remember. “Allen will never have to think about this again.” She felt immensely grateful. Linda believed that no surgeon other than Dr. Nussbaum, with his experience and skills, could have accomplished what he did for me.

  But the next twenty-four hours in the intensive care unit would be some of the most precarious hours of my life.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Using My Ticket

  THE HOSPITAL’S TWENTY-FOUR-HOUR ICU IS NOT THE KIND OF PLACE A person who has just had brain surgery can easily remember. For me, this was probably because I felt as if my head had been slammed into concrete.

  The hospital lights were unbearable. The gurney’s wheels clattered deafeningly. People’s voices struck me like bullets.

  “Don’t scratch,” someone commanded, as I reached up to scratch my ear.

  “He just pulled out a couple of stitches,” someone else said.

  Then I heard Linda’s voice and tried to focus in on her blurry face. “You made it. You made it. You made it,” she kept repeating.

  There was something important I was supposed to remember, but I couldn’t keep my eyes open. Assured by Linda’s voice, I sank back into unconsciousness. She would be my link to whatever came next.

  I have no idea how much time passed. It could have been seconds or hours.

  Linda remained in the room when Gale arrived for her visit. Her blurry figure triggered a
memory. “Red Lobster,” I slurred.

  Linda and Gale laughed. I didn’t understand why. I was only fulfilling the agreement I had made to her at the restaurant. My brain still worked. I was still here.

  For a split second, I saw Leaf’s face.

  I faded in and out of consciousness. Nurses had Linda and my family and friends return to yet another waiting room. After a shift change the ICU doors were locked. Linda got someone’s attention, and a nurse led her back to my room again.

  After Linda left the ICU waiting room, a woman who was also waiting for a surgery patient asked Arlene, “Is she famous?” The woman had recognized Linda from a photo in the Minneapolis Star Tribune months ago. It accompanied an article about the animal-rescue book we’d written. The photo showed my wife on a raised platform. She stood nose-to-nose with a giraffe from the Audubon Zoo in New Orleans who had survived Hurricane Katrina. It struck me later as one more surreal occurrence in my brain-surgery saga.

  Linda said one moment that especially touched her was when Aubrey held my hand in his and said, “Glad to see you, my friend.” I vaguely remember Aubrey’s face. I felt his loving presence. He stood close by on my left side. The lilting Jamaican accent in his kind voice came from a distance.

  A numb yet constant pain filled my head. Nursing staff regularly monitored my pain medications. Throughout the night they changed fluids bags and checked my heartbeat, blood-sugar level, and important vital signs. Their presence made me feel safe. The room was quiet. The curtains were drawn. I rested.

  The next few days after ICU were a blur. My pain ranged from mild soreness to throbbing excruciation. I became a 110 percent supporter of pain-management medications.

  I fluctuated from feeling I could do anything to barely being able to open my eyes. In the neurology recovery ward, the curtains stayed drawn to keep my room dark. Light hurt my eyes like a dagger stabbing the inside of my skull.

  One side of my face was swollen from the surgery. My skull felt hollow. A scar stretched from the top of my head to just above my ear. A strange echo reverberated whenever I spoke. I didn’t feel like myself anymore.

  My mother, sister, and daughter took turns with Linda and stayed with me throughout the entire week. Because I seemed to be making a better-than-expected recovery, they all felt comfortable returning to Georgia the day before I was to go home from the hospital.

  After Gale, Susan, and Mom left for the airport, Linda took a lunch break. While she was gone I called Leaf’s doggy day care. I must have sounded like a drunk phoning from a bar. I don’t recall much of what I said, and my speech was slurred. The person who answered assured me that Leaf was fine. I immediately went back to sleep. Leaf was doing well—that’s all that mattered.

  Steroids to ease the swelling on my brain agitated me. They created illusions of power and control. The nurses and Linda told me to press the call button when I needed to get out of bed. The steroids, however, made me feel like Superman. I thought I could handle a short walk to the hospital room’s bathroom, but when I pulled myself out of bed, I staggered and fell full force on the hard tiled floor.

  Linda returned from the cafeteria to find a nurse helping me back to bed. “He got up by himself,” she told my wife. Her tone sounded a bit like snitching.

  Linda was horrified. “Why did you do that?” she asked me. “Did he hurt anything?” she asked the nurse.

  “No. I’m fine. Nothing wrong with me.”

  The nurse rolled her eyes at me as she helped to hoist my legs onto the bed. “Use your call button next time,” she said.

  I couldn’t find the words to explain to Linda why I’d done such an imprudent thing. Desperate to be independent, I needed to prove how quickly I’d recover. Nothing had changed. I’d still be employed, independent, dependable. A fully functioning man.

  Prior to leaving the office, I’d told my employer that I’d be back at work the third week after surgery. The company needed me to fly to an important client site the fourth week. “There are various suggested days for recovery, but a couple of weeks should work for a healthy man like me,” I’d told the company’s president and my boss. They were sympathetic and weren’t trying to pressure me. But after all the time required for presurgery tests and procedures, I had very few vacation or sick days left.

  Panic drove me to not think clearly even before the surgery. While no one told me I’d lose my job if I didn’t get back to work fast enough or couldn’t operate at full capacity, people who can’t do the work they were hired for are sometimes let go. I clung to the belief that I could push myself to handle the job. My employee health insurance would be essential to at least partially pay the catastrophic medical expenses, and I didn’t want to lose that.

  To Linda’s dismay, the president, my boss, and his second in command from my company came to the hospital during the first week and only a few days after my surgery to check on me. They mentioned they were in the city on a site visit and decided to stop by. They arrived at midday when I was awake and alert. This gave them the impression that I was making a remarkable recovery. I felt relieved that they saw me at my best. After asking general questions about the surgery, the men talked about the work ahead of me and wanted to know when I thought I’d be returning.

  At first I thought it was nice of them to visit. Linda felt that this was a fact-finding mission. She believed they wanted to assess whether their employee would be able to work and travel. I didn’t agree with her totally. They were honest, decent individuals who did a lot professionally and personally to support their office staff.

  Linda cautioned the men that the doctors said I must not talk for long. She hoped they’d take the hint and not try to pressure me. She knew I was the main liaison with the major client I was scheduled to visit in four weeks.

  By the time the men left, Linda was upset, and my anxiety level had soared. Their visit reminded me that my days and nights would be hard after I was released from the hospital. I knew then that the three weeks I had for healing would be inadequate before returning to work. Would I be able to pull off convincing everyone that I was back to normal? Even so, I was determined to make it happen.

  Losing my job and not being normal again were in my thoughts. The president and vice president were compassionate and ready to do whatever I needed for a full recovery. But everyone was feeling tense. Our company had just been acquired by a larger firm, and there were rumors of breakups and layoffs.

  Amy, the head nurse, stopped in to check on her resident pet-book author. She chatted about her pets and told us how much she enjoyed reading the books we’d given her and the nursing staff. Up to that point we were happy to tell her that my nursing care had been excellent.

  Before we left the hospital that day, I felt something gnaw at me. I would have to rely on, even trust, others for my well-being. That frustrated me. I had always been the one who took care of things.

  I resolved to send clear messages to everyone and myself that my brain function was not diminished. In my confused state of mind, I thought people were treating me like an invalid whenever they offered to help. Reduced to my father’s dependence after his stroke, I was every bit as ready to lash out as he had been. Unlike my father, who had lived the rest of his life in miserable helplessness, I resolved to be invincible.

  But just how long and to what extent would I stay out of control of my own body, of my own life?

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Leaf the Healer

  AFTER LINDA BROUGHT ME HOME FROM THE HOSPITAL AND SETTLED me into bed, she headed out to the drugstore to pick up my postsurgery prescriptions and then to doggy day care to bring home Leaf. Meanwhile, happy to be home, I fell into a deep sleep.

  Eventually my ticket-to-life deliverer bounded into the bedroom to greet me. When he smelled all the strange hospital odors that still clung to my body, he became extraordinarily quiet, attentive, and affectionate. Pulling himself up with his paws on the side of the bed, he scrutinized and sniffed me carefully. Although my prescri
ption-drug-laced breath and swollen face must have surprised him, he still licked my cheek. There’s nothing quite like unconditional love.

  “Hi boy,” I said softly. “How are you doing?” I petted his head and swiftly fell back to sleep.

  My wife had a lot on her shoulders. She had to administer to me on a strict schedule from a portable plastic file cabinet full of pills. One day, she gave me something at noon that I was supposed to take at dinnertime. Anxious that I’d suffer some traumatic effect, Linda called Nurse Jody to confess. The stalwart and seasoned neurosurgery professional assured my wife that I’d be all right.

  It was essential to my recovery that I slept in a darkened room. Linda shut the blinds and hung sheets over the curtains to allow in the least amount of light. She kept me as comfortable as possible. I alternated between sleeping, asking if it was time yet, please, for pain medication, and believing I ruled the world.

  In between taking care of and monitoring me, Linda also handled all our pets’ needs. Then she would head upstairs to her office to work on our writing projects, answer e-mails, and talk to friends and family about how I was doing.

  To her horror, I climbed the stairs to her office one day. “I thought you were asleep!” she gasped in alarm.

  “Let’s take Leaf to the dog park,” I said. At that moment I felt this was a reasonable request.

  “How about if we go out in a day or two? After you’ve had time to get more rest? You’ve been through a lot, you know.”

  “Well, if you don’t want to drive us, I’ll take him to the dog park myself.”

  Linda got up from her desk. She rushed over to where I teetered on the top step.

  “Come on downstairs,” Linda cajoled. “I’ll make you some tea.”