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Beloved Pet Goes Missing
Last Sunday our dog, Smudge, wandered off, probably into the 214-acre forest preserve on the edge of our property, a rocky, hilly patch of hundred-year-old oak trees where he once loved to run. My husband Bob, son Tom and I searched the forest, calling his name. No one knew how he'd make his way back.He's an old dog now, becoming increasingly blind. That night, we got a soaking rain and the temperature dropped into the 30s. Did Smudge think his job with our family was finished? Had he wandered off to die?
Smudge was gone. We didn't tell our daughter, Krista, who'd headed back to college that same Sunday morning after yet another eye surgery, this time for glaucoma. She'd had a tough enough week already. After the operation, we made six trips to New York City, where her surgeon worked to stabilize her eye.
Between visits, Krista had commiserated with Smudge. The two of them, Krista with a patch of gauze taped over her eye and Smudge with hardly any sight at all, sat by the garden pond. He always knew when something was up with Krista, and he stuck with her while she cried about the pain and worried about finishing her art classes with just one eye.
Krista is 20, and a photography major. Strong and beautiful and resourceful. She believes the chronic troubles with her eye have helped her see in a different way, made her a better artist. I'm not sure how she might have turned out without Smudge. Not sure how I would have turned out either. Like him or hate him (as Bob pretends to do), Smudge determined the arc of our family's life, helping Krista and Tom to grow more compassionate, Bob more tolerant, me more patient. Maybe even wiser.
Let's back up to an evening in February 1993, when our pleasant family life turned upside down. Krista, then six, announced that something was wrong with her eye. Her pediatrician had seen no reason to worry when he'd examined her a few weeks earlier. But when we started making the rounds of the ophthalmologists, they all told us the same terrifying thing: Krista had no vision in her right eye. Leukemia? Tumor? Lyme disease? No one really knew for sure. Sweat rolled down my back in the dead of winter while I tried to take this in and at the same time control the expression on my face so that Krista wouldn't know how scared I was.
Doctors suggested this was just the first shoe to drop. We'd have to wait. Would she be crippled? Would she die? At last, we found Michael Weiss, MD, an ophthalmic surgeon at Columbia-Presbyterian hospital, who diagnosed uveitis, an inflammation in the inner eye that can destroy vision. He didn't know what had caused Krista's inflammation, but he warned that uveitis is often a harbinger of other autoimmune disorders. We were in for a rough ride.
Dr. Weiss first prescribed liquid prednisone, or steroids, in an attempt to reduce the inflammation. This worked, but only for a while. Next, he shot prednisone directly into Krista's eye with a needle, turning the eye blood red, hoping that the more localized treatment would douse the inflammation. Of course, Krista was terrified. One morning when Dr. Weiss got out his needle, she fell apart, sobbing, and said, "I can't take it anymore."
Her vision was slowly improving, but the emotional toll was huge. She nearly doubled her weight, from 60 to 110 pounds. Wore my clothes to school. Went to a dress-up birthday party where she couldn't fit into any of the clothes the other kids were wearing. She was miserable and lonely, and she longed for a pet.
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