Max, One Year Out

It doesn’t seem quite possible, but it was a year ago yesterday that Max had the surgery on his eye. And, in a strange twist of coincidence, he also had a 6-month check up with the Doggy Ophthalmologist yesterday.

I HATE the drive down there. It works out to an hour and fifteen minutes, usually, and if I don’t hit it just right I can get stuck in morning, evening, or lunch rush hour traffic because it is sooooo close to DC. This time I hit very little traffic, but there was some road construction. And Max, as usual, would lay down only to pop back up every time I changed lanes, sped up, slowed down, or passed or was passed by someone.

Once we got there we only had a 10min wait. One thing I like about Dr. Caruso is that she always seems to be training someone, which I find to be a worthwhile disturbance. The VCA hospitals are nationwide and there are a LOT of them, so usually it is a VCA vet, but this time in addition there was a 4th year vet student from Virginia Tech.

The exam went well, no change in his left (bad) eye and everything looks healthy in there. The right (good) eye was also ok, no sign of lens loosening which was very good news. She did say the cataract in that eye had grown a bit, but he is getting older so that’s not unexpected. In short, no major changes or real changes to the medication list we’re currently doing.

Due to the various drops and tests she wanted to do we spent two more half-hour stints in the waiting room which can be very entertaining and sometimes sad.

• a lesbian couple came in with their cat shortly after I arrived. Not sure what was going on but their cat was in for some sort of treatment; they were still there when I left almost 2 hours later. We had some nice conversation.
• not one but two Newfies were there with different owners. One was especially hairy, and one of the cat ladies said the Newf’s paw was the same size as Max’s head (it was). The second Newf sat behind us (the benches are back-to-back) and at one point I felt A Presence behind me and turned around to have a slobbery black hairy face right in mine, then looking intently at a slightly concerned Max. One of the cat ladies said “Oh Boy! A snack!!”
• a (flamboyantly gay) gentleman was there with his (flamboyantly pampered) Cavalier King Charles spaniel. A tech came out and told him that his other CKC wouldn’t wake up, and the man just lost it. Such grief. From what the tech was saying, the other dog was pretty much brain dead, but the tech humored the man and took he and the other dog back to see the female and try to wake her up. I’m not sure what happened. I really felt for him, I got the feeling that those two dogs were the only companions he had. All of us around him had tears in our eyes.

Max slept the whole way home. The next visit will be in about six months. They will have a new facility by then. It will be closer, they tell me, and easier to get to, but I had just gotten down how to get to the old one so I’m a bit concerned about finding the new one. No matter, it will get done.

I can’t imagine the logistics of a move like that. A 24/7 emergency vet hospital with very sick animals in residence, high-tech equipment that several vets must share, not to mention contacting all the incoming patients to inform them of the move….and from what I was told they aren’t sure when. It could be this week, it could be next. What a mess.