Luck and Love Pt. 2

Here is a picture of Dexter. He can't fit into the palm of my hand anymore! He's a very affectionate little guy. His tail is always curved up in the shape of a C. The only time his curly-cue tail is down is when he is feeling puny. He loves to play with his doggie toys. He will play "catch" with himself. He'll take his ball or toy and fling it and then run after it and do that over and over again. He likes to play tug-of-war with me too. He will growl while I am tugging on his toy with him but he is having fun. If he sees me tire of playing and he isn't done playing, he will keep bringing the toy to me and try to entice me to grab it from him. He loves treats especially his Beggin' Bacon Strips or rawhide sticks. Whenever I give him a treat like that he has a ritual he does every single time. He will stand over the treat and first s-t-r-e-t-c-h his front legs and then he will slowly s-t-r-e-t-c-h his back legs. Then he lays down on top of it and rolls around on his back and wiggles his butt. Then finally he lays on his belly and proceeds to chew on his treat. He loves to take walks and of course he has to pee on every tree in the neighborhood. He gives me "doggie hugs" too. He will climb up on me and put a paw on each of my shoulders and lay his head against my head and give me a hug. If his water dish is empty, he lets me know by bringing it to me and dropping it at my feet! He knows what a lot of words mean and he has a very good memory.

So now that I have introduced you to Dexter, I will tell Part II of my "Luck and Love" story.

During the time I was in the hospital the third time (I was there for ten days), my daughter had driven from down south to visit me. While she was here, she and my parents decided it would be best if my daughter would take Dexter back to her home when she had to return. My parents already had four small dogs. Two Yorkies, one West-Highland Terrier mix and also the brother of Dexter, a chihuahua-shitzu mix. Dex's brother had more of the shitzu features and reminded me of a little "Chewbacca" of Star Wars fame. My parents had inherited the Yorkies from a family friend who had died of cancer a few months prior.

After my parents had retired they had moved from a two-story four bedroom house to a small two-bedroom house. When they acquired the Yorkies, four dogs was really too much for that little house and with Dex added into the mix, it was even more difficult especially since I was so sick and was having to go to doctor appointments with neurologists in cities far away in between my hospital stays. My brother S. wanted a dog so he took Dex's brother and my daughter took Dex to live with her. At least that was the plan. Three little dogs were a bit more manageable.

My daughter came to visit me in the hospital. Before she left to head back down south, she told me what the family decided regarding her taking Dex to live with her. I was disappointed at the time because I wasn't going to get to say good-bye to him. I think I was also upset because deep down inside I was worried that I was never going to get back to normal and felt like life as I knew it was going to change big time.
I had already overheard my Mom suggesting to my Dad that maybe they ought to go house hunting for a three-bedroom house in case I never fully recovered and would have to live with them permanently. I felt so hopeless and confused.

When I was released from the hospital and came back to my parent's house, Dexter was gone. *sigh* At that time, I took it in stride. I didn't really cry over him because as I said in my last post, I had stunted emotions. The only thing that caused any emotional change in me was pain. I suffered a lot of that from the brain-injury illness. All of my life I have always been a very emotional person. Sometimes I will tear up just watching one of those sensitive Hallmark commercials on television! During that time I didn't laugh, I didn't get misty-eyed over sad movies. I just wasn't myself anymore.

About a week after I was released from the hospital I had to have another spinal tap as an out-patient at the same hospital. The pain from that procedure was awful! It was hard to believe that I didn't even remember the first one I had done. A couple days later my neurologist called my parents and told them because of the spinal tap results, he was having me admitted to a hospital in Indianapolis as soon as my parents would get me there. Up until this point I had been throwing up every single day since I first got sick in June. Off to Indianapolis we went. It was a long harrowing drive because I felt so nauseous and my headache was so bad.
When we got there, I couldn't walk well and my Dad had to push me in a wheelchair to the admissions office. Within thirty minutes of my arrival to my room, a neurologist and a group of medical students at this teaching hospital came to see me. The doctor told me they were going to do a spinal tap. Another? I just had one days before! Not again! This one was just as painful but it seemed slightly more tolerable because instead of having me sit up and lean forward as the doctor stuck the long needle in my spine, he had me lay on my side. A female med student held my hand and caressed my forehead while giving me a pep talk to help me get through it. The spinal tap removes fluids from the brain. With encephalitis you have too much fluid. Actually, it was at the hospital in Indy where it was truly confirmed that in addition to the meningitis, I had encephalitis. They said they suspected I had contracted West Nile virus first. I did remember getting eaten alive by mosquitos back in May. My boyfriend had found a dead crow in my back yard near my bedroom window around that time too. This was the summer that Illinois along with several other states was having a high incidence of West Nile virus cases.

West Nile encephalitis is not transmitted from person-to-person or by birds. Mosquitoes become infected when they feed on infected birds and mosquitoes transfer this virus to humans. Only crows, blue jays and raptors (e.g. hawks, falcons and owls) carry West Nile in this area. Since these types of birds die readily from the virus, they tell us about the prevalence and distribution of the virus.

The next 24 hours after that final spinal tap was amazing. I never threw up again. It seemed like hour by hour I was feeling better. My head pain went away. I didn't feel so confused and my balance improved. Personally, I think that getting that spinal tap so soon after another one is what really helped me a lot. I was also taking a drug....can't remember the name of it but it started with a D and I remember the doctor saying it was for swelling in the brain. From then on me and my parents referred to it as my "brain swelling" meds. I got to go home a few days later and continued to get better. I still had trouble walking sometimes. I would just be walking along and my legs would give out and I would fall down. I would still get headaches but they were more like a migraine. They hurt but after having the pain of an encephalitc headache, a migraine was like a walk in the park. Since then, I have also noticed my tolerance for pain is much higher because nothing really competes with the pain I had during the worst days of that summer!

Each day, I would feel a little better and then I started feeling like I wanted to get my independence back. My parents and I had more than one disagreement during that time because I felt like I was well enough to go back to my home. They literally told me that I could not. I didn't like that very much. I was still not allowed to drive. One day after we went back and forth with me saying I was doing really well and my parents saying I was still not completely able to be on my own....I got really upset. My Dad suggested that I go with him over to my Grandma's house to just get out and take my mind off the subject. As we walked up the back steps of my Grandma's back porch, I stumbled and got back up really fast hoping Dad wouldn't notice and as soon as I walked in the back door, my legs just gave out and I fell on the floor. My Dad said, "See Cindi...you are not ready to go back to your house yet!" I had to hold back my tears but I knew he was right.

When I went to see Dr. K for a follow-up a few weeks later, she was amazed at how much better I was looking. She admitted that when she saw me before I went to Indianapolis, she was having doubts that I would ever fully recover. She said I had lost that "chronically ill" appearance too. This time I was easily able to answer her questions like who was the president and what day it was. Answering those simple questions seemed goofy but there was a time when I couldn't do it! We both decided on a target date for when I would be released to go back to work in another month, hopefully.

Finally, I convinced my parents that I could be trusted to be okay at my house. Mom and Dad said "okay" with the idea that it would be a trial one night thing first. I was so excited to get to go back home. We all live in the same town. When I first walked into my house, the first thing I noticed was Dex's brand new "boney" that I had bought him only a few days before I was first admitted to the hospital and never to return home until then. It made me so sad. The house was so quiet without him. I did pretty good that first night. It felt so good to sleep in my own bed again. The next morning, I called my parents and was on cloud nine about being in my house. I told them I would be okay being there another night! They laughed with me at my enthusiasm and agreed, "Allright!!" A few weeks later I was driving again with no problems. I would still have headaches off and on for the next year but they were tolerable and I had medicine for them.

Let me backtrack here for a moment. After my daughter had taken Dex down south, she had taken him to her cat's vet for a check-up. He got shots and a new tag. She bought him a new collar. He seemed happy to be with her, she said. The only problem was that her male cat was extremely unhappy about this new canine intruder. Dex wanted to play with the cat and follow it around and the cat would screech at him and attack him. The cat walked around all the time with an angry scowl on his face and even acted like he was pissed at my daughter. The situation just kept getting worse. Finally, my daughter felt like she had no other choice but to find Dex a new home. I was still very sick at the time. She found a no-kill shelter where they place pets with foster families until they find them good homes. The potential new pet owners had certain requirements they had to meet before they could get a pet from there. Reluctantly, she took Dex there and within a few days they found him a good home. My daughter was even told all about the family who was getting him and was told it was a couple with one young son. They lived in the country and it seemed like it would be a good home for Dex. My daughter hated calling my parents and having to tell them and me what she had done but I knew I had to accept it. At that point I knew I was in no condition to have him.

During the months that passed after I was back in my own home and finally back to work, I missed that dog so much! I thought about him constantly. I prayed that he was happy and trusted that he was. Many times I would get misty-eyed thinking of him and a few times I cried on my pillow because I missed him so damn much! I still had his doggie toys and couldn't bear to throw them away. I would talk about him a lot and my parents knew how much I missed my little buddy.

FIFTEEN MONTHS LATER, I was at the local hospital for a routine check-up with my neurologist. I work in the same hospital. I heard the hospital switchboard operator call my name over the intercom. I called the operator and she said she had my daughter on the phone. She transferred me to my daughter and my daughter (who tracked me down thinking I was working) said, "Mom! Do you want Dexter back?!" My heart leapt. I said, "What do you mean? Of course I would love to have him back! What's going on?!" She explained to me that her vet's office called her and said that Dexter had been found by some people in a town 110 miles from her city and 140 miles from my town! She said a woman had seen Dexter roaming around her apartment complex a few days prior. Later this day, she had left her apartment and caught some pre-teenaged boys throwing rocks at this poor little dog and tormenting him. She yelled at them and they ran off. She approached Dex but he was timid and scared and hid under the stairs to the apartments. She talked softly to him and he came to her and she pet him and then picked him up and took him to her apartment. He was filthy dirty with sores all over from flea bites. She had a little boy named Adam and he pet Dex and Dex wagged his tail and knew he was with kind people. She gave him two baths because he was so dirty. She saw his dog tag on his collar. The same collar my daughter had gotten him. The tag had a phone number of the animal hospital where my daughter had taken him months before. She called the vet's and told them about the dog. They looked up the number from the tag on their computer and told her, "Well, that is Dexter you have there and he is a long way from home!" Up until then, the woman and boy were just calling him "Dog". They gave her my daughter's phone number. She called my daughter with the good news and then my daughter called me and had the woman's phone number for me!

I could hardly contain my excitement and after I hung up the phone, some of my co-workers at the hospital had overheard my end of the conversation and were smiling at me. I went home and as soon as I got inside the door, I called the woman. When she answered and I told her who I was, she giggled and said she was expecting my call. She told me how much they loved Dex and it was going to be hard to say good-bye to him. She said Adam, her five year old was getting quite attached to him. At one point in the conversation, I was describing what kind of dog he was. I asked her to put the phone receiver up to Dexter's ear. She laughed and called Dexter to her. She put the phone up to his ear and I started calling his name. "Hi Dexter! I love you, Dexter! It's me! I love you!!" I could hear the woman say to someone else there, "Oh my God...look at that! I think he is ready to go home!" I could hear another woman in the background going "Awwww! Look at that!" I asked her what was going on? She said, "As soon as you started talking he started wagging his tail and then he ran over and picked up my mother's dog's leash (I've been borrowing) and now he's standing by the front door with the leash in his mouth and wagging his tail really fast! He recognized your voice! I guess he really IS your dog!" I think a tiny part of her had to be convinced it really was my dog! We made arrangements for me to meet them a few days later at a McDonald's restaurant near their home.

On "reunion day", my Dad drove me and Mom to the town 140 miles away. We arrived at the restaurant and waited in the parking lot for the minivan Dex's Good Samaritans said they would be driving. I had bought a toy truck for little Adam and had a thank you card with some money inside for the woman. They pulled up and we all got out of our vehicles. As we all walked up to each other with big grins on all our faces I was looking at Dex but he was sniffing around a trash can, oblivious to me. It was funny....I called his name and he looked over at me, looked back at the trash can and then did a really quick "doggie double-take" look at me! He started wagging his tail! I scooped him up and hugged him. My Mom was petting him and he started licking her face all over!
I couldn't stop crying and then I noticed that the woman and her mother were wiping tears from their eyes. Little Adam saw his red truck and he started playing with it. Both of our families had brought cameras and we took several pictures. We sat down on the picnic tables outside the McDonald's and got acquainted.

The woman had brought along her mother and also her aunt and a niece. As we talked we discovered that we had several things in common. The woman and her son had the same last name as mine! Dexter was sniffing around by some flowers and I tugged on the leash that I had put on him and I called out in a sing-songy voice, "Dexter Waaaayne, c'mere". The woman and her mother looked at each other and started laughing and said that Adam's middle name was Wayne!
When I told them my daughter's name, which is a beautiful and uncommon name, they were wowed again because they said that Adam's little girlfriend's name was the same thing! The woman said now she understood why Dexter had wagged his tail and got all excited when she had mentioned this girl's name at their house. Also the aunt shared the same name as my Grandma and the woman's father had my Dad's name. There were a few other things we had in common. It was all really cool.

On our drive home, I held Dexter and he laid his head on my shoulder and fell asleep. Mom took a picture of him as he slept on me. When we got home and walked inside my house, Dexter acted like "Whew! I am finally HOME!" He fell asleep again and had a really long nap on my couch.

This is why I call him my "miracle dog". It's a miracle that I got him back after fifteen months. It was obvious to us that he probably wasn't with that adoptive family for very long when he got loose. He was wearing the same collar and tag which is fortunate. I would like to think he was heading home here. We will never know what happened.
Those were my two miracles. Dexter came back and I survived my illness. I would like to think that "love" brought Dexter back to me but I think "luck" also had something to do with it.