Eyeteeth

Eye – tooth

1. Dentistry: A canine tooth of the upper jaw

Idioms: 2. a. cut one’s eyeteeth, to gain experience; become worldly-wise.
b. cut one’s eyeteeth on, to be initiated or gain one’s first experience in.

3. give one’s eyeteeth, to give up something one considers very precious

Gadget tired, but precious, near the end

Leaving the Den

I have an eye doctor appointment tomorrow, and I don’t know how I will get through it. I guess if you cry at the ophthalmologist’s, you can blame it on the eye drops, right?

This will be my first time going anywhere since Gadget’s death.

Dental Crowns and Dental Clowns

The last time I went more than a few feet from my home was two months ago — for a dental cleaning. It felt really weird going anywhere without Gadget, and especially that dentist’s office because it was the dog-friendliest place I ever went.

Actually, that’s an understatement. The office staff had perfect assistance-dog etiquette. They admired Gadget and talked to me about him, but never petted him or talked to him. They had a Yorkie who was usually in the waiting room, but when they saw me enter with a service dog, they would whisk away their fiercely yapping guardian so that she would not interfere with my dog’s concentration.

They helped me train two service dogs in how to behave in confined, medical situations. First was Jersey, who mastered the down-stay as only a true Bouvier “floor potato” could, and spoiled me for life in my expectations in that regard. She was the queen of the flawless down-stay (AKA “nap”).

Jersey could even nap inside a folded-up bed

Then came Gadget, who, our first couple visits, got up every five minutes to snuffle my hand or treat pouch, wander into the hallway, complain of boredom, walk to the other side of the chair (and get his leash tangled around the equipment), stare at me accusatorily for putting him through this idle purgatory, or just to lie down in a more comfortable spot, which was always either the hallway or where Beverly, the dental hygienist, needed to stand to clean my teeth.

Beverly loved my dogs. Even when Gadget was popping up every few minutes to interrupt her job, Beverly would smile, laugh, say how cute he was. I would get him back in position, tell him to stay, wait a nanosecond, toss him a treat, wait thirty seconds, toss him another treat, wait a minute, two minutes, five minutes, treat, treat, treat. Lather, rinse, repeat.

At the end of every appointment, Beverly would say — whether it was perfect Jersey or antsy Gadget — “She/he was so good.”

And I’d roll my eyes and thank her, thinking that considering that Gadget had turned a 20-minute teeth cleaning into a forty-five minute training session, “We have a very different idea of what ‘good’ is!”

Looking back, I wish I’d cut him as much slack as Beverly did.

Later, when Gadget was fully trained and exhibiting excellent decorum, Beverly would say how far we’d come, what a great job I did training him, what a smart, wonderful, cute service dog he was. Of course, I agreed!

It was such a gift to have a “real world” training ground where dogs who are still learning — in other words, real dogs — were welcome. It’s an hour-and-a-half drive each direction, and they don’t take my Medicare or Medicaid, but I’ll never go anywhere else.

Long in the Tooth

This last time at the dentist — two months ago — was a world away from cleanings with Beverely. For one, I didn’t see Beverly except to pass her in the hall and say hi.

When I’d called to make my appointment, I’d explained that, for three years, not only had I been too ill to come in, but I had also not had stellar oral hygiene at home. I wanted to prepare them for the full scenario, which was that most days, a PCA (personal care assistant) would brush my teeth once, but twice in a day was exceedingly rare, and sometimes I went days without getting my teeth brushed. I was certain (as was one of my PCAs, who kept pointing out “a dark area” on one of my teeth until I told her, nicely, to shut up about it), that I had at least one, or probably several, cavities. Further, my teeth were covered in dark yellow and brown stains from the antibiotics I was on. Lastly, I said I couldn’t enter the small hygienist cubicle because I was now a full-time powerchair user.

The receptionist said she’d make me an appointment with the dentist himself (in his spacious office), and if I had cavities, he would try to fill at least one that visit. During my lengthy explanation of my dental negligence, I slipped in that I’d also been too busy to come in for a cleaning because I’d been taking care of Gadget, who had terminal cancer.

Although I didn’t ask her to, I hoped the receptionist would pick up on this clue and spread the word, because, whether he was still alive or not by the date of my appointment, I knew he wouldn’t be coming with me. For the past decade, everyone who worked there was used to seeing me walk in with a big, bear-like dog carrying a colorful pack. Now, for the first time, I would be accompanied by my mother, not Gadget. I would wheel through that doorway, dogless.

When I arrived, I knew immediately that the receptionist had understood and passed on the information. Nobody asked where Gadget was or mentioned him at all. There was no Yorkie in sight, either. I was so grateful not to have to answer any questions.

I felt naked without Gadget, but I was too consumed with the struggles of the moment to dwell on it. I entered at 1:00, able to speak and to easily stand to transfer. By 1:15, the ordeal of getting x-rays had so exhausted me that I couldn’t speak a word and could scarcely move my hand to write on a notepad to communicate. Then there were several small chemical exposures that sent me into coughing and gagging fits, which exhausted me still further. I had to keep downing medication and supplements to keep from falling out of that chair.

One of the benefits of extreme pain or illness is when it’s bad enough, you don’t care about anything else. So, except for the occasional unthinking search for a fuzzy gray figure on the floor, I was too busy trying not to cry from pain and exhaustion to spare a thought for my beloved, dying dog, at home without me.

I also experienced an unanticipated sense of relief from being away for a few hours. I enjoyed a tiny timeout from Gadget’s illness. I knew Gadget was dying, but he was still feeling and acting pretty good, pretty normal. Nevertheless, I could see what was bearing down on us. The knowledge of this impending loss, too devastating to contemplate, hung over the house and all who entered it. I’d lived with that, to varying degrees, for six months. During Gadget’s last month, I made a frenzied, perpetual effort to keep him feeling as comfortable and happy as possible until his very last breath. My days and nights consisted of constant assessments, pillings, injections, gourmet feedings, special walks, and late-night calls to the vet. It was deeply meaningful and completely enervating.

It was a release to get away, for just a couple hours, from that marathon I knew would end in defeat. At the dentist, for the first time in six months, I only had to worry about and take care of myself.

Tooth and Nail

Unfortunately, it turned out that I should have worried about myself more, cared for myself at least as well as Gadget. I had worried about certain aspects of my health, but they turned out to be the wrong ones!

My fears had centered around a mouth full of cavities, brown teeth that could not be made white again, and gums that had gone to hell. However, my dentist discovered no cavities, and stains were vanquished with simple, old-fashioned scraping. Even my gums were fine. Not so the rest of me.

That day threw the rest of my body into severe relapse. Since then, I’ve barely been out of bed except for a daily trip to the bathroom and a weekly bath. My voice, which had been strong — here to stay, I thought — ran away and hid again. Pain and immobility pitched their tents in my muscles and bones.

It is only in the past week or so that I have started, haltingly, to recover. And now I have this damn eye doctor appointment.

In the Public Eye

The dentist’s office, at least, was moderately MCS-accessible, and the staff made every effort to get me in and out fast to reduce exposures and other wear-and-tear. There, I have a long-standing doctor-patient relationship. Even though, or perhaps, especially because, Gadget wasn’t with me, I felt everyone’s support and concern for him.

The ophthalmologist’s is a whole ‘nother bowl of kibble.

My first and only visit so far took place six months ago. Even though eye doctors’ offices are notoriously chemical- and fragrance-sodden, I couldn’t blow off this appointment. My Lyme disease specialist wanted me to start taking Plaquinil, an antiparasitic drug that is effective at fighting Lyme and one of my other coinfections. However, in rare cases, it causes blindness. The damage starts at the peripheries of sight and is irreversible. Before I started the medication, we needed to get a baseline reading of my field of vision, so that if changes occurred, they would be discovered, and I would stop the medication.

That trip to the eye doctor was the first time in two years that Gadget and I had been out in public, working together. I was nervous about how he would do, especially because I could barely voice, and what I could squeak out was muffled by my mask. Although Gadget was proficient with signed commands at home, we had hardly practiced them at all in public.

When I entered the building, I was hit with a suffocating wall of perfume. It was ghastly. The ophthalmologist’s office was worse. It was so bad that my PCA, who smokes, said the smell was making her sick. Nonetheless, I did my best to put up with it. Gadget and I went to the eyeglass counter so I could buy a pair of big, dark glasses that go over my regular glasses, because I have so much light sensitivity that, like Corey Hart, I wear my sunglasses at night. My friends say I look like the Unibomber when I wear them, but I love them. The optician beamed at Gadget the whole time.

Then we went back to the waiting room. Despite the fumes, my heart was soaring. Gadget was in remission from lymphoma. I was (I thought), finally recovering from the multiple tick-borne diseases that had first felled me in June 2007. I was so proud of Gadget and of myself for making it there, for looking so put together in public despite all my syndromes and infections and his cancer. We were in tune with each other, working together as a strong, beautiful team.

Red Eye

Then an older man sitting nearby started talking loudly about Gadget. “There’s a dog in here!” He pointed.

He stood up to come over and pet Gadget, but his wife pulled him back into his seat. Look, she said, didn’t he see? The badges said, “Please don’t pet me, I’m working.”

“What?” He boomed. “What? The poor dog’s not even allowed to be petted?”

I tried to tell him that Gadget got lots of affection at home, but between my speech problems and my mask, the man didn’t hear me. Or maybe he was ignoring me.

Regardless, he kept going about the poor dog: What kind of life is that? You don’t even pet your own dog? Etcetera.

“What a mean boss you are!” He finished.

I just sat there, in shock, thinking how everything I did, from sun up till sun down, was for Gadget: preparing home-cooked meals, providing him with a thoroughly researched pharmacopeia of supplements, taking him for chemo every week, getting him to the pond every day to run and swim, even when I had to max out my pain medication just to get out of bed.

“But,” I thought, “I can’t defend myself by telling him any of this. If he knew Gadget had cancer, he wouldn’t be impressed, he’d be even more appalled. He wouldn’t see how much Gadget was enjoying being out with me. He’d think, ‘This horrible crippled lady’s forcing her poor dog to work when he’s dying of cancer!'” None of which was true, especially the last part, because Gadget was in remission and very much living with cancer.

I felt too defeated to attempt another response, especially since a lump had formed in my throat as I tried not to start crying. Carol, my PCA, who loved Gadget like he was her own, intervened, even though she’s not a confrontational kind of person. I think she saw my eyes glistening.

“She takes excellent care of him,” she said firmly. “He gets a lot of love. He has a terrific life.”

In the silence, Carol put her hand on my arm. “I think he was trying to be funny,” she whispered in my ear.

Making Sheep’s Eyes

After the obnoxious guy left for his appointment, two youngish women who worked in the office stood across the room, admiring Gadget. They said how beautiful he was, and I nodded my agreement. They said how well he was behaving, and I smiled to myself.

The tension that “mean boss” man had created was dissipating.

Yes, the two women agreed to each other and the room at large, service dogs are amazing — it’s remarkable what they do, and they have the best temperaments. In fact, one said, she couldn’t let her dog go near any other dogs because he was dog-aggressive. The one exception was her neighbor’s service dog (“she has MS,” she whispered). Her dog was just so well-behaved that she didn’t react at all to what her dog did.

“They train them so well,” she bubbled. “They’re such a blessing.”

“Yes, it’s wonderful what they teach them to do,” the other agreed.

Then one finally addressed me directly. “How long have you had, uh, him? Her? Him?”

I nodded when they landed on the right pronoun and said, “Eight years,” which Carol interpreted for them.

Of course, they were impressed and enthusiastic. I think if I’d said one year or five years or five weeks, they’d have marveled at that, too.

Then they followed up with that tiresomely presumptuous question I’ve heard for a decade: “Where was he trained? Who gave him to you?”

I answered, and Carol repeated it for them: I’d trained him myself.

“Really? You trained him? All on your own? Well, that’s wonderful!”

“Isn’t that amazing?”

Etcetera.

Shut Eye

The actual doctor’s appointment was much less eventful than the waiting room had been. When I finally got seated at the “field of vision machine,” I settled Gadget underneath me. It turned out to be a sort of combination video-game/mantra machine. I was given a sort of button-on-a-joystick to hold, as if I were a contestant on Jeopardy! and pressed my face into the front of a big box, the field of vision machine. A mechanical contraption behind the screen at the back of the box, moved around, blinking different colored lights on different areas of the screen, playing irritating music that’s presumably soothing to people who don’t have sensory-overload issues. The object is to press the button every time you see a colored blip.

The whole time, a synthesized female voice repeated affirmations:

“You’re doing well.”

“You’re doing fine.”

“You’re almost through.”

“You’re doing well.”

“You’re doing fine. . . .”

More than testing my vision, the machine seemed to test my focus and reflexes when challenged by distracting and irritating stimuli. I did it three times: Once to get used to it, then once for each eye. It took 45 minutes, at least.

I was concerned, when we started, that after so long at home with me, Gadget would find all these strange sights, sounds, movements, and smells unnerving. How would he react to the music and beeping and stoned-but-encouraging woman emanating from the moving and blinking and plinking over his head? I shouldn’t have worried. He was mildly interested, then bored, then sleeping. Score! He had achieved a Jersey-like level of mellowness.

I was glad he was so relaxed, because the test stressed the heck out of me. My reflexes have never been good, and time and disability have not improved them. I gripped the button handle so hard that after each round, I had to wipe the sweat off of it and flex my sore fingers. Also, by halfway through the first “real” test, I’d started to figure out the light pattern the machine made. I started to anticipate where the light would be. Then I’d try to make sure I really saw it and was not just pressing the button because I knew where to look.

Finally, over two hours after my scheduled appointment time, I saw the doctor. He spent less than five minutes with me, and we were free to leave. All the way home I thought of snappy retorts for the guy who’d pushed me to the verge of tears. I knew it was foolish to dwell on it. He would never have understood my witty remarks anyway! I told myself to forget about it.

Here I am, six months later, remembering it in vivid detail and dreading going back there again, without Gadget. People say obnoxious things all the time that don’t get to me like this did. What got under my skin so bad was that everything I was doing in my life — all my time, money, energy, love, hope, fear, focus — every fiber, was trying to save Gadget, love him, help him, preserve him. There was nothing I wouldn’t have done for him, and some stranger was telling me I was mean to him.

Now Gadget is dead, and I think some totally nonsensical part of me feels like somehow that guy was right. Somehow, if I’d done something differently, I’d still have Gadget. That maybe I pushed us too much to fly too high — I was too proud of us for overcoming all that we overcame — so we had nowhere to go but plummeting to earth. I know know none of this is logical. But I know something in me believes it, because whenever my fingers tap out a sentence about that man in the waiting room, my chest and throat get tight, and I start to cry.

It’s T minus 12 hours, and I’ll be back there again, trying not to cry. Same powerchair, different PCA, no Gadget. However, I won’t sit in that stinky waiting area. I’m bringing a cell phone, so the receptionist can call me when it’s time for me to come in. It’s going to be cold in the van, but I’d rather be cold than sick. Even if it were 70 degrees outside instead of ten, my heart would feel cold in the van, without Gadget resting his chin on my thigh like he used to whenever we drove anywhere. The weight of his head was so warm and comforting, his wet beard staining every pair of pants that weren’t already stained.

I'll miss that warm, moist weight on my leg

It’s going to feel just as cold inside, too, without a warm, furry body curled around my feet while I press my face into the hard plastic machine and strain my eyes to see the blinking lights. The machine will reassure me, though: “You’re doing well. You’re doing fine. You’re almost through.”

I wish I could believe her.

-Sharon and the Muse of Gadget

As always, we welcome your comments (and read every one, and try to reply to many).