An Earful of Woe From One Man and His Deaf Best Friend

I had selected a brooding palette for today, but illness took away my will to use it.

Over the weekend I became as ill as I can remember ever being and my dog got even worse.

My problem began about 1 a.m. Friday when, ending a quiet session with a book, I noticed that my jaw was so tight I couldn’t brush my teeth for bed.

My morning coffee loosened it up, so I went to work as usual and talked through the discomfort all day. But Saturday brought a sudden advance of symptoms I had never experienced before. An ear began to swell and ache with splitting pain between the lobe and drum.

Before the day was out, I was a patient in the emergency room for the first time since I impaled my hand with fragments of a wooden lance at about age 13.

A long wait in the reception room gave me time to reflect on the gravity of my case. It looked weak compared with those represented by the torn skin, patched eyeballs and tearful mothers around me. I began to think it would have been more gallant to stay in bed.

The doctor took one look and said positively, “Swim ear.” He called it a fungus and prescribed an eardrop consisting of cortisone acetic acid.

“It’s the same as vinegar,” he said.

Though following directions to the letter, I continued to feel worse. By daybreak Sunday I observed with a hand mirror that the passage to my ear was slowly closing. By midday, I steeled myself to another embarrassing interlude among the legitimately wounded in the emergency room.

A new doctor offered an understanding gasp when he looked at my ear and assured me I had done the right thing. He moved me up to a combination of expensive antibiotic pills and drops.

It was too late for the drops, as they wouldn’t slide down the disappearing ear canal. I’m sure I felt the exact moment Sunday night when the skin touched with a ripping noise, closing the passage altogether. If you’ve never had this experience, I can tell you that the voices you hear howling in your head have nothing of interest to say. But they don’t care the least if you’re listening.

The earliest I could get to see the specialist recommended at the hospital was Monday afternoon. I won’t distress you with the clinical details of his aggressive tactics, but I can honestly say I began to feel better the moment I left his office, even before popping my first steroid pill.

It was on this lightening horizon that the bad news about the dog intruded. My daughter said she had watched him all day, and he wasn’t able to answer nature’s call.

That seemed suspect, as he should have been shrieking in pain by then. But I personally let him out Tuesday morning and watched him make his rounds with no success. The beast must be wonderfully immune to pain, for he quietly returned as if concluding that it still wasn’t time yet.

I passed the news on to my wife, whose duty it would be to act. My excuse was a follow-up trip to the doctor, but it was well established anyway that this animal’s life was on her account.

She had taken him on emotional impulse as part of a two-for-one deal, without consulting me.

They were both rejects in a litter of Dalmatians bred for show. We only wanted one, and the kennel master tried to ease the choice by pointing out that one had tested deaf, a defect of the breed.

My wife, unfortunately, asked what would happen to the deaf one and instantly succumbed to the knowledge. We only had to pay for one extra set of shots.

I take responsibility only for the choice of breeds. We had considered German shepherds and Doberman pinschers, but I insisted on a more social type.

You may slide by voting for president on such scanty knowledge, but never buying an animal. The deaf one turned out large and crude, with no interests in life except eating and outwitting his fine-boned, high-strung brother. That one does nothing but run about the yard barking and digging and making sure he’s not outwitted.

The only consolation of our mistake is the amusement of watching two pitifully deficient brains locked in total mental competition. If given two bones, they will immediately lose one and spend the day contesting the other.

It was the deaf one that was ill.

Fortunately for me, the doctor said I was well enough to work. I was deep into the past day’s duties when my wife called with the diagnosis.

“Kidney stones,” she said. “Hundreds of them.”

The surgery to remove them would cost $800 to $900.

The vet said the stones were a congenital defect of over-bred Dalmatians. Most likely, they’d would recur.

I thought I was being asked to make a tough moral choice. But my wife said she had already made the call and was only bracing me for the bill.

As a result of all this, I’ve become more sanguine about the packs of feral dogs reputedly running out of control on the fringes of the city. Perhaps they’re perpetuating a gene pool that will someday save us from the peril of national health insurance for our pets.

My interest in the deaf one has also risen. Maybe he understands the voices howling in his head. Pity he’ll never tell.