Cooder (part 3)
By Bill Stork, DVM
As I rounded the north end of Rock Lake toward the clinic, on that Sunday afternoon in 1995, the annual armada of fishermen outlined where the reeds in 36 inches of water drop to 36 feet, and spring walleye and bluegill lie in wait.
I stepped from the truck to hear the first three lawns of the year being mowed. The potpourri of last fall’s yard dander and leaves in one nostril, Heidi’s secret “rubbed rib-eyes” over Kingsford wafted from Keiner’s grill across the yard.
Outside, Wisconsin was crawling out from under a brutal winter blanket, squeezing the last ray of daylight from the first T-shirt afternoon. Inside, secondhand cigarette smoke hung in the little yellow exam room like a Chicago blues bar on Sunday morning. Three heads hung low around a lifeless little Labrador lying on a St Vinnie’s blanket.
Yesterday Jenny chased balls, happy as if they'd been flung 50 yards across an empty meadow. She’d watch the ball till it stopped bouncing three squares down a concrete path, and then return it to the only spot on Jason’s lap where he could flick it again.
Bloodwork confirmed what her pale gums and labored respiration suggested: Jenny had a life-threatening anemia. Why, we could only speculate, and of little clinical relevance. The only thing certain was that Jenny’s survival would require blood. Doing nothing, or transport to an emergency clinic were not options. Buoyed by a young boy’s hopes, a mother’s tears, and compensated by the calluses in a man’s handshake, we called in Cooder.
Cooder weighed 72 pounds every adult day of his life, which is why we knew he had eaten exactly 6.3 lbs of kibble from the booby-trapped Rubbermaid vault, back in college. Thankfully, Jenny weighed only 58. If you will recall, medical discussions are in metric (it sounds more scientific). Dr. Stork’s rough math is always in whole units, so those following at home don’t have to fetch a calculator, and rounded in such a fashion that they will hold up under scrutiny.
Jenny weighed 26kg and her percentage of red blood cells was only 9%. If she were to see Monday morning, she was going to need every red blood cell Cooder had to spare.
The only spot one can hope to harvest such a volume from is the jugular vein. On command, and in character, Cooder lay still as a statue on the surgery table, fully elevated. Six hundred mL of his blood drained quickly through the 16-gauge needle and heparinized tube in his neck, into the transfusion bag waiting on the floor.
Jenny lay motionless on the heating pad as the infusion pump whirred. Through the catheter in her vein, Cooder’s cells became hers. She would spend three days in the hospital.
For six more years, Jenny bounced down the sidewalk to fetch the ball for Jason. 10mg of prednisone daily for the rest of her life would ensure that her immune system would not turn inexplicably against her cells again.
Like a trail of bread crumbs, scattered clippings and broken leaves from the riding lawn mower marked a path to the front porch, from the trailer and truck pulled in a half-circle in the parking lot.
Always near the end of the day, a cloud of two-cycle exhaust and fresh-cut grass would hang over the front counter, as Todd slipped in to leave a twenty dollar bill.
With an apology, embarrassed he had made a mess in the lobby, and a “thank you sooo much,” he was eternally grateful to the old yellow lab named Cooder, who had saved the tears of the woman he loved, and spared the laugh of her boy and his dog.
He nodded and excused himself, as they kept supper warm for him at home.