dooce: Death to Ed

I was reading the above entry (yes, I’m behind again in my blog reading) and the part where she asked her doctor if she could keep the removed cancer spot reminded me about the time we had our dog neutered.

One of his nuts was genetically deformed and hadn’t dropped completely, so they had to go in and surgically remove it, which created a slightly more complicated procedure than your average neuter. He had to wear a cone to keep him from licking the wound and it got all inflamed and red and was really bothering him.

I mean red to the point that, while home alone with him that night, I actually thought I was seeing blood puddle below his skin and became convinced that he was bleeding internally (ignore the part where I thought the blood would be red under the skin instead of blue…my dog’s life was in danger, I wasn’t thinking clearly). So I (gently) threw him in the car and rushed him to the nearest Pet Emergency Clinic where the on-duty vet laughed at me with his European accent and informed me that I was too stupid to own a dog, that there was nothing wrong with this perfectly normal sewn-up gash in my child’s dog’s rear. He then charged me $75 for the service and sent me home poor and humiliated. I didn’t tell J about that night (and I tell J EVERYTHING), and I didn’t intend to, until he was going through some papers on the desk and wanted to know why we had a receipt for $75 at the Emergency Vet Care Clinic.

But my humiliation really wasn’t the point of this story when I embarked on it. I hate getting distracted like that - why does it always end up with my discussing something embarassing?

Probably because I have a lot of embarassing moments. When I was in 6th grade, I came up with a coping mechanism for all those times I suffered the complete mortification of watching my entire life melt before my eyes. It seems I was habitually finding myself in the situation of having just done something incredibly dumb that would follow me the rest of my life and ensure that I would be home alone watching Saved by the Bell re-runs on Prom night.

When I found the entire world flogging me with the STARE in the aftermath of one of those moments, I would mentally spell “Embarassing” three times and by the time I got through the third spelling, the moment had usually passed enough that I could pull myself up off the ground and continue on my way, stopping every once in a while to pick up the pieces of my shattered self esteem.

About a year later, I came to the realization that I had actually been misspelling the word.

But I’m getting distracted again.

So when we went to pick up our poor, wounded, decapacitated puppy from the clinic after his surgery, they explained the procedure and why he had stitches and a cone and what we needed to do to care for him.

Then they held up his testacle in a plastic bag and asked us if we wanted to keep it.

And we’re like, are you NUTS? (Ba-dum-ching!)

Thank you, thank you very much. I’ll be here all week.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 24th, 2006 at 8:51 pm and is filed under Memories, Pets & Animals. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.