His Dogness

“There was a time when I could have held my own in most any fight. I had the staying power. The staying power is what wins most fights.” R.L. Whitfield talking about his days in the U.S. Navy

Mr. Whitfield turned 79 earlier this month. I had the date written on my calendar but managed to forget about it until he showed up at my front door with a slice of his birthday cake for me.

For a while now, R.L. has been in a lot of pain in his back and legs. That hasn’t kept him from getting out and walking the dog. But it’s been getting harder and harder. There was a time when he resisted when I offered to take Fluke out. Lately, he just hands to leash over to me and thanks me.

A few months back, the spine doctors started talking about an operation, and R.L. began making the rounds of heart doctors and other specialists to determine whether they thought that his heart and the rest of him were up to it.

They decided that he was a good candidate and scheduled the operation for this past Thursday. As the day approached, depending on what sort of mood R.L. was in, he would tell me that he planned to come home five hours after they were done and get on with his life or he would say something along the lines of “All good things must come to an end.”

When I dropped by the night before the operation, his wife, Pearl, told me that he had announced that, if he didn’t make it, he just wanted her to call up Vogler’s, tell them to pick up and cremate the body, and call it quits at that. No obituary in the paper. No memorial service.

“After you’re gone, she can do whatever the hell she wants,” I said.

Exactly, she said.

Mr. Whitfield hopped up off the couch and said he was throwing me out of the house. I said I would see him later.

Between Buster’s sleeping troubles and my sleeping troubles, the two of us might be outside at any given time. So I thought we might see them off in the morning. But we were too early one time and too late the next.

That night Pearl’s niece Bambi filled me in. All had gone well. Doctors had moved some nerves out from between L-4 and L-5, where they were not supposed to be, put a piece of bone from his hip in between there and bolted a couple of steel rods on the side to fuse everything.

By the time, I saw R.L., he was sitting in a chair in his room and complaining about what a miserable thing a catheter is. I have heard this from more than one place and wonder whether male doctors have to have one put in during med school just so they know what the experience is like. My guess would be, no.

I was sorry that he was in misery but glad to see that he was in good enough shape to be cranky.

This morning, I drove Pearl over to the hospital so that she wouldn’t have to worry with a car. When I called over later to find out whether she wanted me to pick her up so that she could come home and take a break, Bambi reported that Pearl was seriously contemplating murdering R.L. but that she wanted to stick around a while longer.

Glad to hear that everything was going well, I promised to call back later.