Deja Doggie Vous

Little "Scruffdog" Oliver was diagnosed with colitis, and the medication the vet gave him made him sicker. I can't believe this. I've been dealing with a similar affliction--Crohn's Disease--for 24 years, and almost everything the doctors give me exacerbates the condition. I am fortunate in that I am largley able control it through diet. My recent surgery stunned me by actually being successful.

Doctors like to prescribe medications, and they hate it when they don't work. In fact, many of them (who seem to think "M.D." stands for "Minor Diety") try to tell me I'm wrong about my adverse reaction, because "no one ever has a reaction to this." (They haven't met my five sisters, daughter, three nieces and two nephews who also have hypersensitive systems and multiple drug allergies.) What they really mean is that only one or two per cent of the people who take the drug have bad reactions. If you live near me, you are in statistical good luck, because I am the one per cent. So, you might have a better chance of being in the golden 99%.

It's taken me 24 years to get over any reticence about telling doctors they're wrong. I try to be polite, but if being "nice" means allowing them to keep making me sicker because they can't believe statistics could be wrong, I'll be as recalcitrant as I have to be.

It never occurred to me I'd have to do the same thing for a dog. I can't decide out if it's irony or serendipity that my dog has my same weird medical problems. Irony for me, I suppose, and serendipity for him. When I told the vet that the medication made him so sick all he could do was lie around, not eating or drinking, the vet questioned my powers of observation. "This medication is very well tolerated," he said, sounding baffled, and intimating that something else had affected Oliver this way.

The deja vous was so thick I probably shook my head like I'd bumped it on something. I wanted to be nice, really I did. But I know how this dance goes. So I didn't even let it get started. "Well, it's not well tolerated by this dog," I said, unapologetically. "Let's explore other options." And we did.

Oliver got a big dose of the new medication this afternoon. He ate a big dinner and spent his evening rolling on his back, asking for tummy rubs, and tossing his little toy duck around. He looked to me like he was feeling pretty good. But then, who knows if my powers of observation can be trusted?