Three Black Spots

To sue or not to sue

Michael is an ex-friend of ours in the Windy City. He was rushed from his office in Chicago with an emergency stomach condition, and got his surgery done at one of Chicago’s best hospitals. It took him months to recover, and he still kept feeling horrible. The doctors did a scan, and discovered that they seemed to have left behind some swabs during the surgery. They opened him up again, took the stuff out, and he was back to being as good as new.

All over his office the discussion ranged from “Do you know what happened to poor Michael” to “His kids are now set for life”. The Comptroller did the calculation on how the settlement from the hospital should be handled for tax purposes. Of course they would settle – who wants to be known as the hospital that leaves behind swabs after surgery. Michael who fancied himself a bit of a comic said “I hope my lawyers are better than my doctors”. No one really ever found out how large the settlement was, but the only question was whether it reached seven figures, or did they stop in the high sixes.

We had our own “sue-able” moment a few months ago with Yoda. A scan in Bombay showed that he had some stones in the bladder. Not too big, but definitely there. They were still there in NYC a couple of months later, and we were recommended surgery. The doctors at NYC Vet are good, and Yoda’s care is always overseen by George – his vet and our good friend for the last 15 years.

Four days later, Yoda was operated on. We dropped him off the day before, and sought to ease our separation anxiety by going shopping. The doctor called us the next day right after surgery. I heard Mina respond to him with a series of strained ‘ Uhmmms’. When she said ‘So I guess the surgery was completely unnecessary’ I knew that this was not good.

Dr Greenberg is a nice enough young man, who explained it all to us. Yoda’s scan from 4 days before showed the stones in place. The X Ray they did right before the surgery did not show any stones, but sometimes these are not seen on X Rays. He and Dr Ferreri did a consultation and determined that they should go ahead with the surgery. They could not take the chance that the stones were still in there, since if they shifted, it could be life threatening for Yoda.

‘Why didn’t you take another scan if the X Rays didn’t show the stones?’ This was Mina at her incisive best getting straight to the point. ‘With the wisdom of hindsight, we should have done that, but we made a good faith judgment call. We asked ourselves what we would have done if Yoda was our dog, and the answer was to go ahead with the surgery’.

Ayesha was appalled when she heard the story. “The poor dog, to go through an unnecessary surgery, at this age” came first. Followed by “You should make the hospital return the money they charged you”.

Here’s the dilemma. We like the hospital, we like the doctors, and we feel that they may have made a good faith mistake of judgment. The larger dilemma – we come from India, where thanks to an extraordinarily powerful medical lobby it is almost unheard of cases against doctors actually succeeding. 95% of the suits filed never go through because no doctor is ever willing to testify against another. Suing doctors, or asking for your money back is not in our genes. Or maybe we’re just wimps who don’t want to confront unpleasantness.

“Mother, in all my experience when there is any medical malpractice, it is because the protocols either failed, or they were not in place. It’s common sense that if the X Rays on the morning of the surgery didn’t show the stones, they should have done a scan. The equipment is right there, it would not have taken more than a few minutes. Instead they put a 15 year old dog through unnecessary surgery, and made you pay a lot of money”.

“How can I ask for my money back?” “Mother, in plain and simple terms, Yoda is your asset, and they have damaged your asset. You should at least recover the money they charged you, even if you don’t want to ask for damages”.

We think Yoda is priceless, but to also think of him as an asset knocked us on our back. Specially when we are only too aware of his growing years, his failing eyesight, his diminished hearing. Is this what depreciation is all about?

Mina wears a big burden of guilt to this very day. ‘The poor boy depends totally on us, and I let him down. I should have found a way to protect him from this unnecessary surgery’. I don’t feel guilt, but a lot of anger. Every surgery takes its toll. I know. I had major surgery about 18 months ago, and I’m still not 100%.

So, what are we to do? Talk to the hospital, and ask for our money back? If we confront them, we can’t ever go back to them, and we think they are good, and what is more, they are nice people. Ayesha’s response “If they put Yoda through this, then perhaps they are not as good as you think they are. You don’t look for a hospital to be nice, you want them to be effective”.

If we do nothing, will we always be saddled with Mina’s guilt and my anger and frustration?

I know that if any surgeons had left swabs inside me, I would be introducing Ayesha as my lawyer to them, and not have any second thoughts. An unnecessary surgery is a lot worse than leaving swabs behind. So why are we being so nice and polite?

To speak up or not to speak up. To sue or not to sue. That is the question we are still wrestling with.

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Size does matter

Tee hee, khee khee khee … you could hear the sniggers all the way across the hotel lobby, as Paolo trudged back with me to our room. We were in Marbella and scored a baby sitter for Yoda. Paolo from the bell desk staff had volunteered, or perhaps he was asked to. His colleagues did not think much of the assignment, and he was being given a bit of the old treatment. If he had been in an English pub, he might even have ended up being called a poofter, though I am sure he had the Spanish equivalent flung in his direction.Not that it fazed him. Ten euros an hour has its own siren-like quality, and Paolo liked dogs. He was a strapping young fellow with a great attitude and not too much English. He passed our Yoda test – when we got back, Yoda did not want to let him go.

So, what is it about dog sitting that brings out this reaction in people? Obviously it’s not as manly as being an astronaut, or climbing Mount Everest, but surely it beats schlepping suitcases to people’s rooms. All you have to do is sit in the hotel room, watch TV, order (sparingly)from Room Service, and radiate kind thoughts towards the dog. Surely there is a very macho thrill in paid well to do nothing.

Is it because Yoda is a small dog? Would there be something far more macho about tending to a bull dog, or a fierce Rottweiler? Does a furry being under ten pounds not qualify for too much respect?

This is not just a bias in the canine race. There is a bias against short humans too. The conventional wisdom seems to be that short people don’t command as much respect as tall ones. Yeah, yeah, I’ve also heard the Napoleon example, but one Frenchman does not an argument make.

Height is always something we fudge up. I’ll never forget the early days of our courtship when Mina bounced up to me with great excitement, and proclaimed that she was now 5 feet 3 inches. I thought that all her growth spurts were behind her, but you don’t argue with the love of your life – not on something as important as a quarter inch of height. I have also agreed to ban the word short from my vocabulary – it’s always people of diminutive stature.

I pondered over Yoda’s smallness all the way on our trip in Spain, and as we hit New York – Wham! It was all over the news. All dogs are identical. Fifi the high strung beauty that peeks out of designer handbags is the same as the 200 pound behemoth that can be seen from outer space. Not exactly, but almost. It’s just one little teeny weeny bit of DNA which suppresses a growth gene – and that makes all the difference. Or so the scientists say.

It’s not just an accident of canine biology. Humans seem to have stumbled on this gene over 10,000 years ago, while breeding small dogs. Why breed a dog to be small? This was way before Paris Hilton, designer handbags, and furry arm candy. Because the little tykes are useful. What kinds of uses? Mark Derr the author listed them – they have turned mills and spits in their time, pursued game into teir den, destroyed rats by the bucketful, done triple duty as foot warmers, and stood guard over home and hearth while the big dogs patrolled the yard.

Whew! I knew it all along, but there’s nothing like a bit of science, a reference to the “Insulin like growth faction 1″ gene to add heft to intuition. Small dogs are small, because they are meant to be. Small is not just beautiful, it is useful.

Is this understanding going to make Paolo feel any better, any more macho? Will he feel more mano, now that he knows that Yoda could have been 200 pounds if we wanted him that way – it is we who have chosen his weight class, and for very good reason too. I don’t think so. Paolo will still have to run the gauntlet of sneers and snickers, still listen to the not so muted taunts about his manhood as he goes off to do his Yoda duty. We are all size bigots, racists of the ruler, and bigger is always better. If you don’t believe me, just look at the size of portions of French fries.

I could try flinging a few clichés into the mix, to see if that will influence the argument. It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of fight in the dog. Don’t judge a book by its cover, and a dog by its size. David and Goliath. But I know that it’s no use.

Size does matter. Ask any man lined up in the stalls of a public toilet.

Pooper Scooper

If there are dogs, can poop be far behind? A Senior Police officer, one with a rather long rank, is supposed to have walked into some doggy doo and decided to launch a campaign against owners who don’t pick up their dog poop.

So on the Carter Road sea face, you began to see these signs “Please do not allow your dogs to commit nuisance. Fine Rs 500″. Right beside them were signs that said “Please do not commit nuisance. Fine Rs 250″. Now I have the answer to that very existentialist question – what’s the price of dog poop in Bombay? Twice the price of human poop.

In a city, no, in a country where human excrement is a fact of life on almost every street – maybe Rajpath is an exception, but I haven’t been there at 6 in the morning recently- it is wonderful to see so much energy expended on dog poop. Almost as exotic as the proposal in Germany to collect the DNA of all pet dogs, so that poop collected on the streets could be tracked back to the dog’s owners, and suitable Teutonic fines could be levied. CSI meets Tin Tin.

We took a decision some time ago. If we could scoop up Yoda’s poop in New York, Frankfurt and Paris, we could scoop it up in Bombay as well. We did not have a ready stock of the small sandwich baggies, so Mina got some low cost plastic gloves from the local grocer.

Our morning ritual works like this. We take Yoda down to the basement garage. He heads straight for his ” pissing post” to let loose a stream. He then jauntily strides off to a far corner of the garage, where after much sniffing around and tentative stops, he goes into his crouch and does his bidness. I reach into my pocket, whip on the gloves with a surgeon like air of authority, and scoop the poop. I turn the glove inside out, and voila, it is ready for disposal.

Here is where the Indian ethos comes into play. Joseph our driver is a dog lover - he has a Pom bitch called Jimmy. He is also a retainer of the old school type. The first day he came running up and told me that he would do the scoop. When he saw that I would not give up my right, he insisted that he take the glove from me and walk it across to the dustbin. We agreed on the compromise.

So, here is how this plain tale from the Raj plays out. Joseph brings the car up, leaves it idling so Mina can sit in air conditioned comfort while Yoda does his thing. As soon as Yoda is done Joseph bounds forward, picks up the reversed glove from my hands, and jogs off to get rid of it. Yoda in the mean time finishes his inspection of the premises and saunters over to the car.

Joseph is by the door, ready to open it as we approach. Yoda goes up, “kicks the tyres” and signals that he is ready. Joseph opens the door with a flourish, I pick up Yoda and deposit him beside Mina, and we are all set to go to work.

Our ritual has now begun to attract a small audience of other drivers and cleaners in the garage. Opinion is equally divided between ‘see how much they love their dog’ and ‘that dog has made a monkey out of them’.

It may not take a village to raise Yoda, but it seems to take two full grown adults to deal with his poop.

J’Accuse

These damn dogs are getting ahead of themselves. Every day there’s a story about some new skill they acquire, some new trick they learn to perform. I read about a dog who saw his master choking on some food,jumped up on him from the back, pushed him down on the ground, and in the process performed a Heimlich maneuver. The errant bit of food shot out of his master’s mouth like a bullet, he didn’t even wait to recover from his wheezing, before he was out proclaiming the miracle.

What’s going on? Have the dogs of the world appointed Hill and Knowlton to front all these stories? They say flacks will work for anyone as long as they get paid. How do they get paid? Surely kibble wont do the job. Whatever the currency, dogs are getting great value. I dare you – open the pages of any newspaper, and see if you can escape the inevitable dog story. No one is immune – not even the NYT or the NYer. The latter will at a minimum cough up a dog cartoon, if not an entire profile or a Talk of the Town piece.

How about this for the warm snugglies? School kids ae learning to read aloud to dogs that cuddle up beside them, settle into a steady rhythm of non judgmental breathing, and listen with great affection. The kids don’t feel under pressure or the threat of being evaluated, presumably the dogs feel no need to provide any input, and a good time is had by all. There are now 16,000 therapy dogs participating in reading assistance programs in schools and libraries all over the US. I kid you not. I read it in Newsweek. It must be true, right?

We’ve all read stories about dogs visiting people in hospital, helping people recover from surgery, cheering up the lives of terminally ill children. Seeing eye dogs, dogs who can defuse landmines, and don’t forget, it was the Russian dog Laika who went up into space way before the astronauts. Did she say ‘One small step for man, a giant step for dogkind?’

So, I have a question to ask of some prominent dogs, who have recently dropped the ball big time. When it really mattered, some of you did not step up to the plate. Are you guys just hype, mere flash, studying opinion polls and carefully triangulating public opinion? Where’s the beef?

Let’s start with Tinkerbell. Where were you when Paris Hilton was DWI? Even if the lawyer did not read the fine print to her, and a fat lot of good it did him trying to fall on his sword in court with his mea culpa, where were you? How come you didn’t reach for the court order, allow the wind to blow it open to the right page, use your paw and a few well timed barks to draw her attention to what the judge said? Instead you allowed her to draw the ‘Go directly to Jail card’. How come you were asleep at the wheel? Slacker!

Yo Barney! Yeah you. Just because you were the White House dog, personal property of the W-ster himself, doesn’t mean you get to skip this inquiry. Okay, I know he dropped you on the head so we have to cut you a little slack. But, are you telling me that you just sat there and ate kibble while Baghdad burned? Didn’t you at least channel Milly’s spirit, she of the steady hand who guided 41 through Iraq 1? You should be grateful that Michael Moore loves dogs. Otherwise he might have used footage of you instead of Wolfowitz in the opening sequence of Fahrenheit 9/11. I bet you too spit on your brush before you slick your hair back.

J’accuse – Marty Richard’s dog – how could you allow Kramer to descend into Gibson world? Our Kramer, he of the Geeddyaaaaap, the face that charmed the Soup Nazi, and the finger in socket hair.

J’accuse, the President of Kazakhstan’s dog- you should have told him that Borat was the best thing that happened to the country since sliced bread, or naan. Every time he fulminated, DVD sales of the Borat movie went up. What were you thinking? How come you didn’t tell him to make Sasha Baron Cohen the Tourism Minister for Life.

Since I am in the mood – J’accuse Yoda. There’s a small matter of 3 shirts from H&M that you should never have let me buy. You wre there, and you let me indulge myself in a post mid life crisis moment. Slim fit shirts – hah!

You see, we have a wonderful Social Contract that we signed with dogs a long time ago. We would provide them with food, water, shelter, leash and harness, and good grooming. If circumstances permitted, other things were also written into the Contract. Spa treatments, designer treats, holistic manicures, and brand name gear. Some would even have adoring books written about them.

In return they would only have to do one thing. Save us from ourselves. Most times they do. But when they don’t, it gets my goat.