When your ears bleed

Good morning, fatty!

I trust you’re doing well. I’ve been traveling a lot lately, I suppose about as much as I usually do, but it’s been for pleasure and at such a regular monthly cadence that the fact that I don’t have a trip booked for August makes me feel a little uncomfortable. I traveled when you were alive, too. It required more logistical planning because we had to find a place to put you while we were gone, but travel we did. In hindsight, not quite as much as I would have liked to, but alas I’m making up for it now with my monthly holidays.

In 2012, we (me and your dad) had a trip planned to Colombia. The morning we were meant to leave, you were in the kitchen being your normal fatty self, eating breakfast and getting the zoomies, and your ear just started to bleed. Profusely. Your fur was white so the blood instantly covered your entire ear and side of your face and when something that is supposed to be white turns red it’s terrifying. We couldn’t find where the source of the blood was, it was as if someone had just turned on a blood faucet on your ear and we couldn’t find the valve.

You were unfazed. You were looking at us like, “What’s up, guys? Is it time to go to the beach?” So at least we knew you weren’t in pain — but that made it all the more confusing. At the time, we didn’t have a car. I can’t remember why now because I think we had two cars the year previously and we were now down to zero. Our only option was to hire a Zipcar to get you to the emergency vet because we figured bringing you into a cab all bloodied and butt-shakey wasn’t an option.

I immediately ran out of the house. Sprinted. Took the stairs four at a time just trusting that my feet and legs and all those ligaments and tendons and muscles inside of them would respond and catch me. Trusted that I wouldn’t trip because I couldn’t trip right now. You had a blood faucet on your ear.

The closest Zipcar was about three blocks away in a parking garage. I managed to book it on my phone mid-run and was trying to figure out how to get into the garage itself. There was a high wrought iron fence with a gate code attached. I spent a few minutes panicking, trying to figure out where I might find the code before I took a deep breath, reached my hands up to grip the fence and hoisted myself up for an ill-advised climb.

One boost into the climb, I decided to check the app again. My ligaments and tendons and muscles in my feet and legs had been through enough this morning and in that moment I knew I couldn’t trust them to lift me over the pointy tops of that fence. There it was in the pick up notes: the code to open the gate.

I’d retrieved the car in hat felt like 305 minutes but had actually been about 12. Your dad commented on how quickly I’d returned. You were still in good spirits, but the blood was now covering your neck. As cute as you are, you looked like a horror show.

I don’t remember the ride to the vet. What I do remember is that all of this happened at around 6am and we had a 10am flight to Colombia. In those moments, I wasn’t thinking about the flights. I wasn’t thinking about how your dad and I were in a super weird place. Or how I had recently done something that would ultimately jeopardize the marriage we had hastily built in our early 20s. I was only thinking about you and your bleeding ear. You, who were blissfully unaware that something might be really wrong with you. You, who despite our best efforts in the car were trying your very best to get both dog hair and blood on the interior of a rented vehicle.

The emergency vet explained that you must have gotten bitten at doggy daycare while playing, and that it created a blood blister. There was a small cut, but no other big lacerations. The blister simply popped and fauceted blood all over your ear and face and neck. A quick clean up and some antibiotics and you were outta there in an hour.

We didn’t make our flight. But there was another flight to Bogota an hour later that we did make. You were safely at home in the care of a very good friend of mine. With a cone on your head to keep you from messing with the injured area. Colombia was a pretty good trip. I wasn’t feeling strong emotionally at the time. Riddled with guilt and shame. Both of which are reactions that start in your head and work their way into your heart and gut, not the other way around like the true emotions. Once they hit you there, in your heart, it takes so much more effort to calm them, soothe them, remove them. They set up shop in there, turn themselves on like a faucet and don’t stop until you find the tiny laceration that allowed them to exist in the first place.

The search for the root cause is only the beginning though. Unlike your antibiotic treatment, which only last 10 days, my guilt and shame treatment would end up being far longer. Years-long. And would involve unimaginable pain. Pain that starts in the gut and the heart and makes its way to your brain. If only humans could wear cones to keep us from messing with the injured area.