Dog gone it

Something someone said about allergies brought this story to mind:

A few years ago, Maggie was in the hospital for one of those long stretches – maybe three weeks. Those are hard on Maggie, of course, but they are also tough on the entire family. Out home life is completely disrupted because I stay with Maggie the entire time. The boys, who were still at home had to adjust to a house without mom and generally without dad too. Steve came home to sleep and usually fed the boys, but between work and the hospital, he was not at home very much.


Of course, the boys worried about Maggie, but these hospitalizations had become routine for all of us. There were certainly times Maggie was in grave danger, but we only told the boys when it was absolutely necessary. We did not want to alarm them prematurely or (God willing) unnecessarily.

They spent a fair amount of time visiting in the hospital as well. On one visit, Eddie was laying at the foot of Maggie’s bed reading a magazine when the young resident came in with some results of an allergy test. Maggie has multiple food and medication allergies, which we already knew about, but this was the test for allergens in the environment. Turns out she has a lot of those too. Cats, dogs, mice, dust etc

Her allergy numbers for dogs was really high,.(And yes we had a dog then and still do.)The young doctor, being very thoughtful, did not want to say this in front of Maggie’s brother. Rather than give the information directly, he just cited the numbers allowing us to draw our own conclusions. Presumably he figured Eddie wasn’t paying sufficient attention or wasn’t going to catch the gist of what he was saying. What he didn’t realize is that my boys spend a lot of time in hospitals and can understand doctor speak very well.

Eddie whipped his head around and said, “Maggie’s allergic to dogs??!!??”

The resident looked very uncomfortable to be part of this moment when a kid learned that his sick sister might mean we had to get rid of the dog..

I said to Eddie evenly, “looks like she is”

Eddie went right back to his magazine and said “Then Maggie’s going to have to move”

I just laughed. It was never really an issue. We use life as a measure, not just a test result. We have to or Maggie would live in a bubble. Maggie had peacefully coexisted with the dog since she was about three years old. Having this test result information was not going to change anything. Eddie knew that, I knew that, even Maggie knew that, but that kind young doctor looked very confused.