Freshly-unemployed, I thought it would be a good idea to use some of this opening in my schedule to see if I could get answers on some dizziness that had been a little bit persistent.
Fast forward past three separate tests beginning in March, I was scheduled to go to St. Vincent Hospital to go in for brain surgery.
Since I was going to be at the hospital and away from home for a couple of days, I was finalizing arrangements to get my dachshund to a sitter for a couple of nights. I first took Sparky to the vet for a quick check, to the dog wash, then home to his pen to dry in the sun. He is 15, blind, deaf, and his sense of smell is gone. He sleeps a lot. Despite being old and blind and tired, it seems Sparky did this virtually implausible thing - he got out and got lost.
I searched everywhere for Sparky. I called neighbors and friends for help to no avail. I had to be at the hospital the next morning at 6 am. As I drove in, I had given Sparky up for gone, thinking that if he had not already lost his life to overnight exposure, he had likely been spied and taken by a hawk or owl or other predatory bird as easy prey.
After the four-hour surgery, I was rolled out of the operating room to ICU recovery, and I mentioned to my two attending nurses that I had lost my dog. I was moved into ICU for the administration of blood thinner and 24-hour monitoring. The nurses were kind and attentive as I sorted through the fog of waking up. The next morning a nurse walked into my room and asked, "Do you remember Amanda, the other nurse, from yesterday?" I replied that I did. She added, "You talked about your dog, and she remembered how you described him, and she thinks he's at IndyHumane". She happens to volunteer at Indy Humane on Michigan Road. The nurse said, "Amanda sent me a picture on my phone. Give me a minute... I'll bring it in." A couple of minutes later, the nurse held up her phone to me, and I saw a pic of my Sparky lying on a colorful blanket in a standard metal crate.
About two hours later the hospital discharged me. A friend picked me up to drive me home. Despite her own packed schedule for the day, she agreed to the side trip to pick up Sparky. It turns out that IndyHumane is closed on Thursdays, but I rang the bell and eventually, someone came to the door. Amanda was in there, doing something else in another part of the building.
The big mystery: What on Earth possessed me to mention a lost dog to St. Vincent nurses after they had just rolled me in from the operating room? What are the odds that one of these two nurses also volunteered at an animal shelter? And that she also happened to be my nurse that day? And that she volunteered at the same shelter where Sparky had been turned in? And what are the additional odds that of the many, many dogs at IndyHumane, Amanda happened to see mine and even put all this back together? Or the odds that Amanda would even have been at IndyHumane today? Or that Sparky was found alive in the first place?
Yesterday, Amanda helped me recover from brain surgery at St. Vincent. Today, Amanda found my dog at IndyHumane.
Recent job loss was the precursor to a new lease on life. Is it overly dramatic to say this? It's not. When I walked out of St. Vincent, I had a much longer life expectancy than I had when I walked in and Amanda Corder helped me walk out and to go home with my dog. That's a DAISY!