Flailing Into the Night 

“Whatever you do, don’t Google it!” The vet warned me with serious, penetrating eyes. 

“Ok. Why not?” I asked, my heart doing manic back flips against my ribs. 

He looked directly into my eyes. 

“The images are really disturbing.” 

As soon as he left the room, I whipped out my phone and Googled the word “heartworm.” Disgusting autopsy images of the hearts of deceased dogs peppered my cell phone screen. The pictures showed hearts split in half, displaying a full panoply of what appeared to be elongated spaghetti noodles tangled up with each other as they cradled together in the heart cavities of dogs. 

I am certain the vet, the vet techs, and everyone in the waiting room heard me gasp. It was clear from the photos that these nefarious parasites would keep reproducing and expanding until they choked the life out of my beloved puppy. Of course, I was going to follow the protocol and do whatever I could to save my dog.

The poet Dylan Thomas once urged his readers: “Do not go gentle into that good night. / Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” We must fight against the dimming of the sunlight on our faces as the sun sets under the horizon and the warmth has been drawn down into the abyss. We are called to rage until the bitter end. We must refuse to run and hide from the Grim Reaper. Instead, we are urged to grab our pitchforks and torches, gather up the rest of our mortal kinfolk and storm the gates of Hades. 

I have wondered if this means that we will forfeit our chance to pass away quietly in our sleep at a comfortable vacation home that overlooks a tranquil lake with our weepy-eyed grandchildren huddled around our bedside. Perhaps we don’t really get to choose at all, especially if we are snatched by the Reaper’s hook. Maybe it’s not the light in us that chooses to rage. Perhaps it’s our darkness, recognizing that it is backed into a shadowy corner. Even the darkness cowers against the ultimate black hole. Maybe that’s why sometimes it chooses to dance.

During the 1500s in Europe, there was a rash of inexplicable and horrific deaths directly related to hordes of people taking to their town square and dancing themselves to death. The most famous case occurred in Strasbourg in 1518, when a woman started dancing in the middle of a cobblestone village roadway for no apparent reason and then simply did not or could not stop. Soon, other townspeople joined in the swirling and twirling. 

According to historians, they weren’t waltzing or swaying to actual music. Instead, they were violently and compulsively gyrating to either an inaudible soundtrack or no sound at all. There were reports of people unable to stop to eat, sleep, or go to the bathroom. Some suffered from such severe cuts to their feet that their shoes filled with blood. Others reportedly cried out for help as their arms thrashed wildly. Fifty people danced for a month. Some died from heart attacks, strokes, dehydration and starvation. At the time, people assumed the horrifying event was caused by witchcraft or a mass demonic possession. Scientists have chalked this up to either some sort of a psychological epidemic or ergot poisoning, which allegedly causes hallucinations and muscle spasms.

However, flailings rising to the level of deadly autonomic break dancing seem far fetched. Perhaps the souls of the feudal cast of Riverdance simply refused to be condemned to their straw mattresses as they awaited the Reaper’s knocking at their oak front doors. Maybe either the fungus, bacteria or virus that supposedly infected the villagers insisted on going out with a banger. 

The “Lords a – Leaping” plague may have run its course, but unfortunately, death by spasms has not.

***

I hadn’t expected anything other than a run-of-the-mill trip to the vet. “Have you noticed Mazie coughing a lot with a wheezing sound?” The lanky, soft – toned vet asked me out of the blue after examining our rescue dog, shaking me out of my doom scrolling reverie. I had taken her in because she had started limping after a futile attempt to chase a squirrel up a tree. “I don’t think so.” I replied and then promptly remembered a recent conversation with my husband. “Remember that time when the kids were toddlers and they had whooping cough? We stayed up all night holding them in the bathroom with the hot shower running?” My husband asked me a few weeks ago. “Yeah, I’ll never forget that harrowing sound they made. It sounded like a cross between a deer snort and a Canadian goose honk,” I responded. My husband looked at me with furrowed eyebrows. 

“Well, Mazie sounds like that,“ he pointed out with a look of deep concern sweeping across his face.

“Did you ever get her checked for whatever it is that makes a shelter dog cough like that?” he asked. 

I sighed, both flummoxed and annoyed by his question. I explained that Mazie, our adopted pup, had been tested for everything at the municipal shelter in Texas when she was first picked up and that I had taken her to the vet for a full checkup two days after we brought her home. She had tested negative for everything. 

I glanced over at our hazelnut-eyed, wire – whiskered German Shepherd / Labrador Retriever mix sleeping soundly on our living room couch. Her dangling, batwing ears were folded and droopy as her low – volume snores kept a continuous rhythm like a metronome.  She looked completely comfortable and totally at home, with no sign of distress or agitation whatsoever. I hadn’t heard her make any unusual sounds. I brushed off my husband’s concerns.

“Well, Mazie did pull a muscle in her leg, and we’ll give her something to keep her calm, but the major issue is that she has heartworm,” the vet piped up. 

“What?” I exclaimed. 

“It’s not your fault. She was a stray from Texas. She probably got bit by a mosquito carrying larvae before she got caught, and the original tests didn’t pick up on the worms because they weren’t mature enough to register.” he explained. I felt tremendous guilt, as if I had implanted the heartworms in Mazie myself. As the vet explained the numerous steps to the treatment plan, I felt my head spin while my heart sank. The necessary protocol involved weeks of antibiotics followed by a shot of melarsomine and an overnight stay at the vet hospital for observation. The cure could actually kill her because the heartworms won’t simply shrivel up and die.

Mazie will have to be closely monitored. Apparently, heartworms don’t take kindly to being destroyed. The vet was certain that the shots would eventually kill the heartworms. However, deep inside the heart cavities and lungs of their furry four – legged hosts, they may start waltzing at a morbid ball. Not unlike the hapless dancing peasants of yore, the inimical organisms sucking the life out of my dog may swing until they spiral out of control. They may dance in an unseen erratic and manic display like untethered windsocks in a windstorm. They might rage in one final rager.

First, the vet, and then my family and I will carefully watch over Mazie. We will look for signs of distress. Hopefully, she will come out of this parasite attack thriving and unscathed. According to the vet, my dog’s body will eventually metabolize the former freeloaders away.  With any luck, after their last dance, the insidious worms will dissolve away and skip their final bow. Until then, we will follow the protocol, hope for the best, and listen closely for the band to start tuning their instruments.