Noelnadesan's Blog

The sea around Eluvaitivu, the small island off the north-western coast of Jaffna where I was born, moves gently to a rhythm of its own. In the morning, when the tide is low, submerged black rocks of different shapes and sizes emerge from the water, providing dry platforms for crabs to scuttle across. In the evening, when the tide rises, the rocks disappear beneath the water, and the sea stretches before us like an immense blue carpet.

As a boy, it was part of my routine to walk among those rocks in the morning and enjoy the beauty of the shore. I had only to step outside my house to be surrounded by it. The beach was, in effect, my front garden.

The ebb and flow of the sea marked the rhythm of life in Eluvaitivu.

Now I live in Melbourne, where I notice a different kind of ebb and flow—not in the sea, but in the traffic. The difference is particularly noticeable between school holidays and school days. On school mornings, the roads are chock-a-block with vehicles. Commuters arrive late for work and invariably blame the traffic.

One such morning, I arrived late at my veterinary clinic and noticed a car waiting outside.

Assuming that someone had arrived with a sick pet, I hurried inside. There, on the examination-room floor, lay a male blue heeler. He barely moved his head, but his dark, moist eyes followed me. Even before I touched him, I could tell that he was in considerable pain.

“Jasper hasn’t eaten for two days, and he vomits whenever he tries to eat,” the woman beside him explained anxiously.

Her accent reminded me of rural Australia. She was tall and slender, with blonde hair, and introduced herself as Laura.

I began examining poor Jasper. When I palpated his upper abdomen, he groaned in pain.

“I work for a veterinary surgeon too,” Laura said.

That puzzled me. Why had she brought Jasper to my clinic instead of taking him to the veterinarian she worked for?

When she mentioned his name, I recognised him as a veterinarian practising in Melbourne’s outer suburbs, not far from my clinic.

“Why didn’t you take Jasper to him?” I asked.

“I don’t like the way he handles animals,” she replied bluntly.

In human medicine, a doctor’s communication and treatment of a patient is often described as their “bedside manner.” Veterinarians need something similar. Our patients may not understand our words, but they certainly understand our touch, tone and manner.

Perhaps that was why Laura had brought Jasper to me.

Australian cattle dogs, commonly called blue heelers or red heelers according to their colouring, were bred to work cattle. Their name comes from their tendency to nip at the heels of reluctant cattle to keep them moving with the herd. Intelligent, energetic and loyal, they have long been valued as working dogs on Australian farms.

Yet this particular heeler was lying motionless before me.

I asked Laura whether Jasper had recently eaten anything unusually fatty.

“Yes,” she said. Two days earlier, she had given him a meal that included cattle bones and fatty scraps.

That strengthened my suspicion.

“Jasper is showing signs consistent with pancreatitis,” I explained. “We’ll need blood tests and other investigations to confirm the diagnosis.”

Laura agreed to leave him with us.

After intensive treatment, Jasper gradually improved and was eventually well enough to go home. When Laura came to collect him, I explained that his diet would need to change. Pancreatitis is inflammation of the pancreas, an organ that produces digestive enzymes and important hormones. After an episode such as Jasper’s, avoiding rich, fatty foods was particularly important, and a specially formulated low-fat veterinary diet would be advisable.

I warned her that such diets could be expensive.

“I’m not worried about the expense,” Laura said.

Then she explained why.

She and her husband had no children and, in her view, therefore did not have many of the heavy expenses that came with raising a family. Their pets’ health mattered a great deal to them.

“How many pets do you have?” I asked.

“Three dogs and two cats.”

What she said next surprised me even more. If she had had children, she explained, she would have had to spend a great deal on their education, health and other needs. Compared with raising children, she believed, looking after her pets was relatively inexpensive.

Over the years, I had met many people who desperately longed to have children. Laura looked at the matter from an entirely different angle. She had turned parenthood into an economic calculation.

Then she turned the question on me.

“Excuse me, how many children do you have?”

“Two,” I replied. “But I think the value we place on children and pets belongs to two very different categories.”

With that, we said goodbye.

I understood Laura’s affection for her dogs and cats. After all, I had spent much of my professional life caring for animals, and I knew how deeply people could love them.

But long after Jasper had recovered and gone home, one thing continued to puzzle me.

It was not Jasper’s pancreatitis.

It was Laura’s economic theory.