My roommate the narcoleptic...

There is nothing funny about narcolepsy. A disease that forces its sufferer to drop to a deep sleep at the turn of a page. Fine one minute and the next: Nothing but Z's.

Ok, Truth?

I know nothing about narcolepsy; I have spelled it wrong twice and had to right-click it just to lose the squiggly red line; but having a wife in the first trimester has got to be the closest thing to living with a patient whose contracted adult onset narcolepsy.

She comes through the door after work, the door squeaks open, the back light makes her hair more blond, she is a silhouette of beauty arriving home to spend a night of love with her husband - then the door slams shut. It's like she has stepped on an invisible rake laying like a booby trap in the middle of the entry way; the handle hits her square in the face and she is knocked out before her bag drops to the floor.

This woman, so usually full of life has hit some invisible wall. Watching her get out of bed in the morning is like watching the little engine half way up the hill. I sometimes wonder if someone has drugged my wife. She sleeps like a teenager. Mornings are torture, nights are cut short- by the time she walks through the door, she is on borrowed time.

We have a dog. A 63 pound black lab. She's 4 feet long with a 14 inch bright red tongue. She's seven years old, but if you attached her tail to a crank you could run the state of Delaware with the energy she turns out.

Every night I walk through the door and it is as if she has been storing up all the energy of her day to race to the door and greet me with a fresh dose of drool and a head-butt to the knee. She charges, then turns back into zone coverage to make sure I don't get by her, and then back to the charge, all before my second foot makes it through the door.

This dog is so excited that another living being has entered the house, she can't actually keep her feet on the ground. She jumps a little with her front feet, but just as she does, she remembers at the last minute some childhood disciplinary tragedy that keeps her from jumping up on my slacks; as her front feet hit the ground she instinctively balances herself with a realigning bull kick of the back feet. All the while, her tail is wagging so hard from jubilation that when her back feet lift from the floor, her butt wags side to side in the air because she has nothing anchoring her down.

Last week, my wife called, "The dog is sick."

This is not going to be good for me.

"She sounds like she is going to throw up," she said.

I was on my way home, it was pouring rain, my pregnant narcoleptic was home with two little boys and a sick dog. I knew this was not going to go well for me.

No sooner had I hung up the phone, and sped the car just a little faster to shorten the drive home, when she called back, "She just threw up in Johnny's room."

When I walked through the door the dog did not greet me. My wife was getting the two boys to bed in the oldest's room...Johnny's room was now under quarantine.

This is an interesting symptom of pregnancy: everything is gross. Dog puke, old dishes, dirty socks, kids kissing at the mall - there is something about pregnancy that makes my wife susceptible to all things contagious and nonresistant to anything gross.

The dog was in the garage, the boys were in bed, I scooped up 1 1/2 cups of undigested Purina Dog Chow from Johnny's floor and I watched my wife step on the rake. It was like curtain fall at the end of a three act tragedy. The audience saw the show coming to a close at the end of act two, but that is why there is no second intermission, nobody leaves until the curtain falls.

"Will you check on the dog?"

It was as if it took every ounce of energy to form the words. I told her to go to bed, I would take care of the dog.

I went to the garage to find our 63 pound pup; but she was nowhere to be found. With the garage empty, I stepped out into the rain and found her laying face down on the dark concrete of the side yard. This was no little drizzling rain, this was the real deal of March heading out like a lion.

"Emma!" She looked up at me like a marionette who's tangled strings were pulling her by the nape: her head dangled and wobbled inches off the ground, her eyes rolled to barely focus on me, and then she just splashed back down into the puddle.

Crap.

I dragged all 63 pounds into the garage where she just lay like a wet towel and I called the vet.

"You should probably bring her in."

Perfect.

And now it was decision time. I hate making decisions. Maybe I should just let her sleep it off. I think she looks a little better already. What if she is really sick. I get sick all the time: I don't rush to the hospital in the middle of the night. Yeah, there's the answer. The dog is no better than me. I'm going to let her sleep it off and I'll go to bed. Decison made. Done.

"What do you mean you aren't taking her to the vet?"

I could have sworn my wife looked more tired than this just 15 minutes ago.

"I won't be able to sleep if you don't take her to the vet."

Won't be  able to sleep? I watched this woman fall asleep at the dinner table two weeks ago with hot food in her mouth. Seriously? This is the cure? Failure to load up the dog and take her to the vet? This cures adult onset sleep disorder? I had made a decision. There was no need to take the dog in, she is a dog, she will sleep it off.

"What if she dies?"

The drive was relatively short, 25 minutes in the pouring rain, the lady at the front desk was pleasant. I looked around at two other pet owners and realized that we were all pathetic. It was 10PM and we were in the pet hospital. I read Lonesome Dove, I don't remember the pet hospital scene, in the country if a pet gets sick he eats alone. The sign in clipboard asked for my name, my dogs name and the reason for our visit. The customer before us was a cat named Daisy who had apparently swallowed a tampon.

Pathetic.

For $89 I got to sign in. For another $49 Dr. House did a cat scan on my dog. At $138 the good doctor told me that my dog was sick. She quoted me $1250 to $1850 to continue testing to find the problem. She wanted to admit the dog into the hospital, run an i.v. drip, do blood tests, ultra sounds, and chest x-rays, I thought, "It's a dog."

I asked the attendant, who gave me the breakdown of the eighteen hundred dollar quote, "What do most people do when you give them a quote like this?" She told me that people have different attachments to their pets.

I have two boys at home in bunk beds and a narcoleptic pregnant wife that can't sleep, I like this dog, but my attachment is to my family. I gave the lady$138 and I went home and told my wife she could sleep, the dog would be fine.

She passed out like a sailor back from a weekend pass.

And the dog? Turned out she was fine after a good night's sleep.