Now that's one useless cat!
Via the Volokh Conspiracy, this sure is one useless cat.
April 24, 2007
October 29, 2006
In the ICU, and thinking about Huckleberry
I'm in the ICU this month. It's a great place (the only place?) to learn what I need to be a competent ER physician -- but it's no less draining for knowing that.
The medical ICU is a joyless place. It's a place where very sick people stay, usually at the end of their lives, to absorb all the high-tech medicine that we can possibly throw at them, in order to live a few more weeks than they would have otherwise. Yes, there are important exceptions, where we save a patient's life in the ICU and he or she leaves to spend time with their families and go for walks on sunny days in their favorite park -- but this is still an exception.
Add to this the horrendous hours, which makes it impossible or at least very difficult for residents to get to know each other as anything other than tired, overworked, cogs in a machine. Throw in the intern's inevitable lack of knowledge and gross inefficiency, and it shouldn't be surprising that there's not much joy for them in the ICU. Speaking for myself at least, there isn't.
My brother just lost his cat, Huckleberry. He was the greatest cat. Friendly, intelligent, and always hungry! He had some klnd of cancer that deformed his jaw, and he had to have it taken off. For a cat who loved to eat, that must have been a particularly large loss. My brother, because he loved this cat, did the best thing for him in the end, and had him "put down" by the vet. Huck, RIP.
If Huckleberry had been a person, he would almost surely have been laid up in the ICU for the last few weeks of his life. He'd have been unconscious, with a feeding tube down his throat to substitute for the eating he'd loved before the cancer. The people "caring" for him would have been overworked and unfamiliar with him as anything other than a reason for more chores. They'd have been more concerned with writing down all the numbers that the machines hooked to his body were spewing out 24 hours a day than with "caring" for him in any sense that could have mattered.
I'm not saying that we should euthanize people. I'm saying that the end of Huckleberry's long life was probably better, being my brother's cat, than it would have been as a human being.
***
Here's a poem I've posted before that means more to me now that I'm spending so many hours in the ICU.
Three Elegaic Poems
Wendell Berry
I
Let him escape hospital and doctor
the manners and odors of strange places
the dispassionate skill of experts
Let him go free of tubes and needles
public corridors, the surgical white
of life dwindled to poor pain
Foreseeing the possibility of life without
possibility of joy, let him give it up.
Let him die in one of the old rooms
of his living, no stranger near him.
Let him go in peace out of the bodies
of his life --
flesh and marriage and household.
From the wide vision of his own windows
Let him go out of sight; and the final
time and light of his life's place be
last seen before his eyes' slow
opening in the earth.
Let him go like one familiar with the way
into the wooded and tracked and
furrowed hill, his body.
II
I stand at the cistern in front of the old barn
in the darkness, in the dead of winter,
the night strangely warm, the wind blowing,
rattling an unlatched door.
I draw the cold water up out of the ground, and drink.
At the house the light is still waiting.
An old man I've loved all my life is dying
In his bed there. He is going
slowly down from himself.
In final obedience to his life, he follows
his body out of our knowing.
Only his hands, quiet on the sheet, keep
a painful resemblance to what they no longer are.
III
He goes free of the earth.
The sun of his last day sets
clear in the sweetness of his liberty.
The earth recovers from his dying,
the hallow of his life remaining
in all his death leaves.
Radiances know him. Grown lighter
than breath, he is set free
in our remembering. Grown brighter
than vision, he grows dark
into the life of the hill
that holds his peace.
He's hidden among all that is,
and cannot be lost.
August 05, 2005
News Flash
Julie Saltman has catblogged.
December 31, 2004
No breaks from cat blogging!
Over the past week I've taken a much-needed break, and not just from blogging. I haven't read many blogs, and I haven't kept up with the newspapers. Instead, I've been reading some good books and going to church.
But today is Friday, and that means it's time for some good cat-blogging.
December 24, 2004
Friday cat blogging
December 03, 2004
It's Cat Time!
The big cat on the left is Merlyn. He reminded me of a black panther. When we were introduced, I was told to "watch out for the big one; he's mean." Well, he was a formidable cat, and he wouldn't put up with any shit. But he wasn't mean at all! He loved to cuddle! It just took a while for him to get to know you, but after that, he'd be in your lap purring every chance he got.
June 07, 2004
Gus
I work my 1L summer job all day
So after work I want to play!
This is why my heart is smitten
(and also why my toes are bitten)
For I have found a little kitten!
Hey you little cat! My toes!