Hey guys, welcome back. Today I’m going to talk a little about humanity. What makes us human? How do these qualities that we possess in ourselves tie us to others? What makes these qualities shine the brightest in ourselves? And how can we help others to foster these traits in themselves? As in, what do we do as human beings that make our souls feel alive and how can we make others feel more human at times when their humanity is being stripped away?
I’ve spent the past week and a half caring for my old man pupper, Baxter. He’s about to turn 13 and for the past 4 or 5 years has been having mysterious “attacks” involving severe abdominal pain. They have always seemed to come out of nowhere, mostly occurring at night, and have resulted in multiple trips to the emergency vet with quite an array of diagnoses. The first was idiopathic nausea. For the nonmedical readers the term idiopathic means “we have no fucking clue.” Seems like a joke, right? It’s actually a pretty common thing to see this word attached to just about any medical term in the book. “This is what you have, we have no idea why.” So nausea medication was prescribed. Did it help? Yes. No. Maybe. Sometimes. It really depended on the occasion, with no rhyme or reason.
Then came the anal gland impaction diagnosis. This one seemed legit for a while. We did have more than one trip to the ED where, once his glands were “expressed,” he had relief of his pain. But not always. And sometimes they weren’t full at all. So the search continued. Unfortunately, this search usually took place in the ED in the middle of the night with a new ER doc who had never met Baxter before. Yes, I took him for regular vet visits. He’s actually on the every 6 months schedule now due to his furry old man status. We did a bunch of tests that resulted in a whole lot of nothing.
I think the next one after that was the rock in his stomach resulting in surgery to remove it. The thing with this one is, once you’ve done an abdominal X-ray on a dog with severe abdominal pain and you see a rock in there, it’s hard to take him home while he’s still screaming out in pain and shaking like a leaf. So surgery it was, we got a beautiful little rock about the size of a lima bean for all of our trouble that go around. Did it stop his pain? Hard to tell really. I mean, we literally cut the dog open in hopes of helping him that time. He was probably like “Guys, I’m sorry I complained. Please don’t put me under the knife again.”
Big shocker coming up now guys, it did not in fact “cure” him or make this not happen again. The next ED visit we got “severe osteoarthritis” added to his list of diagnoses. So some pain relievers were added in to the mix.
The next time it happened it was actually first thing in the morning when it started. I thought, great we can call the regular vet office and get him in this time with someone that knows him and they can actually see what’s happening. Except, no. It was our regular vet’s day off and there was literally no-one in the office that could see him that day. I’m sure I’m not going to be the first person to point out that, among other serious problems we’re all facing right now, a nationwide vet shortage is definitely one of them. So we shlepped an hour away to an emergency vet clinic that is open 24/7. I will not bore you with all the painful details of that day for us but rather just say that by the time we were seen, the episode was over. But it did get us an upcoming appointment with an internal medicine doc in the same clinic. That was last week.
The morning of his appointment he started to act weird, like he always does when these things are happening to him. Baxter may not be able to speak words to me but he has definitely found some unique and interesting ways to tell me when something is wrong. The easiest way to describe it would be to say that he becomes incredibly annoying. He climbs over me on the couch, stands on my feet, repeatedly bangs into the bathroom door when I’m in there, and (my personal favorite) stands in the corner where Levi’s toys are and spins the Sit N Spin with his foot. Literally anything to get my attention. So this particular morning I thought we were so lucky that it was happening for his internal medicine consult and abdominal ultrasound. That was a double edged sword for sure.
We do now have a diagnosis, acute pancreatitis. We also have had the worst, longest, and absolutely most complicated round of this thing that we’ve ever had and I hope to ever have. The thing with pancreatitis is that you can control the risk factors and do your best to control the symptoms but you can’t really cure it per se. So lifestyle modifications (sounds a little weird for a dog) like a very low fat diet, weight loss, more exercise are all what he needs long term. But it’s been an exhausting week and a half trying to get him to bounce back from this bout. I’ve literally been taking care of him around the clock all this time with trips back and forth to the internal medicine clinic, constant cleaning of the house, linens and the dog, hand feeding him to get him to take his meds, the list goes on.
Monday morning he woke me at 4 am to tell me something was wrong. First off, if this old man is awake before 7 there’s a problem. The problem? Projectile, explosive diarrhea. And lots of it. Back to the clinic. Guys, since Monday I’ve been dealing with round the clock diarrhea. We’re not talking the “hurry up and take me out” variety. We’re talking the running down the dogs legs without him even knowing it’s happening kind. So I’ve been cleaning poop all week; off the floors, the linens, the dog, myself. You name it, I’ve more than likely cleaned poop off it this week.
I am very happy to inform you all that today we seem to have taken a turn in the right direction finally. We were back at the clinic yesterday. I was very discouraged. He just wasn’t showing any signs of improving and it was wearing on me. Not just the constant cleaning or the week with no sleep. It was the watching him in such excruciating pain, that was what I wasn’t sure how much more I could take. And I had that conversation with the vet. The conversation about is it time? Is it time to just stop his pain? But he had been researching new ideas for treating pancreatitis in dogs and wanted to try adding in some steroids. Apparently that was what poor Baxter’s pancreas had been waiting for all this time. I hesitate to even type these words but it has now been almost 24 hours since I have seen anything involuntarily eek out of the dog’s butt.
So why have I gone into such great detail describing my dog’s diarrhea to you all? And what does it have to do with our humanity? Well, to say that a lot of emotions and memories from when I was taking care of Mister came flooding back up close and personal while all of this was happening would be an understatement. It made me think about all the things I had to do to care for him when he could no longer do them for himself and how we both felt about it.
It started off as little things after his first surgery. Driving, for instance. Not a huge thing really until you can’t do it anymore. Buttoning his shirt. Again, not that big of a deal. But obviously as things progressed it became things like assistance with showering, counting out his pills, help with his seatbelt. Middle of the road type of assistance.
And then the last few months it was everything. Shaving, toileting, eating, all of it really. Everything you do every day that you take for granted, he needed someone to do it for him. Every last little detail he was no longer able to do for himself. It’s hard to imagine being on the other side of this, being the one needing all this care. So I did everything I could to care for him the very best way that I could, down to the smallest detail, and I really did try to do it with grace and with as little complaining as possible. No one asks to have this happen to them. No one wants to be fed, dressed, have their butt cleaned by someone else. But as human beings we also need to be fed, dressed, have our butts cleaned.
The greatest gift you can give another human being is to do something to care for them and then never mention it to them again. If someone you love needs help in the bathroom, just do it and let it go. It was more emotionally painful for them than it ever will be for you. Have a neighbor that has mobility issues? Mow their lawn and never mention it to them again. It’s really that simple.
So now I’ll get to the actual reason for my choice of topic. I feel like more and more people are losing their sense of humanity. I feel like less and less people actually care about the safety and well being of others. We are all humans, all with human needs, human emotions. And we need each other. “No man is an island” and all that. We need to care for one another. Be compassionate. Care. Or else it’s all just a bunch of shit (no pun intended there, with all my butt talk). Sometimes the compassion and care comes on a grand scale, with a big sacrifice. But sometimes it’s having a bit of conversation with an elderly person in the grocery store. You might be the only person they get to talk to that day. It might be patiently waiting with a smile while someone in a wheelchair gets into their car before you can get into your own. It might be the only time all day that they don’t feel rushed or like the whole world is annoyed with them. All these little things add up to the sum that makes us mankind.
Including getting vaccinated. This is the easiest, most simple way that we can care for one another at this time in history, guys. The people that have stepped up to the plate and gotten this vaccine, we’re the brave ones. Not scared or sheep or ill informed. We need to do it to protect one another, to protect our children, to protect the vulnerable. But mostly, we need to do it to protect our own humanity.