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Essays & OpinionsOften in Error, Never in Doubt! The $300 Barf!Sunday, June 21, 2009This past Friday started out as another weekend visit to Liz. I was able to leave work a little early, which got me into Midwest City by about 7:30pm. (I actually got to Liz's place before she got home from the lab!) I had a 9:30pm conference call with a customer who was upgrading a database and wanted vendor support (that's me!) in case of problems. That eliminated Lobster and Logan's as dinner choices, since we didn't have enough time for a sit-down dinner. So we got some fast food and settled down to watch another episode of Hawaii Five-O. (We're trying to pace ourselves; we're working on Season 6 and we've read rumors that sales of the DVD haven't been all that great, so there may not be a season seven set!) About 10:30 or so, after the customer support call and finishing The $10,000 Nickel, we noticed Gatsby chewing on something. Now you have to understand that Gatsby, one of Liz' two Shar Pei, is a little rascal and somewhat of an omnivore. He'll eat or chew on just about anything. But just as we noticed Gatsby munching away, Liz also noticed that a memo clip was missing from the door frame just above our little rascal. Designed to hold small pieces of paper, the clip is mostly plastic. But it does have a rather large, sharp pin that allows the clip to be pinned to a wall, door frame and so forth. Once Gatsby has something in his mouth, he hates giving it up. But through a bit of brute force, properly applied, we got some plastic debris out of his mouth. We found more bits of plastic around the floor where Gatsby had been chewing away. But the pin? We looked over the floor, under the rug he had been sitting on, around the baseboards, but no pin! Gatsby seemed to be OK; we didn't see any blood coming out of his mouth. The pin was sharp and large enough to be a potential problem, but it was also small enough to have fallen to the floor and become hidden somewhere. But in "an abundance of caution" (don't you just love that phrase, which seems to have become popular with government agencies lately?), we had to assume the pin was now inside the dog. Liz got on the computer and started Googling "my dog ate a sharp object". We found quite a few references to this technique: take 100% cotton balls (not synthetic) and soak them in cream, peanut butter or some other tasty food. Then feed the cotton balls to the dog. Once inside the patient, the cotton balls are supposed to attract the sharp object, or at least wrap around the object, and allow it to pass through the critter's digestive system. We found that Liz did have a supply of 100% cotton balls, and plenty of peanut butter, which the dogs love. (Liz hides the dog's pills in peanut better, which they then scarf up.) Liz was ready to try that approach, but I was a little more skeptical. We didn't know that Gatsby had swallowed the pin, although that seemed like a pretty good possibility. If the cotton-ball approach didn't work, what might happen as the pin made it's way through Gatsby's stomach and intestines? Some years earlier, Liz had another Shar Pei which swallowed some sort of sharp object; that poor Pei wound up with a perforated intestine and died. We decided that the best course of action called for some professional help. So we packed up Gatsby and Lizzie and headed to the animal emergency hospital that we've used before (many times!). There was nothing wrong with Lizzie (the other Pei, not to be confused with Liz, my fiancee!), but we knew she'd be sad and worried if we left her by herself. We got to the hospital about 11 or so and got checked in. Apparently this was a busy night at the hospital, since it took a while before we met the vet on duty. Liz showed the vet a a second, undamaged clip to give him an idea of what might be inside Gatsby. Liz also told the vet about the cotton-ball technique. After some brief discussion of possibilities, the vet recommended that we take some X-rays. So Gatsby was taken for a visit to the radiology room. This animal hospital has some pretty slick technology, including a digital X-ray system: no film to be developed! After a bit Gatsby came back, followed a few minutes later by the vet. He pulled up the X-rays on the exam-room's terminal and sure enough, the pin was definitely in the Pei!
So, what next? The vet pointed out that Gatsby's tummy seemed to be pretty full with food. (Gatsby has a very good appetite!) Also, the opening into the stomach is larger than the opening out of the stomach. And the pin, while sharp, wasn't all that large. All of this suggested to the vet that the best approach would be to induce the dog to vomit. All that food in his tummy would provide some protection as the stomach contents came back out. This made sense to us, so we agreed to the procedure. Once again Gatsby was taken away to other parts of the hospital. (For those who might be curious, Gatsby was given a shot of Apomorphine, which is a mild phorm of morphine that induces nausea.) We had a longer wait this time, which we spent out in the lobby. Eventually Gatsby was brought back to the exam room, looking a little worse for wear. Was the procedure successful? Was the pin no longer inside the Pei? The hospital staff were clever about finding the answer. No one wanted to rummage through the upchucked stomach contents by hand to find out, so instead they took another X-ray -- of the vomit! And there it was, the pin!
So, about 1am Saturday morning, we left the hospital and returned home. Gatsby was safe, and feeling much better. And we've gone through the house, trying to collect and put away any other objects that might be dangerous if they found their way into a Pei. Oh, and we didn't leave the hospital completely empty-handed; we were given a CD with the X-rays taken during Gatsby's visit. Something for the scrapbook. And the title of this story is a little misleading: it really wasn't a $300 barf. The office visit and X-rays came to $179; the barf itself only cost another $82.75! (But Gatsby is worth every cent!!!) Racket, a good cat!Sunday, March 8, 2009Yesterday Liz and I walked Racket to the Rainbow Bridge. I’m not sure we can really call him "Racket", since he only had his name for about an hour. On the way to the vet’s office, we realized we would be asked for the cat’s name. It’s short drive, which didn’t give us much time to think through this issue. But he was the certainly the noisiest of the cats that hang around Liz’s place; the cat the made a racket of noise. So “Racket” seemed as good as anything. Liz, my fiancée, has a special place in her heart for animals that have been abused or neglected. A large collection of cats roam her neighborhood; whether these critters are homeless or just out for a stroll we don’t know. Some of these cats sure look like they don’t get much TLC, so a while back Liz started putting out food for them. You know, cats are smart and they can communicate; it wasn’t long before word got around the neighborhood. Soon we had a collection of “regulars” coming around for vittles. Racket, a very pretty black cat with white spots, was the latest visitor to join this group. And unlike every other cat that has set foot on the front porch, Racket didn’t seem very feral or frightened. He’d come around, meowing for attention. And when we’d open the front door with our big cup of food for the supper dish, Racket wouldn’t run away and hide. It wasn’t too long before he’d be sitting right outside the door waiting for us. In fact, he was so friendly that he started to try coming in the door as we were going out! We already had a challenge keeping the dogs in the house, trying to keep Racket out added a lot of complexity. We started noticing that Racket’s eyes seemed to look funny. It looked like he kept them closed most of the time. Was he blind? By this time Racket trusted us enough to allow me to get close enough to get a better look at his eyes. One looked pretty normal, but the other had some pus and other material in it. Liz and I kept an eye on him for a couple of weeks, but we didn’t see any improvement. We finally decided to take him to Liz’s vet and have him checked out. We figured this trip might get to be expensive, but we’d grown to like the little fellow, and were willing to put out some money to get him fixed up. We put him in one of these cardboard cat carriers you can get at PetSmart, which he didn’t like. He wasn’t happy on the ride to the office, either. But once we were taken to an exam room and let him out of the carrier, Racket calmed down. With some stroking and soothing words, he grew quite calm. In fact, he became quite curious about the little room and kept trying to jump from the exam table to the counter with the sink and all the neat medical equipment. Eventually the doc came in and started giving Racket a basic checkup. She discovered that he was a neutered male, which surprised me; I thought he still had all of his equipment. (I guess I still don't know how to sex a cat properly!) His teeth were in pretty bad shape and suggested that he was about eight years old. He had no external signs of parasites or ringworms, and except for his eyes, seemed to be in pretty good shape for a middle-aged cat. But the eyes. The vet discovered that Racket had entropion. For those who aren’t familiar with this condition, it describes eyelids that for some reason or another have folded over so that the eyelashes rub against the cornea. It’s a painful condition, and over time the eyelashes can scratch the cornea enough to cause blindness. Racket had entropion in both eyes; the condition was so bad in one eye that an ulcer had formed. This diagnosis was ironic, to say the least. Liz has two Chinese Shar Pei, and entropion is a common condition among this breed. In fact, in the last two months both of Liz’s Shar Pei have had entropion surgery. But cats? We had no idea that cats could suffer from this condition! The vet estimated it would cost at least $300 for the corrective surgery on Racket. We talked about this for a bit; money is kind of tight right now, and I’m not sure we could afford to treat every stray cat in the neighborhood. But I’d already filed my tax returns for 2008, and was expecting a pretty decent refund. We decided that we’d go ahead with the surgery in a couple of weeks, once that return was safely in my bank account. At this point the vet raised an issue we hadn’t thought about: she suggested that Racket ought to be tested for feline HIV/AIDS. A positive result could have some implications for Racket’s treatment. In particular, his post-operative care. Liz wouldn’t be able to keep Racket in her house; the Shar Pei would go crazy with a cat in the premises. I couldn’t keep him at my home, since that would risk infecting my own cats. And obviously, we couldn't keep him outside. Also, Racket was very likely immuno-compromised, which might make recovery more difficult and complex. In the end, we came to a consensus that in the event of a positive test, Racket should be put down. Of course, we considered this to be an academic question, since Racket seemed to be in pretty good shape, save for his eyes. One of the technicians took Racket to a back room for a blood draw; he was back with is in just a few minutes later. It took a bit longer for the test results to come back. Positive! The results were shocking, and quite sad. Racket’s friendly personality strongly suggested that he had been around people for much of his life. Whether he had run away from home and got lost, or whether he had been abandoned, we don’t know. His general good health suggested that hadn’t been abused, but he’d certainly been neglected. Life didn’t seem fair to the little fellow, but there wasn’t much we could do at this point. Very reluctantly on the part of all four of us (the vet, the tech, Liz and myself), we decided to go ahead and have Racket put down. It was a very sad decision, but at least Racket passed on in the hands of loving and caring people. Racket, a cat who deserved better from life.
A Word of Thanks to Ralph Nader?January 7, 2006This coming Monday (January 9), the Senate Judiciary Committee begins hearings on Samuel Alito, George Bush’s nominee to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. From everything I’ve been reading, it sounds like the Democrats don’t have much chance of preventing Alito’s nomination from clearing the Senate, giving Bush a chance to alter the philosophical make-up of the Supreme Court for years to come. So, when the members of “Bush’s Base” hit their knees tomorrow to give praise to Jesus, I wonder how many of them will add in a little “thank you” for Ralph Nader and this golden opportunity that he has provided? Sure, the unrepentant Nader voters will argue that it’s unfair to blame Ralph for Al Gore’s loss in the 2000 election. They’ll argue that there were many reasons for Gore’s loss in Florida, including:
All of that may be true, but none of those reasons change the fact that over 95,000 Florida voters cast ballots for Ralph Nader in 2000, and George Bush beat Al Gore by only 543 votes. If Nader had not been on the ballot in 2000, would Gore have won? We’ll never really know for sure, but it’s hard to believe that very many of those 95,000+ votes would have gone to Dubya. Let’s assume that 90% of Nader’s Florida voters would have stayed home in 2000 for lack of an acceptable candidate representing their views; that would leave 9,500 votes, and I’ll bet dollars to donuts that most of those would have been given to the Gore camp. Enough votes for Gore to have won Florida and the Presidency, despite all of the other challenges enumerated by Nader’s apologists. In his 2000 (and 2004) campaign, Nader argued over and over that there are no practical differences between the two major parties; only Nader and the Green Party represented a true alternative to business as usual. Well, now that we’ve had a few years to put the 2000 election into perspective, does anyone from the Nader camp really believe that if Gore had won the 2000 election, we would have:
A sad footnote to Nader’s 200 and 2004 campaigns remains the fact that many of the issues he raised (gerrymandered Congressional districts and campaign finance reform, for example) are very legitimate issues, worthy of more discussion than these issues usually receive. Heck, in the interests of honesty and open discussion I should admit that I voted for Nader in 2000! (However, I was a California resident at the time, and the votes cast by people like me had no effect on the election results in the Golden State.) As Otto Von Bismarck said in 1867, “Politics is the art of the possible.” In 2000, there was no possible way for Nader to win. By the time the Florida election rolled around, it was painfully obvious that this was going to be a close race. Nader’s idealistic (or, as I prefer to describe it, “idiotic, unrealistic and egotistical”) effort to promote the discussion of very legitimate political issues accomplished little to push forward his goals. I truly believe that overall, our society would be much different today if Nader had gracefully bowed out of the race and encouraged his supporters to vote for Gore. As an after word, the web site setup by “Unrepentant Nader Voters” doesn’t look very active these days. There are broken links, and the main page looks like it hasn’t been updated since sometime before the 2004 election! Maybe these unrepentant Nader apologists have finally realized that sometimes, voting for the lesser of two evils can make a big practical difference in the real world. I can only hope the unrepentant Nader voters are hiding their heads in shame. [Simultaneously posted at OtherSingles.] Justice...And TreesSome background... I'm a graduate of Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, class of 1977. My major was Communication Arts, more specifically film and TV production. I started out with an interest in the technical side of the business, but along the way I took a few writing courses and found them very enjoyable; one class in particular: "Writing for Radio". During one class session the instructor started out by proposing a scenario: you're walking down a street and you see a tree. The assignment: right then and there write a paragraph about the tree. Well, I wracked my brain for several minutes trying to think about the tree. What did I see in the tree? Was there something in the tree? Or was the tree itself special in some way? I started to panic, because I couldn't think of anything! In tense situations like this, my mind starts to wander, and this was no exception. After a few moments my thoughts drifted to an incident that happened a year or two earlier while visiting my sister at her college. While that incident had nothing at all to do with trees, it led to a sudden thought on how I could work a tree into a story, with nothing at all special about the tree or anything in it. Although that little story is only about 2/3 of a page long (typed, double-spaced), it's one of my personal favorites from among a huge collection of otherwise forgettable prose that I put to paper during those years. Why? For the first time, I'd written about something that I felt personally very strongly about. In the years since, I've found that writing about things that are significant to me is extremely satisfying, and much to my pleasant surprise, that's the kind of writing that some people seem to enjoy. I figure it's also a good way for people to get to know me better! (After about 15 minutes to write our little paragraph, we then had to read our paragraph to the class. After reading my paragraph, the instructor's first comment was: "A closet wacko!".) I've dug through my archives, and for better or worse, here it is:
As for the incident that focused my wandering mind... I was visiting my sister, a student at Cal Poly Pomona at the time. Karin, her roommate and I were out on a shopping expedition. While the girls were crushing the store, I decided to wait in the car and listen to the radio. The shopping center was located on a very busy street, at least two lanes in each direction. My car was parked facing the street; keeping an eye on the traffic flow gave my eyes something to do while the ears listened to the radio. After a while, I noticed a motorcyclist coming along the road; the traffic he was in was flowing along at 40mph or so. Some idiot woman then pulled out from the parking lot, right in front of the motorcyclist! The poor fellow hit the side of her car broadside and was thrown off his cycle. Fire trucks, police and ambulance arrived within moments. A few minutes later Karin and her roommate returned from their shopping efforts. We rubbernecked for a few moments, but then had to leave while the first responders were still working the accident scene. Years later I happened to remind Karin about that accident and she surprised me by saying that she'd read a day or so later in a local paper that the motorcyclist had died from his injuries. Of Shopping Carts and Parking LotsCopyright © 2004 Eric Chevalier I've developed a pet theory that you can tell a lot about a society by looking at its parking lots. As I walk through the parking lots of my local grocery stores and WalMarts, I can't help thinking: "We're in trouble!" Next time you visit your local grocery store, take a look around as you get out of your car. Do you see any shopping carts abandoned around the parking lot? If your town is anything like mine, the answer is probably not just "yes," but "hell, yes!" What puzzles me about this state of affairs is that all of the grocery stores I patronize have corrals scattered around the lots where you can leave your empty cart. My local Reasor's, for example, has so many corrals scattered around a fairly small parking lot that you don't have to walk more than four or five spaces in order to find a place to park your cart. So why do I see more abandoned carts than corralled carts? After many years of observing this phenomenon, I can't help concluding that we're a very lazy society. Of course, we all have good reasons why we can't walk the cart over to the corral. It's raining and we don't want to get wet. We're in a hurry and we can't afford to spend another 30 or 60 seconds at the store. Let the store's employees come around and corral the carts; after all, isn't that what we're paying for? But wait! Suppose you pull into your local grocery store. You park your car and notice that a previous customer abandoned their cart in the space right next to you. Now, you need to walk to the store's entrance, right? And that's where the cart needs to go, too. So, do you grab the cart and pull it along with you? I do, but I don't seem to have very much company in this effort. Maybe it is raining. But you're going to get wet walking towards the store whether or not you're pulling the cart. And no matter how rushed you might be, is the cart really going to slow you down that much? And maybe we are paying for the store's cart corrallers. But if we all pulled an abandoned cart into the store with us every time we head towards the entrance, maybe the store can hire a few less employees, saving us a few cents on our shopping dollar. Or, better yet, the cart corrallers could be redeployed to bag groceries or help us locate that can of Beanie Weenies we can't seem to find. (We can only hope...!) And it's not just shopping carts. I can't tell you how many times I've stood in line at an ATM while the patron in front of me fills out their deposit slip, stuffs his or her check and paperwork into the deposit envelope and then proceeds with the transaction. Obviously, we can't count on our deposit being properly processed without including the necessary paperwork. But next time you visit the ATM, why don't you grab a couple extra envelopes and deposit slips so come next payday you can fill out the paperwork and stuff the envelope while you're sitting at your desk at work. Thus prepared, the customer standing behind you during your next visit to the ATM will appreciate your expeditious transaction. And you will appreciate that expeditious transaction, too, especially if that visit to the ATM is accompanied by cold, wet weather! I can (with difficulty) understand why we might be reluctant to corral our carts after a shopping expedition. But I can't understand why we are so unwilling (or unable) to help roundup a stray cart on our way into the store. Or simplify our visit to the ATM with a little planning ahead. Unfortunately, every time I pull into my local grocery store, I can't help thinking that we're not just a lazy society, but a stupid and lazy society! |
