and all the science i don't understand, it's just my job 5 days a week
the death of troxel was horrific but at least we knew within days what happened to him. i have seen a lot of death at work and school lately. i know it's part of my field, that i have to get desensitized, but it's been a lot of unexpected inexplicable loss of life that's so unnerving. like we can never really know enough until post-mortem. sometimes that is even written in our lecture notes, some illnesses cannot be diagnoses until "post-mortem". how heartbreaking. not knowing a pre-existing heart condition is present until after it's way too late. comforting perhaps in a way that magic exists somehow still within a human or animal body. that we can't control as much as we like. both terrifying and gives me faith that it could go other ways. that perhaps some miracles of life and not just death will occur and remain unexplained. a kitten started to die in my hands today at work. he had a fever all morning and so did his sister. they were both very tiny and he was the runt of Pademonia's litter. as i started to forcefeed him i got only 1 cc in and he didn't swallow, his pupils started contracting and his little body began to curl into the fetal position in my hand. he didn't swallow. he was having spasms all over. the food sat protruding from his mouth. i cried as i pryed his mouth back open and got the food out again afraid he was going to choke since he clearly was not swallowing or even trying to. nicolette appeared though i was waiting for brandy who had rushed to call chelsey. nicolette saw immediately i was crying and we rushed down with HubBub to the treatment room. carol got on the phone to dr. ewald and she told us to euthanize him. "i'm just not ready to do that yet", carol said looking intently into hubbub's face from over her glasses. carol handed him back to me and continued her conversation with dr. ewald. she told me to talk to him. i had him upright in my palms and walked around the room bouncing him and singing to him like a baby. i was repeating myself like a crazy saying, "don't go to sleep baby, kittenface stay awake, please, please open your eyes baby", i watched as his body shrunk further and his eyes remained open and yet his pupils shrank and then his eyeballs rolled down. "fuck", i said. the room was quiet. then he perked his head up and nicolette kept petting him. we gave him a shot of dextrose then he was able to sort of stand on his own and even meowed when marshall did an IM injection. WHAT THE FUCK. seriously. seriously. i am exhausted.