A cat called Gary

How does one deal with the end of a life? Does one not go gently into that good night? Does one slip away on streams of morphine? Or do all wise, good, wild, and serious men rage against it?

How does one rage against metastatic osteosarcoma? Multiple drugs and radiation treatments have elapsed without a response. Tell me to tell him what to do next. He wants to fight. With what? We have nothing left. He has fought a great fight. He is not a quitter. Tell me how to tell him that he’s a not a quitter. Tell me how to tell him that we aren’t quitting. Quitting implies a different end result will be achieved if one does not pursue further therapy. Even though I am not his primary oncologist, I wish we could cut it all out of him, curing him of his paralysis, relieving him of constipation, paresthesias – so he could sit up in bed without oxygen and play the Wii.

Currently, he’s content to sit back and play Halo 3 on his 35 inch LCD monitor.

Gary. Gary knows something is off. He’s not in his usual habitat. He looks at the bed and circles underneath the bed, much like he did at home. He’s friendly to strangers, they come in frequently, checking monitors and tubing. Does Gary know? Does he know he’s providing some semblance of normalcy to this man’s last few days amidst beeping sat monitors, IV flushes, and BP checks? Does he sense the inevitable?

I don’t know. I do know that Gary’s owner desires to stay in the hospital until the end. He doesn’t want to burden his family with the responsibility of caring for him at home. They can solely focus on quality without worrying about the monitors and IV flushes. He has visitors constantly – I’m amazed at his strong spirit in welcoming them when he need not given his situation.

At times like this, one has to look face one’s own mortality. Frankly, I hate doing that. It’s not that I am not “secure” in where I will end up. It’s just plain scary. Does losing Dad nearly two years ago play into this fear? Absolutely. I think about him every day and wish I can call him and talk, just talk. Sigh. When will that feeling leave?

There may be some of you (especially people of my generation) reading this who say, “I don’t fear death. It’s not scary to me.” Some of you may think this fear childish or call my faith immature. To say that one doesn’t fear death unless one has truly seen it, truly been in its presence and threatening your existence may be a way rationalizing something we can’t fathom. (It’s curious, though, that the elderly I know don’t fear death – for a different reason, and one I cant put my finger on – Faith? Resignation? Inevitability?) Gary’s owner is now facing death head on, with dignity – I believe him when he says he doesn’t fear it.

I debated whether to include a recipe… I have chosen to include a classic.

French Silk Pie. (Vera’s recipe, but a favorite in our household) I’ll edit pics into this later.

Ingredients:

½ cup butter (that’s one stick) – softenened at room temp

½ to ¾ cup sugar (adjust to taste and if your diabetic)

Cream above using hand mixer.

Melt 3 oz of bittersweet chocolate (get the good stuff) in the microwave

Add chocolate to butter/sugar. Beat x 3 minutes on high.

*2 eggs – Add one egg at a time to mixture, beating on high for about 4 minutes after each egg.

Add 1 tsp vanilla

Place in prebaked pie crust and chill for 2 hours, top with whipped cream (+/- shavings of chocolate)

Serve. Eat. Repeat.

*If you are pregnant, think you might be pregnant, have cancer, are undergoing chemotherapy, are otherwise immunocompromised, have small children, or scared of the immensely small chance of getting a bad egg and getting E Coli infection (not pretty, trust me) then you can use Egg Beaters. Fat free (a plus) – and they are pasteurized!

That’s what I did in this case – I took one to work for lab meeting and one to the resident’s while I was on service as an attending.

Thanks for reading...

T
(Note: Gary's owner fought bravely and lost his battle to osteosarcoma last week)