"Ditto Euthanasia, ..."

The old cat across the street, a great neighbor for 10 years, lost his wife to a very long bout of illness.  It’s been going on two years now…and he is falling rapidly to illness himself.  He spent many, many years at his bedridden wife’s side, caring for her all night and taking care of his landscape all day, …getting sleep in naps; his deeds on behalf of his wife kept him strong and alive with ideas.  This is a gent who flew as an Army-Aircorps pilot in the war…and I can’t remember ever having a more easy to know neighbor, but his children, all “grownups”, have pretty much abandoned him since the last time he took out a great big loan & helped them all out of their extreme financial tangles.  They’re just waiting, like vultures to carrion, for the property to divvy-up.  Just between you & me, these are some rat-bastid kids.  The only one who would lift a finger has been diagnosed with a bone disease and can barely walk himself.  Yeah, it’s a sob story…but it gets worse.  So my neighbor’s wife dies and he begins to tumble health wise & ends-up in the hospital followed by a full-care nursing home for a few months, now he’s back in his own home…because his insurance coverage stopped paying on his nursing home stay.  Yeah, this is American Medical at it’s finest.  So he’s picking up his mail yesterday (using a walker with a basket on it ~~ a guy who was tending his prize roses and cutting brush with a chainsaw last summer) and he tells me he got a call from the hospital:  They say his bill is $140,000.oo, partially covered by his insurance, & that he needs to pay x amount on it immediately or they will send out a representative to budget his finances for him.  He served his country honorably as a pilot, raised children with an ever sicker wife whom he adored, lived the past fifteen or so years honorably at his vanishing wife’s bedside; & now he’s miserable & alone, & this is not some idiot, this was a vital, energetic man just last year.  & he’s tired …& he misses his best gal to no end. 

Now you tell me why……..we put down our sick pets…& it’s called “humane.”

But we drag out the lives and torment the limited incomes and peace-of-mind of the elderly sick.  They are chronic cash cows to the medical profession, it seems; money in the bank, weak and easily manipulated, families in turmoil over power-of-attorney, etc. & they cannot ask to be “put down” in a humane fashion. 

It’s “humane” to gently ease the suffering of a beloved dog, …but it’s a crime to gently ease the suffering of a beloved human. 

We are in a world of shit, …common sense is out the window, humanity is spiraling down, down, ever downward, & …it just does not have to be this way.  The rich can still be rich, filthy rich if need to be, …without terrorizing the people with absurdities.