Thursday, March 11, 2010

And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda

I've had this song ("And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda") running through my head all day. I'm guessing the first time I ever heard it was in Cambridge, MA, probably in the early 80s. One of the radio stations (WERS) put on a folk festival each year, and the concerts ran to 4 or 5 hours each night -- not a moment of which was dull. I heard a lot of really fine musicians at those concerts (including Nanci Griffith, Pierre Bensusan, and Malcolm Dalglish) -- and I think I must've heard Eric Bogle sing this song one of those times. (It's a gorgeous song, very sad, and is the ultimate anti-war song, in my opinion.) In any case, the line that's been most prominent in my mind today is: "I never knew there was worse things than dyin'."

Bullwinkle was in terrible shape when I got home this evening. We ran out of buprenex -- his pain meds -- yesterday, and he was without any at all for about 24 hours (I got some tramadol for him today). He was in a lot of pain this afternoon and quite miserable -- it was obvious his mouth was really bothering him. I got some of the tramadol into him almost immediately, and it started working within half an hour -- blessedly. Had I needed an illustration of the value of ongoing, consistent pain control, his experience today would've been more than enough to convince me.

The other evening, a neighbor stopped over to meet Bullwinkle (I think she's a regular reader of this blog but hadn't met him personally). She said, "He doesn't have that I-wanna-die look in his eyes." Well ... this evening he did. It's gone now ... but I'm keeping a close eye on him. This cancer has been a terribly long road for him and I think he might be running out of steam.

There are worse things than dying -- and extreme, ongoing pain is one of them.

1 comment:

  1. Lisa, your blogs are so well written. I know you must have a book in you somewhere.

    Sorry to hear about Bullwinkle's pain. That is, I think, the underlying truth for these kinds of struggle: what is endurable.

    Rosie is home from her surgery. Poor little thing; her left-rear quarter is all shaved, making her appear part cat, part reptile. Because they want to keep her from licking the stitches and partly because they found an eye infection that they don't want her to rub, she's wearing one of those cone-collars too.

    She can hobble around (they encourage it to get the joint mobile) and that cone bobs back and forth and up and down. I think she's healing ok and she's eating better than she has in a long time. But I can tell she feels humiliated by all the irregularity of her situation and apparatus.

    But so far so good.

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