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April 17, 2005

Adventures with Bruce - It's Time to Pull the Plug

by Tallulah Interloper

Hi! I'm Tallulah, and I'm the sole voice for reality-based thinking on this blog. Today I want to talk about Ferdy's pet human Bruce.

I'm very concerned about Bruce's quality of life. For one thing, he's in constant physical pain and I just can't stand to see him suffer. For another, he needs a machine to stay alive and no matter what he says, it's a cruel indignity to make him breathe through a tube every night.

I think it's time to pull the plug.

Now it is true that Bruce says he doesn't want to die; however, he's clearly not in his right mind. For example, when you ask him about the reasons for the war in Iraq, he mutters something about democracy instead of laying the blame where it belongs-- with Haliburton and Bush's oil buddies. So I'm willing to conclude that he's in a persistent vegetative state and the behavior we're seeing is just random brain activity.

The worst thing he has to endure is the breathing machine. He has to have it attached every night or he starts to choke to death. This is severely limiting: he can't fall asleep in church and he nearly died last week when he passed out during a panel discussion on data structures for Wet Lab Micro-Arrays.

I know some of you are thinking that I have some selfish reason for wanting to get rid of Bruce. It is true that the proceeds from Bruce's life insurance would enable Nate to take me with him to college, but that's a very small consideration compared to letting a formerly brilliant scientist humiliate himself by supporting George W. Bush's foreign policy.

Anyway, please write your legislators and tell them we need to have Ferdy removed as Bruce's guardian and me put in his place. Remember: a low-quality life is worse than no life at all. To believe anything else is a clear violation of the separation of church and state!


# At Sun 12:18 PM | Permalink | Trackback URI | Comments (8) | More Adventures with Bruce

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Tracked on April 26, 2005 8:49 AM

Comments

Posted by: Kilo at April 17, 2005 1:52 PM

Aha! Here's a little tip. I don't know if yours has the humidity attachment, but a little bit of vodka goes a long way.

Oh wait. That's drink the vodka and then hook up the humidity compartment.

Or heck, you could load up on the vodka and skip the humidity compartment altogether.

(I sleep with a CPAP, too - that is when I'm not all sinusy - I have the nasal aires things because I'm claustrophobic and didn't get a kick out of playing "jet pilot and steward" with the hubby. It is so not fun and there are days I wonder if I could bribe the cats to pull the plug for me!)


Posted by: Kris at April 17, 2005 3:05 PM

He has a full face mask, so he has to use the humidity attachment or he gets nightmares about dying of thirst in the desert. There was one scary night when he accidentally knocked the water tank on its side and started to drown, but the noise I made when the blower fell on me awakened everybody in time to fix the problem.


Posted by: Ferdy Author Profile Page at April 17, 2005 7:06 PM

http://www.cpap.com/productpage/10 is the one I have and so far it's been the most "untippable" (so no drowning).

I feel for you though. If you think the nasal aires might help rather than the full mask (the thought of the mask just makes me cringe), http://www.cpapman.com/nasalair.html is the one I use for that.


Posted by: Kris at April 17, 2005 8:08 PM

The problem is I open my mouth while sleeping, even if I'm using the headband to keep it closed. (For those not familiar with a CPAP, if you have a nasal unit and you open your mouth, the air goes out your mouth and the lungs don't get any. This is bad.)


Posted by: Bruce the Human Pet at April 17, 2005 8:33 PM

Do we need to start a "Blogs for Bruce?"


Posted by: FTS at April 17, 2005 9:23 PM

Um.... duct tape? Ugh. Hubby says it's the one time a day I DO shut my mouth. (Well at least now that I'm not snoring all the time). Now if only we could get longer tubing so we can actually sleep like real people. Imagine that! (Wonder if we could create jumpers with some sort of connector.)

We shall have to form a community! Got a nifty acronym?


Posted by: Kris at April 17, 2005 10:10 PM

Actually, I think Tallulah has the right idea. I bet that Bruce doesn't have a living will or a medical power of attorney so I say "pull the plug"!


Posted by: VARepublicMan at April 20, 2005 1:21 PM

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