From the article: > I once cared for a woman in her sixties who had severe chest and abdominal pain from a bowel obstruction that had ruptured her colon, cause

From the article: > I once cared for a woman in her sixties who had severe chest and abdominal pain from a bowel obstruction that had ruptured her colon, caused her to have a heart attack, and put her into septic shock and renal failure. I performed an emergency operation to remove the damaged length of colon and give her a colostomy. A cardiologist stented her coronary arteries. We put her on dialysis, a ventilator, and intravenous feeding, and stabilized her. After a couple of weeks, though, it was clear that she was not going to get much better. The septic shock had left her with heart and respiratory failure as well as dry gangrene of her foot, which would have to be amputated. She had a large, open abdominal wound with leaking bowel contents, which would require twice-a-day cleaning and dressing for weeks in order to heal. She would not be able to eat. She would need a tracheotomy. Her kidneys were gone, and she would have to spend three days a week on a dialysis machine for the rest of her life. On Valentine's day this year, I had to put my 13 y/o cat to sleep. I had taken him to the vet 3 weeks ago because he couldn't poop a couple of times in the last 2 months. When this happened, he'd quit eating and drinking, was vomiting up bile, and hid under a blanket. The first time I gave him an appetite stimulant and hairball treatment recommended by the vet, which worked, but he still didn't poop for a few days. He finally did, and the thing that came out was triangle-shaped, 1 3/4" on the longest side and 1 1/2" on the other 2. It was crazy. The 2nd time it was similar though not as large. I took him to the vet after this 2nd incident (he was doing okay) and the vet explained that in a 13-y/o cat, their kidneys get weak, don't concentrate their urine as well, and the cat loses too much water in their urine. They have to compensate by drinking a lot, which my other cat, a couple of years older, does. The vet said to try the hairball lube 3x a day instead of 2 and I tried to get the cat to drink more. The vet said if it happens again, I could drop off the cat and he could knock him out, inject some saline into his rectum, massage his abdomen to break up the stool, get it out, etc. It happened again. The cat was obviously miserable for a couple of days. I took him to the vet with a written list of the kinds of problems the cat and I were going through: not eating, not drinking, poop drips all over the house, constantly trying to use the litter box but unable to, hiding under blankets, etc. The vet said he could treat him as he said before, but since this was likely a chronic condition, I'd probably be back in less than a month for the same thing. I was prepared to put the cat to sleep when I took him to the vet: it was awful seeing him suffer and likely in pain. When we decided to do it, I told the vet "At least with Niko there is the option of ending it. If this were happening to me, I'm not sure I'd have that option." It's awful to me that we force people and their families to suffer physically, emotionally, and financially and are kinder to our pets that we are to people.