Slashdot Mirror
Dog Eats Man's Toe and Saves His Life
Have you ever been so drunk that you passed out and your dog ate your toe? I haven't either, but luckily for Michigander Jerry Douthett, he has. It turns out Jerry has type 2 diabetes and a wound on his toe had becoming dangerously infected. After a night of drinking Jerry passed out in his chair and the family dog Kiko decided to do a little doggy doctoring. From the article: "'The toe was gone,' said Douthett. 'He ate it. I mean, he must have eaten it, because we couldn't find it anywhere else in the house. I look down, there's blood all over, and my toe is gone.' [Douthett's wife] Rosee, 40, rushed her husband to the hospital where she's a gerontology nurse — Spectrum Health's Blodgett Campus. Kiko had gnawed to a point below the nail-line. When tests revealed an infection to the bone, doctors amputated what was left of the toe."
How much do you have to drink to pass out so badly that you don't feel your dog eating your toe??
Maybe not much if the toe is rotting and the nerves are damaged by diabetes and infection.
Besides, the man is a retard - he was urged to check for diabetes, but resisted "fearing the diagnosis" while his brother died of diabetes complications earlier!
It's really easy to point to someone acting out of fear and say "That's irrational: that's stupid." All of us have procrastinated out of fear on smaller things than "You could die." It's a universal human failing, and very common when it comes to scary medical things. Yes he should have done many things different, but we don't know the full story.
Let's reserve terms like "retard" for people who aren't behaving irrationally out of fear for their lives.
In a hostile environment, hiding illness or injury is a common strategy to avoid predation. In this case, the jackals would be health insurance companies.
When we prioritize providing decent healthcare over welfare for rich bankers, blowing up brown people and looking under people's clothes in the airport, we'll see less of this sort of thing.