pyrexia comes from Greek 'pur', which means 'fire'

i am staring at the seafoam green botched paint job wall of my cell. at least that is what i feel like i am in. i am trapped in this rectangular room with jovial voices behind the employees only door, muffled enough to keep my ears from hearing why or how they possibly could be high-spirited while these adorable, obviously loving creatures are aching, possibly dying, at their fingertips. the portraits on the walls are trivial, failing at their attempts to cheer me up.

i switch positions on the bench. i stare at the poster board of the anatomy of my cat. why didn't they be more specific when asking for her symptoms? i want to burst through the employees only door and see what they are doing to her. if she is laying on the hospital bed next to that barking dog. she hates dogs. i am sure that in her hot little body, that insistent little mind of hers will simply give up fighting for life... it just might not be worth it to live through this night listening to this incessantly yelping dog.

the doctor says his piece to me about how bad her fever is and that they cannot possibly know what it is without a series of tests. he sends his technician in a few minutes later to outline the thousand dollars in costs for tests of every kind. of course it could be anything when they haven't asked me about any symptoms, behavioral changes or factors that might have led up to the fever. i ask if they may do one test at a time to see if anything shows up and then we can proceed to medicate, decide how to treat her illness. she has to ask, she says.

the technician comes back in with a new "quote". i feel more like i am haggling with a peddler. like i am negotiating my cat's life. this this and this will cost blah blah and blah. she is using technical terms and when i ask her what she means, her descriptions are equivocal, like she is defining a word using that word in her definition. her explanations are circular and obscure and i feel like i am being given the runaround. i am not doubting her basic knowledge of what it is they are doing... i just want her to speak in layman's terms for me, because i am asking what we can do to help dagny, what we might do to diagnose and treat her without just stabbing at the issue from a thousand different angles, and eventually, maybe not ever, concluding which angle it is that is poking her so to make her lethargic, feverish, piss herself in the basement and sit in it. . .

i am crying again and it is impossible for me to explain myself or clearly speak to this technician when i feel so vulnerable. i am angry and spastically depressed that i might possibly be spending more on my cat than i spend on my own health. i am ashamed that i am thinking this way. i am angry that this process, these doctors are making me feel like this. she continues the negotiations, eventually telling me that we can do a shot and send her home with me for a fraction of the price, but this is highly unadvised by the doctor. i ask her about the sliding scale of testing again. she responds that the doctor advises all testing to find out the trigger of her fever. she doesn't understand. i am not against trying to save my cat's life. i just feel like i am being robbed. used. i am feeling dagny's fever through anger, shaking and irrepressible sniffling.

the doctor is okely-dokely-ing behind the employee's only door. i suddenly hate him. i want to take dagny and drive her to denver. find a doctor who wants to save animals, not poke around with my cat all night. i want her to sleep in my bed with me tonight. i don't trust these car-salesmen vets.

i leave dagny locked up to her IV in the pet emergency room with those cackling vets and obnoxious dog. i hope she hangs on because so many people love her and because i would and will spend more money on her than on my own health. she is the light that brings me home when i am on the road and the breath that susurrated me to sleep last night. i cathect her.