11/15/2025
Another (true) story from Dr. Weeman.
It has been two weeks since the patient, a geriatric pig, arrived at my client's rescue from the only life he has previously known. New surroundings, new food, new everything except his sizeable friend who has arrived with him. A rocky start isn’t all that unusual; old habits die hard even for God’s hardiest of stock, but after two weeks of hunger strike, the new addition simply isn’t making it. Antibiotics, fluid therapy, pain meds, some foot work, and a prayer haven’t proven enough. The patient is tired, hardly responsive, and so thin his femur is visible…I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen the femur of a pig-it may have been the anatomy lab in school.
Examining the patient, lifeless, decisions must be made. Every question yields a more damning answer than the last: What will he eat? Almost nothing, the client replies; not even dog food (very poorly cared for pigs are often fed dog food-it’s trash for them, but they love it). Will he drink? Some….maybe, not much. What exactly does he do? He lays here.
It’s an Autumn, Eastern Shore day, which means it’s still decently warm and a pig should certainly be compelled to drink. With all that has been done, I ask myself silently: what’s really left to do? Why is this pig still so sick? Brushing the straw back from his self-nested state reveals a scaled top-line that would make a crocodile giddy. Is he itchy? No, the client says. I think to myself, that’s interesting…he should be. The skin otherwise seems fine, but these scales are so dense, thick, and tightly adhered that one practically requires a crowbar to extract them. A look at his eyes and gums shows he’s not yellow. This doesn’t mean his liver is fine, but it certainly means we can’t assume it isn’t. We can send off for labs, but it’s Friday, and he will be dead before we get the results.
What does one do when they wish to treat patients who can’t speak without the benefits of objective laboratory diagnostics to dictate a treatment path? They become a large animal veterinarian. Fitting then that every pig illness looks the same. I suppose that’s why not very many vets work on them.
I look at the patient….what is wrong with you? No reply. What hurts? Silence.
I look at the client….what do you think is best? There are words, I don’t remember what they are, but it’s clear… this decision belongs to me. Veterinarians hold a license authorizing actions to promote and protect life, and are the only professionals in the United States to hold a license to end it. These distinctly different responsibilities do complement one another. It’s not a burden, but it is a powerful responsibility, and at least this client makes it easy to know she respects my reverence for it. Some do not. I respect her for that, and I know she loves this pig. I shouldn’t put this decision on her.
Her and I talk. No decision is made.
On my knees, kneeling in the dirt directly beside this lifeless, emaciated pig, client hovering over us both, I look at the patient…this time just his eyes. This time I ask silently, in what I think is a whisper....would you rather be dead? This time he answers. No, I’m really not done yet. You don’t see me itching because I am too damn weak to walk the fence line and it hurts too much to lift my leg to scratch. I am so painful on these elf-slippers to walk much of anywhere so forgive me that I just don’t care to drink. I do not want to eat because I am so damn itchy it hurts-I can’t even think straight. The itch is literally all I can think about….so if there’s nothing you can do but kill me then get on with it, but if you could find it within that dribble-drab brain of yours to otherwise create a solution that restores in me my former will for life, I’m ready to live again.
Well, okay then I think to myself-that seems clear enough. I inform the client the decision is made, we are going to take immense efforts to clear this skin issue, there will be injections, there will be topicals, there will be scrubbings and there will be pain. Some additional antibiotics, some different kind of “feel-goods” and we are going to bring this pig back to life because he absolutely wants to live. While it seems like it can't be possible for the skin to be entirely to blame especially when the antibiotics have failed, it is.
The client accepts (she doesn’t want to put down her pig), I order the treatments. Both of us are definitely wondering if this is a futile experiment prolonging this poor pigs suffering, but I persist, because the pig told me to, and the client accepts because I asked her to. For the same reason, we both hope it works.
The sun has set now, what will be will be, and the pig will lie there for the night with no audible question answered.
As daybreak arrives, he’s happier. He drinks. He nibbles some food. One day turns to three and there’s some energy back. The injections are fine-tuned. Three days turn to a week, and the patient is up, about, and eating normal pig feed.
His name is Baby, he was mere minutes- a single decision- from leaving this life with the glance of my needle, but by the Grace of God, he answered and stayed true to it. Keep going, Baby, you aren’t all the way there yet…. but you’re moving down the right path.
