Jesus Action Figure

My brain is totally fried with French and biochem--big exam in the latter on Friday. But I wanted to get this post up while it was fresh in my mind.

I'm volunteering at the large animal hospital here at the university. It's only a four-week gig, and only for 5 hours a week. The opportunities are reserved for members of the pre-vet club, and even then the slots are assigned via lottery. I got lucky and got in this semester.

On one of the info sheets was an explicit request for us to not post anything on social media about specific clients in the hospital. So this post will be light on details in order to respect that.

A very sick animal was brought in on Monday. She was so sick that it wasn't clear if she would survive the time it took for the initial evaluation, the development of a treatment plan, the suggestion of the same to the owners, their approval/amendment of the plan, then implementation of the plan. While all of that necessary administrative wrangling was going on, this animal was visibly sinking before our eyes.

I spent nearly all of my two hours on Monday with the doctor and students working on this animal. I watched them get her set up in a pen; by the time I left, both she and the enclosure were bristling with tubes and bags of fluids.

When I got there on Tuesday, I went straight to her pen.

And sitting on the treatment table was a Jesus Action Figure, still in its original plastic packaging. The package was scratched and grubby, and had clearly been tied and taped to more than one cage.

The implication was clear. If supernatural intervention were at all real, this animal would be a good test case.

I later found out that the vet hospital (the large and small animal parts are all in the same building) has three Jesus and one Buddha action figures, all reserved for those ICU patients who are not expected to make it. When a patient is particularly critical, it might get two Jesuses or a Jesus and a Buddha.

I don't think that a plastic doll has magical powers, and I am an atheist so I don't think Jesus has magical powers, but I think that I understand the sentiments at work here. The doctors and students always walk a line between patient care and demands or restrictions of the owner, between curing and only being able to reduce pain. They are making decisions based on science and technology but they are moral and emotional beings. It can be exhausting, walking this tightrope. Jesus Action Figure represents comic relief, albeit a bit on the dark side. The doll is symbolic of the subtext that the care that they give, the tests they can run, the drugs they can administer, will make a difference.