




EDMONTON - A man from east central Alberta is gravely ill with rabies after failing to seek treatment after a bat bit him last summer.
The man was sleeping in his rural home last August when a bat entered the house and bit him on the shoulder. The man, whom health officials have not identified, apparently realized he had been bitten but did not immediately seek medical help.
In January, he experienced pain in his shoulder where the bite occurred. He has since developed symptoms of rabies, including paralysis, difficulty swallowing and convulsions. He is in serious condition in hospital, but there is little doctors can do for him now.
"There's no specific treatment once the neurological symptoms occur," said Dr. Karen Grimsrud, deputy provincial health officer.
"We want to emphasize that if someone is exposed to a wild animal, they should seek medical treatment," she said. "That's the important message from this unfortunate case."
The treatment for people bitten by a potentially rabid animal consists of a series of shots given over a month. The injections, called post-exposure prophylaxis, are "close to 100percent effective if they are given close to the time of the bite," Grimsrud said.
The last time an Albertan died of rabies was in 1985 when a bat bit a 25-year-old Calgary man while he was working near Smith, 220 kilometres north of Edmonton. He died in Vancouver about five months after being infected.
In 2005, almost 130 people across Alberta received the post-exposure treatment. Most of those people had been bitten by dogs or cats that could not be located and observed for rabies symptoms, said Grimsrud.
While there is no known case of rabies being transmitted between humans, health officials are investigating whether anyone had direct contact with the bodily fluids or saliva of the man after he was infected with the disease. The general public is not at risk, Grimsrud said.

If psychic life consisted only of self-evident matters of fact – which on a primitive level is still the case – we could content ourselves with a sturdy empiricism. The psychic life of civilized man, however, is full of problems; we cannot even think of it except in terms of problems. Our psychic processes are made up to a large extent of reflections, doubts, experiments, all of which are almost completely foreign to the unconscious, instinctive mind of primitive man. It is the growth of consciousness which we must thank for the existence of problems; they are the Danaan gift of civilization. It is just man’s turning away from instinct – his opposing himself to instinct – that creates consciousness. Instinct is nature and seeks to perpetuate nature, whereas consciousness can only seek culture or its denial. Even when we turn back to nature, inspired by a Rousseauesque longing, we “cultivate” nature. As long as we are still submerged in nature we are unconscious, and we live in the security of instinct which knows no problems. Everything in us that still belongs to nature shrinks away from a problem, for its name is doubt, and wherever doubt holds sway there is uncertainty and the possibility of divergent ways. And where several ways seem possible, there we have turned away from the certain guidance of instinct and are handed over to fear. For consciousness is now called upon to do that which nature has always done for her children – namely, to give a certain, unquestionable, and unequivocal decision. And here we are beset by an all-too-human fear that consciousness – our Promethean conquest – may in the end not be able to serve us as well as nature. Problems thus draw us into an orphaned and isolated state where we are abandoned by nature and are driven to consciousness. There is no other way to open us; we are forced to resort to conscious decisions and solutions where formerly we trusted ourselves to natural happenings. Every problem, therefore, brings the possibility of a widening of consciousness, but also the necessity of saying goodbye to childlike unconsciousness and trust in nature. This necessity is a psychic fact of such importance that it constitutes one of the most essential symbolic teachings of the Christian religion. It is the sacrifice of the merely natural man, of the unconscious, ingenious being whose tragic career began with the eating of the apple in
-Carl Jung, The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, The Stages of Life


There are details in death, and they're dry, they stick to you, the muted colors, unsaturated in the coolness of dawn, and they’re dirty, and for the time being, harmless. They’re not horrible details but they’re salient. The details of life, the memory of life events, on the other hand, are brightly coloured, textured with hope and fondness, they’re dreams in the heat nearer the sun, all
Yes, a dear family member and friend of mine died. He was once my dog. And sure, there are those that would deny me my feelings and tell me the kinship was one-sided and my personification laughable. And without referencing the cold ignorance these blind and uninspired individuals use against my sentiments, I do in another sense agree that the significance of bond between me and my old dog was probably more one-sided than mutual. Grizzle was perfectly aloof at most times; probably the most content of all dogs I’ve ever known. Although in his youth he was a hellion, it was still all based on his beautiful canine simplicity. He would hop the fence countless times and bring home garbage--- and the odd time whole carcasses of mule-deer and antlers that he tore down from some bastard’s garage--- probably the same bastard that gave him anti-freeze when he was 8. He almost died that year but a vodka intervienous drip kept him drunk for 3 days and provided the perfect antidote for the sweet and toxic drink.
Sometimes I’d go out and lie in the snow in the back yard and look up at the night's wintery sky, Grizzle would rarely greet me with a bounty of enthusiasm, but eventually he’d make his way over and sit down beside me before he’d promptly manoeuvre himself, completely collapsing against me, leaning right up against my side. Deep eye contact was rare but when it was made it was heartfelt and loving.
Grizzle slowly broke down. His arthritis, cysts and cataracts attached themselves to his body and never let up. His shoulder blades scraped against each other when he walked. He hobbled and limped. He was mostly deaf and half-blind. Yet he handled these afflictions with his faultless dog wits. He battled in a way only nonhumans can, without sentimentalizing and without agonizing. If he had to get up, even though at the end he barely could, he’d struggle in spurts until the moment when the series of actions were just right, until they worked—if they never worked and he couldn’t get up, he’d wait some more, until the next struggle. If he lost his balance he’d fall, plainly and without complaint. And then, when he found it necessary he’d try his best to get back up--- everyday struggling without complaint or knowledge of complaint.
In the final moments, after all the liver-treats and proclamations of his grandeur and importance were made his veins proved too thin for the home-called doctor to hit so he was poked 7 times before the euthanol was properly injected; stuck seven times, in one of the puncture wounds the blood swelled under his shaven arm. Grizzle struggled, wounded and displeased his eyes white and cloudy. On the second to last injection some euthanol was accidentally administered and Grizzle folded to the floor, not dead but mercifully, medicinally paralyzed. On the final attempt, after the two front legs were shaved and found to be useless (thin veins), the Doctor shaved the hind right leg, a proper vein was found, and the death serum circulated. Grizzle died at
My tongue, she was a black tongue, twice this week. The first time I was hung-over and talking to Alyssa while I bathed. The water was too shallow. When I’m severely hung-over I feel the need to pamper myself with a bath. I was busy watching my stomach respond in jerky fashion as I breathed. It wasn’t just the fat, but the way it always seems somewhat quivery when I’m hung-over, it has always fascinated me. Alyssa was asking me questions. I was stuck on my gut. Chin touch chestish, mostly. I responded and Alyssa seemed concerned, “What’s, -- You’re tongue is black, let me see it, you’re tongue is black!” I stuck it out, “It’s black!” Alyssa promptly went to the internet like a good little me, to find, the remarkable remedy. With my weak arms I raised myself just high enough out of the tub to see the remarkable feature. Indeed, my tongue was black. I wasn’t really impressed, but neither was I concerned. I was feeling so low, and with the proposition of my shift getting nearer and nearer my mind was on just how shitty it was to be 28 and hung-over hours before work. Twenty-eight years, 10 years drinking, hung-over in the tub with a sickly, twitchy stomach countless times before, probably with a black tongue but rarely noticing it on account of absent girlfriends or apathetic ones. Plural generosity sing Singular insecurity.
Alyssa came back after 5 or so minutes. I was sweating too much for a guy whose dreams themed water lapping, water want. She informed me nothing was wrong, black tongue was benign enough, she said it had something to do with, “Paleod, umm, pal-ido, I don’t know but they say it’s nothing to worry, to worry about”. I don’t remember how I responded. I think I probably just got up, out of the tub, too hot. I dried myself with the smallest and ugliest of the three towels. The other two where mismatched, but they were both what I would consider my good towels. The towel on the towel bar was stinky, had been for a while. The towel on the floor was still folded but the underside was soaked, presumably from the party the night before. I remember seeing some asshole of a beer flipping down the stairs. And I might have just filled in the blanks, but I seem to remember some stranger wiping the liquid up with the good towel, still folded.
I brushed my teeth, paying extra attention to my tongue. I remember thinking it sure was a good thing I didn’t throw away my 1 ½ year old toothbrush, because of its special tongue-scraping head. The toothpaste frothed and foamed to a purplish black, almost grey, between the toothbrush bristles. It poured down the corners of my mouth. I’m a child when I brush my teeth, the paste, it goes everywhere.
I went to work. I was late by five minutes. 50% of my coworkers didn’t care, 50% of them did. 75% of them shouldn’t have. Work was nice. Surprisingly, I felt capable and partially healthy.
Skip ahead many hours later, about a day and a half later. I woke up at



