I just learned a really hard lesson about preparing for medical emergencies. I fell way short, particularly in the area of my judgement.
A week ago Friday Mrs. L was bitten by the neighbors dog. The bites themselves were fairly minor, not even a single stitch was needed. The paramedics were called and they all agreed it was no big deal. Now this happened at about 0100 on Friday. “Go see your doctor in the morning” was the advice from the “professionals. Keep in mind I’ve got a significant pile of antibiotics on hand and you’ll see just how badly I screwed up.
By noon that day when I took her to see our physician half of her right hand was almost twice it’s normal size. Our doctor took one look at it and sent us off to the urgent care clinic for a huge shot of antibiotics and pain medications. She was really hurting. We went home, had dinner, and went to bed.
When we got up Saturday morning, the telltale signs of serious systemic infection were all present. This is less than 30 hours after the injury. Back to our family doctor we went. She took one look at it and said “Wait here. I need to make a couple of phone calls.”. Mrs L was not looking well at all at this point, with a fever of 100.5. Off to the hospital we went and she was in a room getting massive amounts of antibiotics intravenously in less than an hour.
She spent 5 full days in the hospital getting 3 GRAMS of ampicillin a day PLUS 3 milligrams of morphine every 4-5 hours “as needed”. Surgery was required to clean out the infection and as I write this she’s still recovering and is wont be able to return to work for another for another 3 days at least.
Perhaps if I’d reached into my stash when she was bitten and pushed 1000 mg of ampicillin into her things might not have gotten so bad as quickly as they did. According to the infectious disease specialist who consulted on her case another 24 hours and she would have been in life threatening trouble. All because I didn’t recognize a serious situation before it reached a critical level.
So like I said, I learned a really, really hard lesson here. All the “stuff” in the world is useless if you don’t recognize an emergency situation when its kicking you right in the balls. I came scary, scary close to losing the thing I value most in this world all due to a serious error in judgement.
She is on the mend now, but I took a well deserved blow to my ego. I thank Heaven above things turned out the way they did. I sure as hell had nothing to do with it.
Hope all is well.
I’m happy to hear your wife made it.
Be careful my friend.
Wow! Great reminder. You never know. I’m praising God she came out OK!
Puncture wounds can be very iffy even when the dogs are your own.
I stupidly stuck my foot in between a couple of litter mates who were asserting dominance and the “sweeter” of the two snapped due to the adreneline. I ended up with a wound that took about two months to heal. I and my better half immediately soaked it with peroxide, applied antibiotic ointment and repeated that procedure with fresh dressings until the wound healed.
My takeaway was to have plenty of peroxide, sterile dressing and antibiotic cream on hand. I know it won’t solve every problem, but it kept me from having some government busybody asking how about my “vicious” dog.
He loves picking nectarines off the trees, btw.
tmp
I met a guy about 10 years ago who had been bitten by a feral cat. He didn’t think anything of it, but his finger got infected very quickly. They ended up having to amputate his finger. I learned to treat all animal bites seriously, even if they seem like no big deal.
Hope your wife is feeling better soon.
Freepmail incoming.... Wow !
Glad she’s better....
I am so sorry that happened. That tells us to make every effort to prevent an injury from getting worse - to trust ourselves and just do it. Who would have thought it would get that bad? I am so glad she survived.
You got lucky there and learned a valuable lesson.
What I’m most amazed at is you got care that day and was able to see someone on Saturday. Around here, I’m turning into those folks who don’t have insurance and run to the ER for everything because the doctors won’t see you for a week or two and they keep bankers’ hours.
Wishing her a full and speedy recovery.
Having been bitten by dogs I know that the wound must be kept open because of the high danger of infection. If the skin is broken antibiotics are needed. Tetanus shot too.
They gave the wrong antibiotic. They should have given your wife Keflex at a minimum.
Glad to hear that she is recuperating well.