Some of you were here last Saturday when I complained of a hurting hand, due to a bad little kitty who sunk her teeth into my knuckle. The advice I received was unanimous: get thee to a doctor post haste. Follow me over the fold for not-very-gross pictures, and the rest of the story.
WYFP is our community's Saturday evening gathering to talk about our problems, empathize with one another, and share advice, pootie pictures, favorite adult beverages, and anything else that we think might help. Everyone and all sorts of troubles are welcome. May we find peace and healing here.
Although I fully intended to heed the advice to visit a doctor, I was not going to an ER at 11 pm on a Saturday full moon night. But had I any intentions of putting off the visit, the pain I experienced that night would have changed my mind--just the sheet brushing against my hand woke me up repeatedly. So at 9 am I headed out to the urgent care (note to self: never go to urgent care again), sat for two hours, only to have a doctor cast a cursory glance over my hand and tell me he'd be more comfortable if I went to a full-fledged ER.
So I headed down the street to an auxiliary ER/diagnostic center of the local Catholic hospital. And of course I sat some more. And then they took me into an exam room and I sat even longer. Then the doctor came in, and without even looking at my hand, told me their policy is admit all cat bites, especially those in the hand, for IV antibiotics. Okay....
I sat some more while they arranged things with the main hospital. I did at least get one dose of IV antibiotics and my tetanus booster there, and eventually the nurse took pity on me and fed me a Healthy Choice dinner, and finally at around 6 pm they stuck me in an ambulance and off I went.
I spent the next three days hooked up to IV antibiotics, and took so many orally that I rattled when I walked. The infectious disease doctor, himself a cat owner, claims to have developed his own drug cocktail to deal with cat bite infections--ampicillin by IV every four hours; 2400 mg of clindamycin orally every six. I left the hospital late Wednesday afternoon, and am now taking 2000 mg of Augmentin twice a day. This all feels like overkill to me, but I can't argue with the results--a week later, you'd never know I'd ever been bitten.
My FP is that this is going to cost me a fricking fortune, even though I currently have decent insurance. (My insurance company's FP? I've had insurance with them for eight months, and they're now on the hook for a ER visit, an inpatient stay, an ambulance ride, lots of drugs, xrays...couldn't happen to a nicer company.)
What is NOT an FP are the people here, who told me to get to a doctor quickly--I trust you guys, and if I had had any notion of putting it off, you dissuaded me. I heard so many horror stories of cat bites gone bad in the hospital--leading to open heart surgery, or requiring the lancing, draining and packing of the entire length of the arm, from wrist to shoulder--that I know I did the right thing by getting to the ER the next day. Thanks for having my back, guys!
Okay, the promised pictures--these were taken with my crappy cell phone after a day or so of treatment:
And here's the criminal herself:
So, WYFP?