A Tale of Two Kitties
Innocuous Incisor Inoculation
Tomas is our cat who wishes he were a sabre-toothed tiger, roaming the himalayas or wherever the hell, free to go as he pleases as long as he gets handed a Pounce treat every now and then. For months, we have put up with his near-constant meowing and paw-slapping at the front door, wanting out, out, out. Unfortunately, he's gotten into scraps with a few other neighborhood cats, so we stopped letting him explore. Plus, the crying and protesting didn't really bother me all that much, what with being 12 miles away at work.
A few weeks ago, fed up, we decided FINE GO AHEAD DAMMIT ATTACK THE UPS GUY and let him out the front door.
And he plopped himself on the porch, sunning himself for hours. La de dah.
He'd go out, munch on some grass, and then come back. Sometimes meowing to be let in to make sure he wasn't missing anything. And besides going after the black labrador across the street (who simply gave Tomas a puzzled look), Tomas had behaved himself.
Kiki lives next door. She's an outdoor/indoor cat. Dover loves to bark at her from the back yard when he sees her low-crawling through the grass. Sometimes comes over and says hi in our driveway. Lovely girl.
So Sunday Tomas decided to go over and say howdy. In a Franco-Prussian friendly kind of way.
Ainsley heard the high-pitched roar first, asked if Tomas was out, and before I could even say yes I was already running next door. I eventually found them under some deck furniture, just as our neighbor was coming out with a squirt bottle, which seemed rather silly since it had just started to thunderstorm. But I lifted up the lounge chair and found the two clamped together, ying and yang, claws and fangs. A still photo of it might have looked like a hug.
I reached down to separate them, which wasn't easy--they were superglued to each other. Kiki didn't like me touching her belly and seemingly ganging up on her, so she took a bite of my left index finger while I sustained scratches on my wrist and right hand from Tomas' rear paws.
"Grab the scruff of his neck!" Ainsley yells from below deck. Ah. Someone's done this before. While I'm the one always getting in the middle of animal fights and ending up the bleeding one.
Although Tomas joined me this time -- after we washed off my puncture wounds in the sink, Ainsley noticed the left side of my shirt was all bloody. She checked my belly to make sure it wasn't me, then I checked on Tomas in the garage, who was indeed sporting two fewer claws than he had left the house with that afternoon.
But I'm thinking no biggie. I washed out the bites, I've had tons of animal wounds, no worries. My finger felt fine; I played guitar that night for the Howsers' kids.
First Do No Harm
Monday I woke up and my finger was a little swollen in two spots. Oh well, that'll probably go away.
Later at work, the swelling got bigger and considerably pinker.
That probably won't go away.
So I went to the ER to have someone take a look at it. The someones there knew a lot more about cat bacteria than I thought they should, and started throwing words around like "admitting me overnight." What?! They said they were going to give me an IV of antibiotics and talk to an orthopedic surgeon on-call. So the nurse found a nice fat vein in my hand, wanting to put it there as opposed to a place I'd be moving around, in case they had to put more in that night (What?), but she missed and went right through the other side with the needle. She then got someone else to try, only she went ahead and put it in my left elbow pit. Took two vials of blood. Meanwhile, a doctor took a pin to my two bite wounds to get them to bleed a bit so he could collect a sample. That didn't tickle, but I figured we should know what we were dealing with.
The on-call guy said (through the ER doctor) that he wasn't a hand specialist so I needed to go up to Walter Reed.
"Right now?" It's 4:30pm. D.C. rush hour. "There's no one in this building qualified to look at my hand?" Words to the effect of better safe than sorry followed, and wanting to catch this infection sooner rather than later. *sigh*. I called the wife and drove the twenty miles in ninety minutes.
The Ft Belvoir doc had told me to report to the ER at Walter Reed and ask for Dr. Eckels, who was on-call. Asking for him by name would mean I wouldn't have to fill out more paperwork and get seen by a nurse there and repeat what had already been done. But the ER said I had to fill out paperwork. Policy. I told them I'd find Dr. Eckels myDANself and headed for the information desk, who sent me to Ward 71 on the 7th floor. Where there were a bunch of sick people and a locked office.
See, they had heard that I needed the on-call doctor and sent me to the "ONCOL"ogy department.
Har!
I told Ward 71 that I needed the Ortho on-call doctor, who they said was in Ward 5A.
Dr. Eckels had me get some x-rays to ensure no bones were fragmented, then took a look at my hand. The pinkness had already subsided from the IV antibiotics, but the finger was still pretty fat and tender. The Doc said he wanted to "open" up the wound and let it breathe for a while, so he stuck a needle behind my big knuckle four times, inserting Novocaine and making my hand flare out like Michael Jackson's face in the first part of the Thriller video.
"I'm not going to lie to you, this is still going to be a little uncomfortable."
Ainsley, you should probably stop reading at this point.
He took a scalpel and cut open the puncture on the back of the finger, not bad, a little pinch. He then took tweezers and dug in the incision, trying to get the gook out, then tried to pack some little thin strips of gauze into the opening to keep it open and let the bacteria ooze away. He was right. It didn't feel great.
He then did the wound on the inside of my finger. Only the numbing agent hadn't really found its way down there. So when he cut
The Sound of One Hand Washing
Ryan was already asleep by the time I got home from the second hospital Monday night, so he didn't see my hand until Tuesday after work. He frowned and pointed, and I said, "Owie." So he said "Ow-whee?" any time he saw my hand again, making it difficult to get through dinner, even with me trying to hide it behind the squeeze butter bottle. He also saw fit to stick a rigatoni noodle on his own finger and go "owie!" so perhaps there was some sympathy there.
Typing wasn't bad, though showering was just silly with a newspaper bag rubber-banded around my arm. Plus it felt weird to not have my wedding ring on for two days. And it sure was hard to uphold public bathroom etiquette when I could only stick one hand under the faucet and snap around some soap.
And you can imagine that my coworkers had no reason at all to make fun of me all week.
I also saw my old boss from Colorado Springs in the cafeteria. He asked me what happened. "Terrorists, sir. They broke into the house and.."
"Dan."
"Cats, sir. Breaking up a fight."
"....didn't your dog bite you breaking up a fight?"
"Good talking to you, sir."
Tomas is our cat who wishes he were a sabre-toothed tiger, roaming the himalayas or wherever the hell, free to go as he pleases as long as he gets handed a Pounce treat every now and then. For months, we have put up with his near-constant meowing and paw-slapping at the front door, wanting out, out, out. Unfortunately, he's gotten into scraps with a few other neighborhood cats, so we stopped letting him explore. Plus, the crying and protesting didn't really bother me all that much, what with being 12 miles away at work.
A few weeks ago, fed up, we decided FINE GO AHEAD DAMMIT ATTACK THE UPS GUY and let him out the front door.
And he plopped himself on the porch, sunning himself for hours. La de dah.
He'd go out, munch on some grass, and then come back. Sometimes meowing to be let in to make sure he wasn't missing anything. And besides going after the black labrador across the street (who simply gave Tomas a puzzled look), Tomas had behaved himself.
Kiki lives next door. She's an outdoor/indoor cat. Dover loves to bark at her from the back yard when he sees her low-crawling through the grass. Sometimes comes over and says hi in our driveway. Lovely girl.
So Sunday Tomas decided to go over and say howdy. In a Franco-Prussian friendly kind of way.
Ainsley heard the high-pitched roar first, asked if Tomas was out, and before I could even say yes I was already running next door. I eventually found them under some deck furniture, just as our neighbor was coming out with a squirt bottle, which seemed rather silly since it had just started to thunderstorm. But I lifted up the lounge chair and found the two clamped together, ying and yang, claws and fangs. A still photo of it might have looked like a hug.
I reached down to separate them, which wasn't easy--they were superglued to each other. Kiki didn't like me touching her belly and seemingly ganging up on her, so she took a bite of my left index finger while I sustained scratches on my wrist and right hand from Tomas' rear paws.
"Grab the scruff of his neck!" Ainsley yells from below deck. Ah. Someone's done this before. While I'm the one always getting in the middle of animal fights and ending up the bleeding one.
Although Tomas joined me this time -- after we washed off my puncture wounds in the sink, Ainsley noticed the left side of my shirt was all bloody. She checked my belly to make sure it wasn't me, then I checked on Tomas in the garage, who was indeed sporting two fewer claws than he had left the house with that afternoon.
But I'm thinking no biggie. I washed out the bites, I've had tons of animal wounds, no worries. My finger felt fine; I played guitar that night for the Howsers' kids.
First Do No Harm
Monday I woke up and my finger was a little swollen in two spots. Oh well, that'll probably go away.
Later at work, the swelling got bigger and considerably pinker.
That probably won't go away.
So I went to the ER to have someone take a look at it. The someones there knew a lot more about cat bacteria than I thought they should, and started throwing words around like "admitting me overnight." What?! They said they were going to give me an IV of antibiotics and talk to an orthopedic surgeon on-call. So the nurse found a nice fat vein in my hand, wanting to put it there as opposed to a place I'd be moving around, in case they had to put more in that night (What?), but she missed and went right through the other side with the needle. She then got someone else to try, only she went ahead and put it in my left elbow pit. Took two vials of blood. Meanwhile, a doctor took a pin to my two bite wounds to get them to bleed a bit so he could collect a sample. That didn't tickle, but I figured we should know what we were dealing with.
The on-call guy said (through the ER doctor) that he wasn't a hand specialist so I needed to go up to Walter Reed.
"Right now?" It's 4:30pm. D.C. rush hour. "There's no one in this building qualified to look at my hand?" Words to the effect of better safe than sorry followed, and wanting to catch this infection sooner rather than later. *sigh*. I called the wife and drove the twenty miles in ninety minutes.
The Ft Belvoir doc had told me to report to the ER at Walter Reed and ask for Dr. Eckels, who was on-call. Asking for him by name would mean I wouldn't have to fill out more paperwork and get seen by a nurse there and repeat what had already been done. But the ER said I had to fill out paperwork. Policy. I told them I'd find Dr. Eckels myDANself and headed for the information desk, who sent me to Ward 71 on the 7th floor. Where there were a bunch of sick people and a locked office.
See, they had heard that I needed the on-call doctor and sent me to the "ONCOL"ogy department.
Har!
I told Ward 71 that I needed the Ortho on-call doctor, who they said was in Ward 5A.
Dr. Eckels had me get some x-rays to ensure no bones were fragmented, then took a look at my hand. The pinkness had already subsided from the IV antibiotics, but the finger was still pretty fat and tender. The Doc said he wanted to "open" up the wound and let it breathe for a while, so he stuck a needle behind my big knuckle four times, inserting Novocaine and making my hand flare out like Michael Jackson's face in the first part of the Thriller video.
"I'm not going to lie to you, this is still going to be a little uncomfortable."
Ainsley, you should probably stop reading at this point.
He took a scalpel and cut open the puncture on the back of the finger, not bad, a little pinch. He then took tweezers and dug in the incision, trying to get the gook out, then tried to pack some little thin strips of gauze into the opening to keep it open and let the bacteria ooze away. He was right. It didn't feel great.
He then did the wound on the inside of my finger. Only the numbing agent hadn't really found its way down there. So when he cut
I'll pause here to point out that I took creative writing courses in college, so
try and follow my analogy here
it felt just like someone taking a sharp knife and slicing into your finger.
Worse was the digging. I tensed every muscle, lifted off my seat, squirming every body part except my hand, and gasped an expletive through my teeth directed at cats in general. The point of no return, the doc kept going, packing, poking, prodding (he was nice enough to move from the metal tweezers to some cotton swabs, but still). It was like a scene from M*A*S*H on a micro scale, watching a little itty bitty surgery with little itty bitty gauze pads getting quickly soaked with blood. I don't think it was the image, as I've seen pretty gross things before, but rather the earlier waves of intense pain that suddenly caused me to start feeling faint, sweat pouring down my head. Like my sciatic pain pre-back surgery. I asked the doc to go ahead and let me lie down before I fell over. That did the trick.
He wrapped my entire hand in gauze and an ace bandage, telling me to have someone at Belvoir change the dressing and take a look at it, then to follow up at Walter Reed later in the week. The dressings became smaller as the days progressed, and by Thursday morning, the Doc said I was fine to just leave band-aids on them. So I'll get to take those accordion lessons eventually after all. Thinking back, the treatment hurt more than the injury, but still -- when you go to Walter Reed and see dudes with half their legs blown off, I just can't see myself complaining.The Sound of One Hand Washing
Ryan was already asleep by the time I got home from the second hospital Monday night, so he didn't see my hand until Tuesday after work. He frowned and pointed, and I said, "Owie." So he said "Ow-whee?" any time he saw my hand again, making it difficult to get through dinner, even with me trying to hide it behind the squeeze butter bottle. He also saw fit to stick a rigatoni noodle on his own finger and go "owie!" so perhaps there was some sympathy there.
Typing wasn't bad, though showering was just silly with a newspaper bag rubber-banded around my arm. Plus it felt weird to not have my wedding ring on for two days. And it sure was hard to uphold public bathroom etiquette when I could only stick one hand under the faucet and snap around some soap.
And you can imagine that my coworkers had no reason at all to make fun of me all week.
I also saw my old boss from Colorado Springs in the cafeteria. He asked me what happened. "Terrorists, sir. They broke into the house and.."
"Dan."
"Cats, sir. Breaking up a fight."
"....didn't your dog bite you breaking up a fight?"
"Good talking to you, sir."
posted by Dan at 9:22 PM
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