Dog bites. Hes a bit of information I have learned in the past two days. My sister was swimming her dog at Kepala and she went to pick up the ball from the water to throw it. Her dog already had a ball in his mouth. He went to grab it at the same time and bit down on her thumb on the joint above the thumb nail. The hole was very tiny but her finger swelled up immediately and she had almost no flexibility to bend the thumb. Knowing that a tetanus needle would be needed, she made an appointment to go to her local doctor the following day. He sent her to outpatients and wouldnt touch it, saying that it needed treatment. Still thinking possibly an xray and a tetanus shot was all that would remedy the situation, she went to the hospital emergency department. The nurse put in a drip, the doctor advised her she was being admitted and that she would be in hospital for two to three days. She thought it was overkill until she remembered her friend who sustained an injury on the knuckle that became infected. That friend now has limited mobility in that finger. The doctor explained that anywhere else on the hand but the joints and it was perhaps not so serious, however, as the joint was involved there was a possibility of serious infection. My sister was in outpatients mid afternoon and was operated on that night. They opened up the joint, flushed it out and stitched it back up. She is on a penicillin drip six hourly and will require another two days after the first one to open up the joint completely and inspect the tendons and give another flush out. Any sign of infection and the procedure will be repeated again. The moral is never to dismiss a dog bite, no matter how trivial it may seem. Tetanus is only one of the things that we can develop. When joints are involved, medical attention is a must.
Posted on: Sat, 23 Nov 2013 08:21:56 +0000