Wednesday, November 15, 2017

Cat Bites are No Joke

We've had our little Sadie for a little over a month now.  She is a great cat with a sweet temperament - 99% of the time.  



She enjoys lying around on soft surfaces, looking outside windows, and is especially attached to Zack.  Her greatest joy in life is eating.  

Her least favorite thing would be Ollie.  Truthfully, if Ollie were a normal dog, I think she would be fine.  But I think I've already mentioned that Ollie is certain everyone and everything loves him as much as he loves them and, for him, there is no such thing as a  personal space bubble.  

Monday morning I was carrying Sadie to my room so I could leave for work when Ollie spotted her in my arms and started jumping up on me to get to her.  Before I had time to do anything, Sadie freaked out and bit me on my hand.  

OMG!!!  PAIN!!!  I literally could do nothing for about 10 minutes.  Every time I tried to move I felt dizzy and nauseated and broke out in a cold sweat.  While most of the immediate pain subsided, the residual pain lasted all day long and my hand started swelling up.  By Tuesday morning I was positive something was not right.  My hand looked terrible.  

Thankfully, our school receptionist is also an EMT and she took one look at it and told me to get the doctor ASAP.  




You can see the redness in the picture but it doesn't really show the amount of swelling that I had.  

Anyway, it turns out that 80% of cat bites end up becoming infected.  Because of the amount of bacteria that is in their mouths, cat bites are 8 times more likely to become infected than dog bites.  I received a tetanus shot, an antibiotic, and some pain pills with instructions that if it got worse, I needed to go back to the ER for IV antibiotics.  This is the case for about 50% of the people treated. 

I am happy to report that my hand was so much better today - so no IV for me.  Yay!   

And that is my cat bite story.  They are serious stuff and not to be taken lightly.  

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