Wednesday, May 25, 2011

The Story of Munchie and my Finger...

I wrote this entry in May but never posted the draft. When I re-read it, I thought it was kind of amusing, so I'll post now before today's entry. It ends abruptly where I left off...





It is Wednesday, and I've been home sick all week. The dog was just picked up to go to day care for the afternoon, so I can actually sit at my computer and get some stuff done. I haven't written an entry in so long, that it would be nearly impossible to recount everything I've done since I last wrote. Plus, the last week has been so action packed, that I think I'll start there.


This is a photo of Munchie, sitting on my shoulder last year. She is a beautiful Lavender Oriental Shorthair, which is like a Siamese with green eyes, no points and the color of a Weimaraner. She is fancy; her entire name is Sinergia's Princess Violet of Tlu. She is a little thing (Munchkin), and she eats pretty much anything, so she earned the nickname Munchie. She led a pretty charmed life until February, when I brought a new member into the family. That would be Thor (which is pronounced "Tor".) Thor is a big baby, and he either gets along with or is afraid of everything. Except the cats. Sadly, Thor and the cats cannot even be on the same floor together. The cats now live upstairs, which is separated from the first floor by a baby gate half way up the steps. Munchie doesn't like being banished to the upstairs and she screams her brains out (Siamese), and pees on everything (well, not everything...just my bedding and my clothing) to show her displeasure. Anyway, I was having enough issues with Munchie even BEFORE last week's incident; I didn't really need another pain in the ass, but that's exactly what I got.


I have an awesome Swedart bracelet which I wear all the time. I got it at the Swedish Yuletide Festival a couple years ago. They are made by the Sami people (in Lapland) out of reindeer leather, spun pewter and shed reindeer antlers. Because I wear it nearly everyday, the bracelet doesn't often make it into my jewelry box. It is kept in my bedside table drawer. Now, Munchie also likes this particular bracelet; she thinks it's quite a tasty chew-toy. She knows the bracelet is in the drawer, and she can open the drawer and grab the bracelet herself. Bad kitty. So. Normally I get up about 6AM to get ready for work and walk the dog. Last Monday I awoke about 4:30, got up to use the bathroom and came back to bed. As I mentioned, Thor stays downstairs and the cats sleep with me. Because I had about an hour and a half before I had to be up, I had every intention of falling back to sleep. I only made it to the mostly asleep stage. Munchie was trying to get into the bedside table drawer and she was making enough of a fuss that I was aware of it. I rolled over and with my right hand and pushed the drawer closed. On her paw. I initially thought that I'd closed my finger in the drawer as well, but in hindsight, it doesn't seem very likely. She lets out a scream and bites me - HARD. (Hard enough that I thought I'd slammed my finger in the drawer.) In the time it took to sit up and look at my finger (a couple seconds), there was already blood on my sheets, my rug and my floor. Uh oh. Jesus. So I'm making my way to the bathroom, and I'm trying to make sense of what just happened. I put my hand over the sink, and I'm looking at two punctures - one of which is pumping blood. I run it under water a couple times, but each time it just keeps bleeding. Time to call in reinforcements. So I go knock on G's door, wake her up, and ask her to come out and help me. By the time she gets to the bathroom, I was resting my head on my forearm, and my hand was in the sink. She thought I had a bloody nose, but when I looked at her, it was obvious that my face was not bleeding. G: "What did you do??" Me: "Munchie bit me." We cleaned it really well with hydrogen peroxide and she squished my finger w/ a washcloth until it stopped bleeding. I then hopped in the shower and washed it some more with dial soap. It was in the shower that I realized I had two more punctures on the underside of my finger. Applied Neosporin and bandaids, taped it to the next finger over, packed it in ice and went to work. I work for a healthcare organization, so there are a lot of people around with clinical backgrounds. It was decided that I should call my doctor as soon as his office opened, and I was sitting in front of him exactly 12 hours after the bite occurred. The wounds were really clean and looked good. He put me on seven days of prophylactic antibiotics, and said he didn't think I'd have any problems. (I should probably mention that I'm allergic to penicillin. Cats carry some really gross bacteria in their mouths, so they had to put me on two drugs to cover the spectrum of shit that passed from Munchie's mouth to my finger. If I could've taken penicillin, my story probably would've ended right there.) So out of the office I went - to fill my prescriptions and relate the story of Munchie - the cat who'll eat anything - to everyone I encountered. It was still pretty amusing at this point - or at least I thought so. So fast forward to Wednesday. I get up, look at my finger, and ooh - that doesn't look so good. I hadn't been able to bend my finger since the bite occurred, but now it was noticably swollen and red and hot. So I take my finger to work for a second opinion, and the concensus is that I should call the doctor. They make me come back to the office, where I see a second doc b/c mine is not there that day. New doc tells me that yes, my finger is infected, but I pretty much already knew that. He tells me that the only thing worse than a cat bite is a human bite. He does some painful probing which I don't really need to get into, and says that I don't need to see a surgeon that day (WHAT??) but I need to come back the next day. That takes us to last Thursday, when I saw my usual doctor again. Sure enough, my finger is still not so good. We didn't need to open her up, but we did switch to what I've been calling "napalm antibiotics" (Bactrim and Clindamycin for those of you keeping score). The list of side effects of these abx is long, and by the time I got back to the doctor Monday (for my fourth visit) I was so sick from the meds that I couldn't even go in to work AND I'd lost seven pounds. The absess had pretty much cleared up, but I can't come off the abx - I have to take the full course. As far as my other symptoms: I agreed to the stool sample, passed on the internal and departed with another prescription and what little dignity I had left. Today is Wednesday, and I'm still sick. I suppose it's to be expected because I'm still on the Clindamycin. They now have me on a diet of bananas, rice, applesauce, broth and gatorade. I could have toast, but as a rule I don't eat bread. (If you ever come to stay at my house, bring your own bread or you'll be eating knackebrod. Seriously. Ask my mother...she brings her own bread.) Anyway, if I don't get better, I'll have to go back to the office to be retested for a nasty GI bug called C-Diff, which is a side effect of the Clindamycin. I'm hoping to pass on that. I'm ten days out, and my four puncture wounds are in various stages of healing, but they're all still quite visible. I keep waiting, but Munchie hasn't apologized yet.