On 7/2/07 16:21, in article
, "Dave Liquorice"
wrote:

On Wed, 07 Feb 2007 14:47:27 +0000, Sacha wrote:

No, thank goodness. I was on the look out for that myself.

When I got cellulitis I'd never heard of it before let alone seen it,
thats why I basicaly ignored the first, very mild, signs. I won't do that
again! If you hit it with antibiotics early on it's not a problem but let
it get hold for a 24 to 48hrs and it becomes serious to life threatening.

The scary thing is that is comes from a very common bacteria that is part
of most peoples skin flora. You might not even be able to see the wound
that it gets in through.

Well, the update is that having seen the doc, the doc rang a bacteriologist
who said Ray should be seen by a hospital. So we went to Torbay hospital at
4pm. It took 7 attempts to get a line in to give him antibiotics in liquid
form - absolutely not the young doctor's fault, though she was nearly in
tears - and finally a nurse did it and pumped it into him. Then they said
that given the nature of the infection and the length of time he's had it,
they wanted him to go to Royal Devon & Exeter Hospital where they have a
plastic surgery unit and that, apparently, deals with hand cases - something
to do with the minute scale of surgery required, if any. Net result is that
they were checking carefully for damage to the sheaths that cover the nerves
(?) in the fingers and if the absolute worst happened would have to operate
to drain the infection. However, they have kept him in overnight and having
kept the canula thingy in his arm will give him antibiotics overnight and if
need be, all day tomorrow.
The one thing that they were *very* clear about was that while tet jabs are
important, having one earlier would have made no difference in this
instance. It's the bacterial infection from the dog's teeth that is the
problem.
The truly weird thing is that he's actually feeling better than he has for
several days and that might be psychosomatic because he's agreed to do
something positive (!) or it might be a genuine result of the antibiotics
working fast.

--
Sacha
http://www.hillhousenursery.co.uk
South Devon
http://www.discoverdartmoor.co.uk/
(remove weeds from address)