On Monday a 13 year old girl came to clinic with her parents. She had been bitten by a dog a week earlier. Apparently they took her somewhere where she supposedly got two shots but the parents didn't know if they were antibiotic shots or what. The bite was in her thigh and there was one hole maybe made from a tooth? Anyway, it was infected. We are out of tetanus vaccine now so I just cleaned up the wound. While cleaning it I discovered this wound was already tunneling under the skin. I had given her some ibuprofen before starting to clean it out but I hadn't realized then how deep it was or I would have given her something stronger. We don't have very many options for stronger pain medication but we do have a few. This poor girl was crying and screaming in pain. I had to pack the wound then and I probably got about 18 inches of 1/2 inch packing in it. I gave her a shot of Rocephin, some pain meds, and some antibiotics and told her to come back on Wednesday to have it re-packed. I wasn't sure if she would come because it had been so painful but she came with her dad. I tried a slightly different combo of meds this time but they didn't seem to help either. This time though the wound was worse. Now I could stick a q-tip in over 1 1/2 inches and there was a lot of nasty stuff I had to wash out also. In the United States this child would have been hospitalized and been on IV antibiotics and probably would have went to the operating room every other day to have this wound cleaned out. So I gave her another shot of antibiotics and told her she had to come back the next day. This time I had gotten over 2 feet of packing in the wound. Thursday she came back and thankfully it looked some better. I tried another cocktail of the meds we have but it still didn't take away the pain. She was still on lots of pain. She also got another antibiotic shot but at least the wound appeared to be getting better instead of worse. Friday Todd did the dressing change for me and he also thought it looked better. We had also talked together and decided to try putting some lidocaine in the wound for a few minutes to see if that wound help. It did! Saturday we let her have a break and today she came back to the clinic and I changed the packing again. It looks a lot better, not necessarily smaller but less infected and the lidocaine worked so much better. I could tell it still hurt but she didn't cry at all today. We will try to change the packing every other day now unless it starts looking worse again then we'll have to go back to daily.
On Friday at about noon Keith's family, Ben's family, and Sallie and I headed to Wahoo Bay beach for a day. There were 14 of us in the Excursion along with overnight luggage but it was fun. We got there probably about 5:00 so we dropped our luggage off in our rooms and all headed down to the beach. It was wonderful! We swam in the ocean and also some in the pool until the sun set then we had supper. The sunset over the water was beautiful! Saturday morning we slept in a little then headed down to the beach again. A couple of men in a older looking wooden boat wanted to take us out to go snorkeling. Keith offered them a price and they accepted so 8 of us climbed in the boat and off we went. They had enough snorkeling equipment for all of us and a couple of life jackets too. I would have been too freaked to go without a life jacket. The boat did have a small motor so it didn't take us long to get there. We then were free to "snorkel" for probably 45 minutes to an hour. It was so pretty. There weren't really very big fish but very colorful, also coral. Several of us saw jellyfish but nobody got stung. I also saw several eels. Then we headed back because it was time we needed to get our luggage out of the rooms. We still swam for a couple of hours after that and ate lunch then all took showers in the outdoor showers and headed home. Of course we had to stop for some cold cokes and peanut candy. Also got some really good pineapple. We didn't get home until after dark and everybody headed to bed as soon as they could. It was a short but wonderful vacation!
Today of course was church then this evening we went to Todd and Donna's and had fry bread with all the fixins, fresh pineapple, and jello. Ben's are here until Tuesday.
Oh yes, there was a baby born one evening while Ben's were here. Just like all of us who come from the U.S. and Canada, they were amazed how not even an hour after the baby was born the family was heading home. They had come on motorcycle and it was rainy off and on so Keith offered to take them half way home which they gladly accepted.
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