Not A Great Way To Start The Week

 If you're squeamish or don't like blood, better pass on looking at this blog!

Sunday, March 7th I was doing my usual walk on the beach in the early morning - even though campers are NOT allowed on the beach for overnight camping, there were 3 sets of them camped out!  As I was walking towards the last tent (which is up on the sand - I walk right along the water) I saw a dog down on the water.  I stopped and waited to see if a person would come out of the tent and sure enough, someone came out and the dog went back to the tent.

I walked on by and then turned around at my designated spot and headed back along the beach.  Now mind you, I look for sea glass when I walk so my head is down a lot and out of the corner of my eye as I'm walking parallel to that tent again, I see 2 dogs barreling towards me!!  It happened SO FAST that I hardly knew what had happened but one of the dogs bit me in the back of the leg!  It hurt - BAD!!  Both dogs then stood there barking ferociously and I remember screaming NO at them as the owner is running towards me, yelling at the dogs!

I think I was in shock for a couple of minutes - the bite hurt - and she got ahold of the dogs and sent them back up to the tent.  I told her the one bit me and turned my leg around and sure enough it was already bleeding.  I did have enough sense to ask if the dog had had his shots and she said yes!  And by this time I realize the couple has 4 dogs!  The guy is walking towards me too and he felt bad and kept asking what he could do to help!

I had no idea the bite was so bad and just stood there dumbfounded - by this time Joleen is walking towards me and I just left and walked towards her and showed her my leg!  I should have asked him to take me by car back to our house as we had at least 1/3 of a mile or more to get back there!  And I probably should have gotten their names and phone number but I'm walking without ANYTHING except sea glass in my pocket and I'm barefoot!

It was a long walk back to the house and when I got there, then I could really see what had happened and it wasn't pretty......

This doesn't look so bad taken straight on.

But once I turned my leg to the side, you could see how swollen it was!

Joleen is a nurse (how convenient!!) so got the puncture wounds cleaned up and we got ahold of Jaime (who is a pharmacist) to see what type of antibiotics I needed to be on!  Glenn was out fishing!!

We flagged down my friend Jo who was walking by and she took one look at my leg and said she was taking me to the dr so walked back home to get her car.  But after she finally got ahold of a nurse who works at the clinic, she found out it wasn't open (it's Sunday).  The nurse did call the dr and got instructions on what to do and passed that on to us!

It's such a great small community we stay in and before long, Jo had left and brought back all kinds of supplies - she had a syringe to thoroughly irrigate the wounds, special liquid to clean it with again and then per the dr, an amoxicillin pill crushed into triple antibiotic cream!

Glenn was pretty darn shocked when he got back in from fishing and him and Joleen got right into town to get me some high powered antibiotics!  Luckily the 2nd pharmacy they stopped at would dispense them without a prescription!

For many days, I iced it, put on the cream, took my medication and spent way too much time on the couch!  The bruising was bad - all the way down to the ankle and it hurt to basically sit straight on the couch and have my legs in front of me because of the pressure so spent a lot of time on my side!  Luckily I slept pretty well!

I've been wearing the same pair of stretchy cotton shorts for over a week now during the day and if we had to go out or to town, I had one pair of capris that were not legging tight!  Guess I need to rethink clothes next year and have some baggy attire!

So as I write this 10 days later, my leg is doing much better!  The bruising is still there - it's still quite sore - but I've done my 10 days of antibiotics (and my stomach paid for that this morning - glad I'm done with those) and hoping the bruising will fade shortly!  I'm sure it was very bruised inside also.

As you can see, it's a whole lot better and the puncture wounds are scabbed over and healing nicely - I kind of think I'll have a scar or two from this ordeal!

Unfortunately I am not a dog lover (sorry all you dog lovers!) and now I cringe when I'm around dogs - and believe me, EVERYBODY down here has dogs running around on the beach!  Glenn has found me a stick and I've started walking short distances this week, carrying my stick and keeping a close eye out!  I will NOT walk if there are tents on the beach!  And next year, the bear spray will be brought down!