Dog Eats Man's Toe and Saves His Life

Have you ever been so drunk that you passed out and your dog ate your toe? I haven't either, but luckily for Michigander Jerry Douthett, he has. It turns out Jerry has type 2 diabetes and a wound on his toe had becoming dangerously infected. After a night of drinking Jerry passed out in his chair and the family dog Kiko decided to do a little doggy doctoring. From the article: "'The toe was gone,' said Douthett. 'He ate it. I mean, he must have eaten it, because we couldn't find it anywhere else in the house. I look down, there's blood all over, and my toe is gone.' [Douthett's wife] Rosee, 40, rushed her husband to the hospital where she's a gerontology nurse — Spectrum Health's Blodgett Campus. Kiko had gnawed to a point below the nail-line. When tests revealed an infection to the bone, doctors amputated what was left of the toe."

Comments

Sounds Like Maggot Treatment

[eldavojohn]

As seen on Gladiator and from the US Army Survival Manual (FM 21-76) page 40:

4-97. If you do not have antibiotics and the wound has become severely infected, does not heal, and ordinary debridement is impossible, consider maggot therapy as stated below, despite its hazards:

*Expose the wound to flies for one day and then cover it.
*Check daily for maggots.
*Once maggots develop, keep wound covered but check daily.
*Remove all maggots when they have cleaned out all dead tissue and before they start on healthy tissue. Increased pain and bright red blood in the wound indicate that the maggots have reached healthy tissue.
*Flush the wound repeatedly with sterile water or fresh urine to remove the maggots.
*Check the wound every 4 hours for several days to ensure all maggots have been removed.
*Bandage the wound and treat it as any other wound. It should heal normally.

By no means a pleasant option but an interesting way to remove infection.

Re:Sounds Like Maggot Treatment

[mad_ian]

This is still done in hospitals, particularly for bad burns. The Green Bottle Fly is most often used, as the maggots will only eat dead flesh, and do not excrete waste. Only after they pupate and metamorphose into flies do they excrete, thus the larvae are essentially sterile.

The pharmacy at the local hospital grows such larvae in sterile environments just for such use. In the field you won't have all those advantages, but it's absolutely an option.

Re:Sounds Like Maggot Treatment

[igaborf]

Human urine is quite sterile, believe it or not.

Yet, I stand by my belief that it's better to be pissed off than pissed on.

Re:wow

[Chris Tucker]

Coming up next, on Sick, Sad World!

Re:wow

[interkin3tic]

How much do you have to drink to pass out so badly that you don't feel your dog eating your toe??

Maybe not much if the toe is rotting and the nerves are damaged by diabetes and infection.

Besides, the man is a retard - he was urged to check for diabetes, but resisted "fearing the diagnosis" while his brother died of diabetes complications earlier!

It's really easy to point to someone acting out of fear and say "That's irrational: that's stupid." All of us have procrastinated out of fear on smaller things than "You could die." It's a universal human failing, and very common when it comes to scary medical things. Yes he should have done many things different, but we don't know the full story.

Let's reserve terms like "retard" for people who aren't behaving irrationally out of fear for their lives.

Re:wow

[elysiana]

I can just see that conversation...
Husband: "Holy cow, where's my toe? What happened?!"
Wife: "I finally lopped off that death-threat."
Husband: "What? That... that don't even make SENSE!"
Wife: "Yep, I've just been waiting for you to pass out drunk so I could take care of it. Smell was gettin' too bad."
Husband: "But... that ain't even possible! You can't just cut off my toe! Why are you lying?"
Wife: "*sigh* Okay, you're right, you're right. It was the dog. The dog actually bit it off and ate it. It completely ignored the rancid smell of rotting flesh, and ate your toe."
Husband: "Oh! Well that makes sense, that dog always was loyal! Good boy! Have some more Jack Daniels, boy!"

Good thing...

[Farmer Tim]

...he didn't have the clap.

Re:wow

[sjames]

In a hostile environment, hiding illness or injury is a common strategy to avoid predation. In this case, the jackals would be health insurance companies.

When we prioritize providing decent healthcare over welfare for rich bankers, blowing up brown people and looking under people's clothes in the airport, we'll see less of this sort of thing.