I’ve been bitten by a horse, snake (twice, years apart), cat, red back spider, dog (twice, weeks apart). What’s your count?
Cat. My pet cat. It wasn’t her fault, the window was open on the sill she was sitting on and abruptly closed on its own, on her paw.
So she understandably freaked out. When I ran to open it, she bit me on the finger.
Long story short, I went to a couple of Urgent Care centers before the ER. My mom had been told that I was allergic to penicillin when I was a child, so I told the medical staff this. After a couple of days, whatever else they were giving me wasn’t working and I woke up with red streaks going up my arm and my finger swollen to over twice its size.
Went to the ER. They said if I didn’t have penicillin, I could lose my finger. They also said it was common back in the day to mistake a certain reaction to it as being allergic, so maybe I wasn’t allergic. But they monitored me closely just in case.
Penicillin FTW. Not allergic. Spent 2 days in the hospital getting a constant IV drip of this modern medicinal miracle. Still have all 8 fingers and 2 thumbs.
Thought I was allergic my whole damned life from a childhood incident in '76. Had a long talk with the CVS doc one day. We really hit it off and shot the shit for almost an hour.
He told me the same! When I related getting hives when I tried penicillin later in life he told me that mono is often mistaken for strep throat, and yes, treating it with penicillin often results in hives.
I’m going to quit telling doctors I’m allergic.
BTW, just imagine how we could all benefit from being able to chat with a doctor for an hour now and again! Also, he knew I had just lost my job and my insurance wasn’t working. He gave me two antibiotic prescriptions for future use, even though I didn’t need it at the time. Also fudged the insurance paperwork to make it look like a software issue so I could just pay later.
What an awesome doc! Good to know folks like that exist :)
DON’T keep that information to yourself.
Mention that there may be an allergic reaction to something but don’t hide anything from your health care workers… (facepalm)
Penicillin saved my leg. Nothing bit me, I just kept scratching a wound because it was itchy.
Nearly 20 years ago I was on a meeting when one of my coworkers suddenly jumps back, takes off his shoe and throws it in the middle of the room, with a scared face. Everybody looks at the shoe and out of it comes crawling a spider. At this moment the boss walks into the room and notices the spider too and says: “woah, careful, that spider is extremely venomous”. The other guy then looks even more terrified.
Boss takes him to the hospital and he took the antidote within like 15 minutes from being bitten, so no big deal at the end of the day, just the story of how he was wearing a shoe with a spider in it for over an hour before it bit him. We were all laughing and cracking jokes in the afternoon but the guy was just relieved about no longer feeling the pain from it.
I have no idea what spider it was, but this happened on a small town in the Atlantic forest region of southern Brazil. My guess would be that it was a Brazilian Wandering Spider (the spider famous for giving painful long lasting erections).
Having lived in a few many venomous-spider rich areas, I bang my shoes together while holding them upside down to prevent this. Only had a spider come tumbling out once but that reassures me that it does the trick.
My guess would be that it was a Brazilian Wandering Spider (the spider famous for giving painful long lasting erections).
If that was the case there would have been a pretty obvious clue, no? lol
(not doubting you, just making a silly joke)
Sorry, Bob. Doc said you’re gonna die.
Had half my face ripped off my a dog when I was a kid. Doctors put me back together incredibly well and people can’t tell anything happened. I got super lucky. I almost lost my right eye and could have been super disfigured if one of the best pediatric plastic surgeons hadn’t happened to be in town that day.
Worst part was spending the entire summer inside and not being allowed to do many fun things. Got bit right as summer vacation started. I had a prosthetic tearduct until mine grew back and I had to be extra careful because it could come out easily. I also had a gazillion stitches.
Holy shit. Did you pick up kayak launching that same summer?
I wish lol.
Not me but my dad (a veterinarian who should know better) was bitten by a cat then ignored the wound until it ballooned up. They nearly had to amputate and he nearly died.
If a cat bites you hard enough to make you bleed GO TO THE DOCTOR ASAP! Their mouths are filthy and the bite will get infected
Never. Weird you keep getting bit.
Slow learner.
Where my snake bitees at?
Was biking/exploring in the woods and got bit on the ankle by what I later figured out was a copperhead. Couldn’t bike to the ER so I had to bike to the edge of the woods and meet the ambalance there.
Copperhead venom digests/destroys tissue, but the antivenom can kill you since it’s made from horse blood and you could be addicted, so they gave me 10 bags over the course of the night and stuck me in the ICU just in case. The person in the room next to me ended up dying from whatever they were there for. At this point my foot had swelled up like an exam glove you blew into to make a balloon. But it started going down after the 5th bag of antivenin. Which felt like ice in my veins.
The next morning basically I was good to go, but it was expensive. I was a teenager but my mom had to fight the insurance company to get them to pay which was the real horror story of all this.
My savage ex-girlfriend and one crazy neighbors kid.
I’m sure this is two separate stories but please tell it like it was one. Extra style points for the two biting each other.
A friend of mine had a partner accidentally draw blood when he (consensually) bit them. It got infected and they needed quite serious hospital care. I suppose that counts.
This did not end up in the ER but is a bit of a funny tale. When I was very young I got bit by a gerbil on my finger but it must of hit something somewhat significant as the blood was spurting. I wrapped a kitchen towel around it and wen to my brother who upon seeing the kitchen towel wrapped around my finger and hand for what I explained was a gerbil bite immediately started making fun of me. Oh did you get mauled by the mighty gerbil or such. Anyway he then unwound the towel and was like. holy shit. and wrapped it back up. He got it tightly wrapped with a real bandage and gauze and such that it slowed the bleeding down so that after a few hours and a rewrap it was no bleeding passed the bandage anymore.
Ha! I’ve been bitten by rodents a time or three and never had a spurting wound! Little dude must have been infected with rage.
I’m not sure how it works in every state, but in mine rabies testing is covered by the state but kind of requires a doctor visit, (and the animal to be tested) to get the ball rolling. I think you could also go straight to the sheriff. All of that to say i went to the ER for a minor bat bite, and to make my PSA statement that if there is even a sliver of possibility that rabies is possible, don’t ever assume that a minor animal bite is no big deal.
Got bit fishing a mouse out of the trash can at our wedding. When I sobered up the next morning I was seriously sweating about rabies.
Turns out mice don’t carry it, or at least have never infected a human. Plus, despite all the woods around here, rabies is very rare in this county.
It is rare, but not something to completely ignore as a possibility
I got bit by my cat once and had to go to urgent care because my hand started swelling up pretty rapidly, and I got some pretty heavy antibiotics, but I think that’s probably it. Had a dog bite too, but that didn’t go deep enough to cause issue (it’s a teeth thing - thin and pointy cat teeth vs wider and more dull dog teeth).
Guinea pig.
I was watching a school pet named Peanut. I honestly don’t know what I did, but I must have scared him or something because I opened up the cave, went to give him a pet, and he bit the shit out of my hand. His teeth actually put a nice bloody gash because I had to wiggle my hand to get him off with cause his teeth to drag. My hand was gushing blood. Would have never thought a Guinea pig could do that.
I had to beg my mom not to make me get rid of Peanut for my week. I never told the school/teacher what happened because I didn’t want to get in trouble. That was the last time my mom let me watch Peanut.
When I first read your question, I thought it was a hypothetical situation. Like an improv exercise or something.
Anyway, I was bitten by a racoon once. Everything turned out alright in the end for both me and the racoon.
I never went to the emergency room (was traveling where there weren’t doctors of any kind), but I was bitten by a black widow spider and was sick as a dog for days afterwards. Not sure if this counts for the question?
My family rescued a huge fluffy chow back in the '90s who promptly tried to bite my heart out of my chest. I still have the circular scar and it feels super good to scratch at. Dog was put down, obviously.
