Dog Bite

Tuesday morning found me at an urgent care center for a dog bite. The PA (physician's assistant) was impressed with the lack of swelling, noting that dog bites almost always get infected.

Two days earlier, I took in a stray dog walking by my house. When I've done this in the past, I've posted pictures of the dog online and heard from the owner within a few hours. Not so with this dog--he must have been dumped.

The next day, he and my dog got into a scrap over a food bowl and when I tried to push him away, he bit me. Have I mentioned the dog is an American bully, weighing about 50 pounds? It broke the skin and made my hand sore--I'm lucky it wasn't worse. Sometimes I have more courage than sense.

The PA didn't recommend a rabies shot even though I don't know whether the dog is vaccinated. She did recommend a tetanus shot, since my last one was just over 10 years ago, and wrote a prescription for Augmentin (an antibiotic). I got the tetanus shot but haven't filled the prescription for the antibiotic because the wound hasn't gotten infected. I rinsed my hand under running water for a few minutes and put on Neosporin and L. reuteri/B. coagulans yogurt. L. reuteri bacteria create bacteriocins (antibacterial agents) and helps speed healing. Later I added juice from a Biotiquest Ideal Immunity recipe I ferment.

Eating collagen and taking hyaluronic acid, which thicken your skin, might have helped keep the wounds from being deeper--the skin wasn't broken on the sorest part of my hand. I'm also glad I've regained a lot of grip strength in the past few years. Imagine what would have happened to my hand if it had been mostly bones and thin skin.

The dog has been sweeter than the blossoms on the trees aside from biting me. Oddly, I'm sad that he has to go. He's still here (confined to the enclosed porch) because Friday is the earliest appointment I could get to turn him over to Indianapolis Animal Care Services. I even called them and told them that he bit me, but they said it might be days before the police and an animal control officer could be sent out. If they show up tomorrow when I'm at work, who knows if they might take my dog into custody if he happens to be in the yard.

What to do about strays in the future? On the one hand, I want people and their dogs reunited. But I don't want to take care of another potentially vicious dog for a week.

Comments

Lowcarb team member said…

That was good of you to take in a stray dog, but the dog bite could have been so much worse.
I hope it is picked up okay on Friday.

All the best Jan

May 18, 2023

Lori Miller said…

Indeed. A Marion County sheriff's deputy recently died in a dog attack. https://www.wthr.com/article/news/local/adult-dies-child-injured-dog-bite-east-indianapolis/531-fc737e97-5c7f-43f6-bbdd-76eab7cb0fad

May 18, 2023

Moving on to YouTube

Remember when the blogosphere was a wild ride? Doctors, writers and researchers dove into research, picked apart studies and stood up to official advice and conventional wisdom that didn't work. We found each other in the comments and made a community. Along the way, Dr. T. Colin Campbell's research got exposed as shoddy by an English major, Tom Naughton made us laugh, "safe starch" fads made us scratch our heads, "Diabetes Warrior" Steve Cooksey almost went to jail, CarbSane trolled everyone who was anyone, and CarbSaneR trolled the troll. Now it's very quiet. Blogs don't come up in Google search results anymore and even if they did, most of the bloggers have stopped writing. That's why I've moved on to YouTube. Videos do come up in search results and my shorts--which are mostly what I make--get pushed out to hundreds of people or more. My videos are on food and health (biohacking), but also on growing things and fixing things. If you...

Palpitations Gone with Iron

Thanks to my internet friend Larcana, who alerted me to the connection between iron deficiency and palpitations, I doubled down on my iron supplements and, for good measure, washed them down with Emergen-C. It's a cold medicine with a mega-dose of vitamin C, plus B vitamins and minerals. I don't think vitamin C does anything for a cold (a friend bought the stuff and left it at my house the last time she visited), but vitamin C does help iron absorption. After doubling up on iron in the last three days, I feel back to normal. (I'd already been taking quite a bit of magnesium and potassium, so I probably had sufficient levels of those.) How did I get so low on iron? Maybe it was too many Quest bars instead of red meat when I had odd cravings during my dental infection recently. Maybe because it's too hard to find liver at the grocery store and I haven't eaten much of it lately. Maybe the antibiotics damaged my intestines . And apparently, I'm a heavy bleeder . ...

We Hate the ADA; Why does the Perfect Health Diet Get a Pass?

Some people keep touting the Perfect Health Diet as low-carb, but carb levels that are mostly in the triple digits aren't generally regarded as low-carb; in fact, one of the authors says low-carb diets are unhealthy. A lot of us hate the American Diabetes Association's advice for diabetics: start with 45g to 60g of carbohydrate per meal and go higher or lower from there. That's 135g to 180g of carb. Perfect Health Diet advice for diabetics: eat 20% to 30% of your diet as carbohydrate. On 2,000 calories, that's 100g to 150g of carb. On 1,700 calories, that's 85 to 128g; on 2,200 calories, that's 112 to 168g. Depending on your carb and calorie intake, carbs would be 85g to 168g per day. That's not a mile off from the ADA's recommendations. Paul Jaminet, one of the authors of the Perfect Health Diet, says, "the basic biology here is that the body's physiology is optimized for a carbohydrate intake of about 30%." He warns against a ...

Not Only Cheaper, But Easier

A while back, I wrote about saving money on break time coffee and snacks. I haven't done very well putting it into practice. But a post by James Clear today got me thinking about it again: Warren Buffett uses a two-list system to prioritize things. Check it out --and follow the instructions. Using Buffett's two-list system, two of the goals I ended up with were taking care of myself and saving $400 more per month than I already am. As I said, I've been wanting to save money, and the system made me really focus on this. I came up with 11 money-saving ideas, six of which had to do with food. Buying hamburger in bulk. Ranch Foods Direct sells one-pound packages of 80% lean pastured ground beef in bundles of 20 for a lot less than Whole Foods. Sprouts only carries super-lean beef that's grass-fed, and it's more expensive, too. Not driving to Whole Foods. Whole Foods is out of my way, and saving a weekly trip saves gas. Coffee at home, tea at work. Tea is fr...

Fly with Reuteri

If you're planning to travel by plane and you want to keep enjoying the benefits of l. reuteri yogurt, you might have gotten sticker shock from the price of l. reuteri probiotics. MyReuteri * costs $46 to $83 for 30 capsules, depending on the CFUs (colony-forming units, or the number of viable microorganisms). If you're thinking about economizing by putting some yogurt in a sturdy container and taking it with you, you can do that. I'll break down the pros and cons and look at some alternatives. Photo from Unsplash . Cost Yogurt might be less expensive than probiotics, but it isn't free. A half-cup serving costs about 70¢ to make if you start with a previous batch. It contains about 90 billion CFUs if fermented for 36 hours. This is a lot less than $5.56 for two capsules of 50 billion CFU MyReuteri, but for a one-week vacation, you'd only save $34 by eating yogurt instead. (You can freeze any unused capsules for later.) Furthermore, the yogurt would have to go in ...

Pain, Pain, Go Away!

Search This Blog