Dogged by Controversy
December 21st, 2009Flea Confrontation
Give me your opinions on a vital issue.
You have a dog. You find flea bites on the dog’s butt. The dog’s butt is sore.
You have a flea-killing product called Advantix, but you have not been using it. It works like this: you put a drop on the dog once in a while, and it kills the fleas.
Would you:
A) Take your dog to the veterinarian and ask if medical science can cure his butt, regardless of cost?
B) Give the dog a flea dip, put Advantix on him, and see how his butt looks in a couple of days?
I think you will be able to predict my answer. I have a spider bite on my back, and it’s a big boily knot of a thing. I probably have a low-grade fever, and it may be the reason I got a kidney stone yesterday. I am not going to the doctor. God healed me of the kidney stone before I could get treatment, and I don’t care about the spider bite.
If I’m not deserving of a trip to the ICU, neither is a dog. That’s how I see it.
December 21st, 2009 at 12:58 PM
We switched our dog to the once a month pill comfortis, thereby banishing all fleas from her and from our abode. Advantix and similar worked fine when we lived in the north (NY, Maine, MN) but not in the insect paradise of FL. I agree there’s no reason for ICU for the dog.
December 21st, 2009 at 1:19 PM
Do you have Urgent Care clinics in Miami? They are less expensive. I’m concerned that you have a fever.
December 21st, 2009 at 1:21 PM
Fear not, Tziporah. I checked it today, and it’s going away. These things fill up with sterile pus, and you get a fever, but that’s about it.
December 21st, 2009 at 1:26 PM
if it is an unfamilar tye of bite – the urgent care trip might not be a bad idea. some spider/insect bites do warrant medical attention (like brown recluse spider bites).
December 21st, 2009 at 1:27 PM
This is not a brown recluse bite.
December 21st, 2009 at 1:31 PM
Steve,
Keep a close eye on the bite–keep it clean and well drained/dry. If you start to see liquefactive or caseous necrosis setting in, seeing a doctor is highly advisable. I’ve seen the results of lack of attention…and it’s not good. Red streaking from the wound is a sign of increasing infection and would also need immediate attention. Closeness to the spine is also something to consider in the overall equation. During healing, the area may become hard and have a pit at the bite area. Nothing to worry about unless it refuses to heal or spreads.
As for now, there probably isn’t a lot a doctor would do anyway–except clean the wound and perhaps start some antibiotics–which may or may not work, depending upon what the bite is. So, pray and use the common sense God gave you when looking after the bite.
You’ll know pretty quick if it was a Brown Recluse…wolf spider, or scorpion.
December 21st, 2009 at 1:33 PM
Ack! Read your comments after posting…
Never mind.
December 21st, 2009 at 1:33 PM
No necrosis, no enduration, no pain, and it’s shrinking. The only redness occurred after I poked it. And Wikipedia says there are no brown recluse spiders in Florida. Let’s all relax.
.
It may not even be a bite.
December 21st, 2009 at 1:58 PM
Bah…. a man only goes to the Dr. if he can barely drive there…
December 21st, 2009 at 2:11 PM
Dip the dog, wash the boil with antiseptic and cover both with clean gauze.
See if both improve by Christmas.
Happy Holidays to you and yours.
December 21st, 2009 at 2:35 PM
It was the “big, boily knot of a thing” quote that raised an eyebrow…
BTW, Wiki is misleading.
BR’s can be found in Florida and most every southern/midwestern state…They are less common in central and south Florida, but they are there in numbers enough, just …watching….waiting…Bwahahahaha.
Now, the big, boily thing sounds like a pimple. Ha. Pack it in Clearasil and be done with it.
Glad to see things taking off at church. The news on your sister was answered prayer…glad to see it…next, healing…
I’m now going back into my hole…
December 21st, 2009 at 6:19 PM
I had two of these things when I was in law school, and the diagnosis was “spider bite.” But it was tentative. Unless you see the spider running away after the crime, there is no way to prove it.
December 21st, 2009 at 11:07 PM
Now that you are all up on these things, ya know, you can take authority over spiders and tell them not to bite you? I did it when we lived in a cabin in the woods all full of spiders and my kids. I told the spiders to be at peace, I wouldn’t poison them if they didn’t bite the kids and they didn’t for years. They just hung around under stuff. Not everybody could deal with this, but I thought it was better than poisoning what amounted to a chicken house. Losing proposition. Can I be on the crazy lady list now?
December 22nd, 2009 at 9:54 AM
“Unless you see the spider running away after the crime, there is no way to prove it”
.
You mean Horatio Kane and the whole CSI Miami team didn’t rush out to collect DNA samles from the bite and do some sort of magnascope analysis of the tiny trails through the dust of the flor and some sort of infra-red satellite racking of the perp – assigning 16 evidence techs to work full time on it for a month (while getting their test results back within minutes of submission each time)?
.
I guess maybe CSI Miami is just a fantasy TV show after all.
December 22nd, 2009 at 9:34 PM
I didn’t realize crime scene technicians got involved in so many gunfights either until I saw CSI Miami!
I guess Miami really is a very violent place,,,,,