Attacked By A Dog

Earlier this week my son was walking to school, minding his own business, when he walked past a lady walking her dog. My son loves dogs so he looked at the random dog as he passed and the dog suddenly attacked his leg, biting through his jeans and puncturing his skin.

Instead of making a big deal out of it, he kept silent and continued limping his way to school. The lady with the dog didn't do much either, she simply said "no biting" to it and continued on her way.

Of course, I didn't find out about this until my son got home from school at the end of the day when I asked him how his day went and he casually mentioned that he got bit by a dog. 

I lost it, I bombarded him with questions about how exactly it happened, what kind of dog it was, where he was bit, if it punctured his skin, if the dog was on a leash or not and why the hell he didn't call me as soon as it happened.

I called my husband at work to let him know what happened and that I was taking our son to the doctor's. My husband told me to get his mom to drive us over, I agreed, hung up the phone and proceeded to get ahold of my mother in law, which scared her half to death and had her rushing to get out the door when my husband called me to tell me he was on his way home to take us to the hospital.

I immediately let my mother in law know that she didn't need to rush, my husband was on his way, she seemed a bit relieved but still worried about my son.

I put my shoes and coat on and took my son outside to meet my husband. We got into the car and my husband starts grilling me about how badly our son is bit, and asking if we need to go to a hospital or medicentre. I calmly answered his questions, letting him know we don't need to go to the hospital, the medicentre will be just fine.

We arrive at the medicentre, I take my son inside and go straight to the counter informing the nurse that my son was bit by a dog. The nurse asks a series of questions about how bad the injury is, looking out at the full waiting room, and then gives me the address of a different clinic. As we are talking the entire room goes silent and everyone is listening intently to us discuss my son's injuries. I thank the nurse for her help and take my son back to the car, give my husband the address of the next clinic we will have to drive to and ask my husband about his day.

We drive about 15 minutes to the next clinic and the parking lot is completely full, at which point I tell my husband to just drop us off, he says he will wait in the car, and we go inside.

The clinic is full, I go to the counter to talk to the nurse but she dismisses me and tells me to take a number. I'm reluctant but knowing that my son's let isn't in any real danger I take a number and stand in the waiting area. I hear a number being called, look down at my own and realize that I have a while to wait. I hand my son his health care card and the number, tell him what to do if they call his number and go outside for a smoke.

When I get back inside there are finally a couple seats available so I grabbed my son and sit down with him. We wait quietly when an older lady walks in and starts to complain very loudly about everything that is wrong with her, telling the nurse that she doesn't like a certain doctor, yelling at her for not knowing who the lady had spoke to earlier and then she starts harassing another patient. The nurse handles the ordeal wonderfully, keeping her cool and gets the old lady into a room as quickly as possible. The entire room erupts with laughter, making jokes about needing to see the doctor immediately.

An older man sitting next to my son laughs to himself, looks over at us and makes a comment about how using a sob story will get us in quicker. I laugh and tell him our sob story and he then starts talking to my son about the dog bite. We chat a bit with the man and then our number is called, we go to the counter, give the nurse our info and she asks why we are there, I inform her about the dog bite and she immediately asks us to follow her. She leads us to the side of the counter where she takes my son's temperature with the coolest thermometer ever, then leads us down the hallway a bit to a scale where she weighs my son then leads us further down the hallway to an examination room.

While in the waiting room my son chats a bit with me about the rest of his school day, cracks a few jokes about the dog bite and starts giggling because we can hear the sob story lady complaining to her doctor. By the time the doctor gets to our room we are both laughing.
The doctor doesn't look too impressed with us and annoyingly asks what we need, I inform him about the dog bite and he starts asking us what kind of dog we have and if it is up to date with its shots. I let him know the dog wasn't our dog and give him as much info as I can, which wasn't much.
He asks my son to show him the bite, and my son drops his pants, hops up on the table and reveals the now scabbed wounds on his thigh.

The doctor examins the wound, asks repeatedly what the dogs vaccination status is, and asks if my son has any allergies. I answer the doctor's questions and repeat that we don't know the dog.
The doctor prescribed two full spectrum antibiotics and tells me that I should be knocking on doors in the area to find this dog and get it's vaccination status, he also tells me that I need to be calling all of the veterinary clinics to find out the odds of a rabies outbreak. Then he tells us to go back to the waiting room and wait for a nurse to get us to clean the wound.

We go wait in the waiting room again and I hear a nurse ask another nurse who had the dog bite, the other nurse says she doesn't know and that we might have left, so I go up to them and inform them that my son is the dog bite victim. The nurse asks us to follow her, has my son drop his pants and hop up on the table so she can clean the wound. She asks when it happened and I let her know it happened on my son's way to school but didn't tell me until the end of the day because getting an A on his test was more important. We all have a good laugh, she cleans up the wound and bandages it and let's me know that we need to come back the next day. I tell her that the clinic is out of our way and ask if we can go to the clinic closer to home, she says we can and gives me instructions to clean and dress the wound at home if we prefer that.

We leave the clinic and let my husband know that we have one more stop to make, we need to get the antibiotics, so we start heading to the pharmacy closer to home.

Once we get to the pharmacist  tell her what the antibiotics are for and she says she will have them ready in a few minutes so I take my son over to the coffee shop to kill some time. We order our coffee and slowly head back towards the pharmacy trying to kill time but we end up still having to wait a while. When the meds are finally ready the pharmacist calls us over and starts to explain how to take the meds, what the side effects are and what to watch for. 

The next day I take my son over to the clinic closer to home to have his wound looked at and bandaged for a second time. The wait wasn't nearly as long as the original time, we were in an exam room pretty quick considering the waiting room was completely full. This time we didn't see a doctor, we saw the head nurse and he was great. He asked us a series of questions about how and where my son was bit, told us that we didn't need to worry about rabies and that my son should be covered for tetanus shots given his age. He examined the bite wound, pointed out to me what area I should keep an eye on, and showed me that the wound wasn't nearly as deep as it could have been. The nurse then slipped out of the room for a minute to ask the doctor if she wanted to examine my son before he bandaged him up, then he returned to let us know that we should come back in two days to see the doctor, bandaged my son and sent us on our way.

Two days later we end up back in the doctors waiting room, waiting long after our appointment time to see the doc, when we are finally called into the exam room. This time the nurse was less than impressive and really didn't seem to know what she was doing. We were in the exam room for nearly as long as we were in the waiting room and the nurse came in and out several times asking if the doc has seen us yet. When the doctor finally came in she took a quick look and told us what we already knew, my son was healing extremely well, didn't need any follow up appointments and while the bruising would take close to a month to fully heal, the puncture woulds were already nearly healed. 

The doctor explained to my son why the bruising would take the longest to heal and reassured him that he didn't need to be skipping gym class because he was more than healed enough to participate. She gave me some basic instructions on how to care for the wound at home and what to keep an eye out for if the healing process slowed down at all, and then she left the nurse to bandage it up. 

The nurse's lack of skill became obvious as she looked confused by all of the options for bandages and then opted to tape gauze on the wound then wrap his entire thigh in a spiderweb type of material before tapping that down as well. My son looked like he had broken his leg by the time she was done but we didn't bother saying anything, my son just wanted to get home to play xbox. 

By the time we got home the spiderweb type material was itching and falling off so I sat my son down and removed it all leaving just the tapped gauze covering the wound. This seemed to help quite a bit and stayed on for the entire day and following night.

The next morning I removed the gauze, took a look at my sons wound and laughed because it really just looked like a small scratch, unless you knew it was a dog bite you would never have guessed what it was. I put a small gauze over it with some polysporin on the wound and taped it in place then sent my son off to school. He asked if covering it was really necessary at this point but until the scratch like wounds are completely healed I think it best to keep it covered as a precaution and to keep it clean. 

My son has definitely been playing it up with his wound, pretending to limp and acting like it is way worse than what it really is in an attempt to get his sister to do all his chores for him but I don't think she is buying it. She managed to slice open the heel of her foot somehow while cleaning her room and is now playing it up right back at him, pretending like she can't walk to get him to do her chores for her. 

As a mom I am pretty angry that my son got bit by some random strangers dog but not just because he was bit, I am angry that he was bit right outside an elementary school on his way to his own school, I'm angry that the dog's owner didn't make any attempts to see if my son was alright and I'm angry at my son for not making a bigger deal out of it when it happened. 

I wasn't there when the bite happened so I don't know exactly what set this dog off but as a mom I feel that I should be able to trust my kid enough to tell me the truth about how it happened and in this case, that dog should be put in a muzzle or left at home. It shouldn't be out in a neighborhood full of young children if it will randomly bite people and the owner really needs to understand that her dog would be put down if we had made a big deal out of the situation or even had we pursued calling the police or veterinary clinics.

The neighborhood my kids walk through has four different schools in it, two of which are elementary schools. That is a ton of kids in a wide variety of ages for someone to walk an aggressive dog though first thing in the morning when all the kids are starting to arrive at their schools. This owner is very lucky that it was my eldest kid her dog bit and not some kindergarten student. My son is nearly six feet tall so the dog got him on the thigh and his jeans saved him from having a much worse bite, had he been a young child I can only imagine where he would have been bit and I know it would have been much worse.