MilliCal Goes to the Emergency Room

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

So I got a call on my cell phone at work. (I had just finished recharging it, and turned it on) Pepper Mill calling, to tell me that MilliCal was going to the emergency room.

Don’t worry – she’s okay. Right now we’re at home, and she’s playing with the kitten. But I was freaked.

MilliCal and her friends were playing in the woods beside our house, building a fort, I think. Apparently she heard a ruckus, and ran over to see Harley in an altercation with a chipmunk. Harley is one of our neighbor’s cats. Very friendly, but lately with a penchant for going after the local wildlife. I found her playing with a mouse a couple of nights ago.
MilliCal, kind-hearted animal-lover that she is, tried to break it up.
And got bitten. By the chipmunk. Lotsa blood.
MilliCal freaked*. Pepper Mill cleaned her up, but then reflected that we had a problem here – it would’ve been better if Harley had bitten her. Harley’s had her rabies shots. Pepper called the doctor, and was advised to take MilliCal in to the emergency room for inspection, treatment, and maybe some shots.

I met them at the hospital. MilliCal had been very nervous, I was told. Now she was bored. Bored, bored, bored. She had a single Band-Aid on her finger, and didn’t want to talk about it. She was tired of waiting. We waited and waited and waited. She hadn’t brought a book. I got a women’s magazine from a waiting room. Someone had drawn a moustache on Salma Hayek. I gave MilliCal a pen and told her to draw a beard on to match it. MilliCal started going through and drawing moustaches on everyone, and coloring hair in blue. Soon she got bored with this, too.

They called us in to get our specifics. we answered questions. I gave MilliCal a couple of sheets of polaroid from my pocket and let her play with them.

We went back to the waiting room – the “Fast Track” room. It’s a good thing we didn’t go to the slow room. We played with the toys for the pre-schoolers. We read the toddler books. We got bored.

Finally, they called us in to the ER. We went to a chilly, spare room with one chair and a movable bed. We waited. And waited, and waited. I started telling MilliCal the Sherlock Holmes story “The Man with the Twisted Lip.”
Finally, after 2 1/2 hours, they came in to treat MilliCal. The doctor unwrapped the Gand-Aid and got the story.

“Where’s the cut?” he asked.

“In the wrinkle,” replied MilliCal. The skin under the BandAid had started to wrinkle up, obscuring the wound. He examined it.

“The good news,” he says, “Is that she doesn’t need any injections.”
It turns out that chipmunks, not being carnivores or omnivores, aren’t vectors for rabies. (Bats eat insects) This is an immense relief to all concerned. Only we wish someone had mentioned it three hours ago. We had horrific images of series of gut-wrenching rabies injections. MilliCal was looking forward to missing school on account of it.

as it was, she got another cleaning and some Bacitracin and a fresh Band aid. we got to fork over a hefty deductible. (“Why?” asked Pepper Mill. “They want us to think we got our money’s worth,” I replied.)

Pepper Mill and MilliCal went home. I picked up Chinese food (we hadn’t eaten, and everyone was hungry). As I drove up, I saw Harley in our yard. Chasing mice.

*MilliCal maintains that it was Pepper Mill who lost it first, which made her then freak out.

2

Great story – greater outcome – and I had never heard that rabies had anything to do with which kind of -vore you are.

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Milliecal here:You wanna know what the worst part about being there for so long was ? Peppermill and I missed the second part of a three part '‘Doctor Who’'episode ! Fortunatly we can record it because it’s on again at one o’clock, but still.

4

Poor kid!

Emergency rooms are the pits. The only time they treat you quickly is when you really, really don’t want to have to be there. Maybe next time one of the little emergency clinics? Less of a deductible, and probably less of a wait as well.

5

Nah- you can wait a couple of hours there, too, and if you do need treatment, end up having to go to the ER, anyway. (Of course, they don’t have rabies vaccinations at freestanding urgent cares.) In this kind of situation, it may be best to just call the pediatrician. Even after hours, she can direct you as to what to do.

I’m glad your daughter’s okay. Having suffered more than my share of long ER waits with my youngest son, I totally sympathize.

6

Insects carry rabies? I found a link from googling that says insects never get it…

ETA: Sorry, I wasn’t sure if you were saying that bats are vectors for rabies because they get it from insects, or for some other reason. Does eating insects have anything to do with being a carrier of rabies?

7

Cal

FWIW, the modern rabies injections aren’t “gut wrenching” at all. My wife had to take them several years ago when she was bitten by a stray dog in Thailand. There was a series of 3 or 4 of them prepackaged in very fine needles. We wound up doing them at home.
Glad to hear that all is well with Milliecal.

Regards

Testy

8

Great story. Just like to echo the sentiments that the rabies immunoglobulin used to treat possible rabies exposure isn’t too bad. Just a little shot, nothing to miss school over. And if you can trying to page your pediatrician is always easy too. Even if that specific physician isn’t available they’ll usually have someone on call for them who can answer questions and give advice. (Though usually they always end every call with, “but you should go to the emergency room just to be sure”, CYA and all.)

Chipmunk attacks while trying to save them? I’ve had mine. Damn thing jumped in my house when I was trying to protect it. Took >1 hour to get it out. In hindsight I should have just let the cat in to finish the job.

[hijack]

I’ve been waiting for this thread to ask a question in the back of my head. You’re Cal, your wife is registered as Pepper Mill, so when you daughter reaches the minimum age to post here will she be registered as** MilliCal**? Or does she get her own choice of name? That would be damn confusing if she got two names. I wouldn’t keep track and I’d just assume she was the secret twin of MC who was recently discovered.

[/hijack]

9

For the love of God… .it’s stories like this which make me want to buy nationwide advertising giving a basic run-down of why people should go to the ER… and when they should just wait to talk to their primary care doctor:

If you’ve got a nasty cough, and had it for the past two weeks… even if it’s keeping you from sleeping, just tough it out and make a doctor’s appointment in the morning.
Has your back been aching for the past six months? Take some tylenol, and call your primary care doc in the morning.

Really, a good 30% of the business any ER gets is comprised of things that aren’t emergencies… if you took that 30% of spurious claims away, Millical could have been seen by a doc in an hour instead of 3 or 4.

10

Hi, Pepper Mill here.
I did call MilliCal’s Dr. when the bite happened. It tooke two calls to get the Dr. to call back.
The bite happened at 4:30 on Fri. afternoon, so the office was closed. I didn’t get MilliCal’s Dr. I got a doctor who was on call for the group. She was the one who told me to take her to the ER because she needed to get shots. The ER Dr. just shook his head when I told him this.
MilliCal is asking if she can change her name. We told her that if she does, she has to tell you who she use to be before the name change. We’ll see what a 10 year old comes up with.
At the bottom of this post is an ad for bat & aminal removal.

11

Glad to see you’re OK, MilliCal. You were sorely missed at the last Dopefest. I hope you can make the next one.

12

Sort of. ANY mammal can get rabies. Small rodents and lagomorphs typically don’t under natural conditions. Largely because primary transmission is through saliva and small rodents that are bit by carriers usually end up dead and of course they aren’t usually communally noshing on something like a carcass.

But larger rodents like groundhogs and beavers have. In the case of groundhogs it seems to sometimes be related to “shared” ( appropriated would be a better word ) denning with infected raccoons.

Insects cannot harbor rabies. Transmission in bats is bat-to-bat, not insect-to-bat.

Glad everything worked out fine, though :).

13

Chipmunks are carnivorous!

http://www.chipmunkplace.org/diet.htm

Get a second opinion!

14

How about just looking at the CDC section on Rabies which has a chart on different types of bites. From that site:

“Bites of squirrels, hamsters, guinea pigs, gerbils, chipmunks, rats, mice, other small rodents, rabbits, and hares almost never require rabies postexposure prophylaxis.”

15

That “almost never” is partly scientific caution (scientists hate making flat yes-or-no statements; I used to work with them, I know) and partly because you should always consider rabies if bitten by any warm-blooded animal acting strangely. If you’re minding your own business and a chipmunk lunges from the bushes and bites you, get rabies shots. If a cat is attacking the chipmunk and you intervene, and the chipmunk bites you, no worries; lashing out in panic isn’t strange behavior.

Note that for normally nocturnal animals, like rats and mice, simply being out in daylight may be strange behavior. If you see a bat out in daylight, steer well clear!

I’d be more worried about the bite getting infected. You don’t know where that chipmunk’s been.