Saturday, March 27, 2010

Poor Mumsy

This post had many possible titles:

Emily Sue DON'T read this (you've been warned)

Exercise is bad for your health

My Rabid Mother

Did you bite him back?

My Mum, who has been walking to get fit for our overseas holiday was out on Wednesday afternoon when a dog jumped over a fence and bit her.

Thankfully she was walking with my Nan, who then fended the dog off when it tried to have another go. When I told my Nan that she was very brave for trying to scare off a dog that had a demonstrated ability to attack, she simply indicated that there really was no other choice.

They flagged down a passing car and got them to ring for the ambulance, and Mum was taken up to the hospital. Nan also borrowed a phone to call Dad to tell him what was happening, and he came down, picked up Nan and took her home and then went up to the hospital.

The first I knew about it was a late phone call from Dad. If I'd been looking out of my bedroom or family room windows I could have seen the whole incident.

The dog was taken straight on a one way visit to the vet.

Mum was told to keep her leg up for 48 hours, then to go back yesterday, then told to keep her leg up for an additional 48 hours (but she's allowed to have crutches now). We're off to my Grandmother's 90th birthday party in a park today, so that's going to be easy!

We're hoping that she'll be better for our trip overseas - but the doctor doesn't think she'll be able to put weight on it for a week. He reckons that it was quite a bad bite. We've all been praying that it will heal quickly and there will be no infection. When the doctor looked yesterday he said that there is no sign of infection yet and that it seems to be healing well. Strange, huh?

What I have learnt?
1. Exercise is bad for you.
2. Don't wear your good, comfortable (and expensive) shoes and orthotics walking, because when you get bitten by a dog, one shoe will fill with blood and will either be wrecked, or have to be cleaned out by your husband and/or daughter (and possibly still be wrecked because of the extreme measures needed to try to get them approaching clean).

The chance that we're not continuing to pray for a speedy recovery?

... APPROXIMATELY NONE!!!

PS for any overseas readers, rabies doesn't exist in the Australian dog population - so we're fine on that score.

4 comments:

Emily Sue said...

I read it. (I know I was warned. What can I say? I'm a rebel.) Your Nan is feisty! Oh dear... I'll pray for your Mum. Is she traumatised?? Or a stoic country woman?

For the record, I'm not worried about this happening when I visit because if we went for a walk I assume we'd have the LBD with us to protect us. (The fact that the attacker-dog is no more also helps...)

Givinya De Elba said...

Oh no! That is terrible. Dogs can't be allowed to do that. I love your Mum and hope she's okay. What a post for 27 March! Man.

Hippomanic Jen said...

Mum is looking on the bright side and is high on drugs (or is that the other way around?...)

She said she trembled all night the first night - so I think the shock had set in. Now she's just going through all the bother of getting other people to do stuff she was supposed to be doing. And she's resigned about the fact that she won't be doing heaps of walking overseas.

Allegro ma non troppo said...

That's awful. I'm very lucky, in that the only time I was ever charged by vicious dogs, I happened to be holding some full water bombs.

I couldn't believe my luck! Walking a few blocks to my cousin's house, armed with water bombs to create havoc with my relatives, and I was attacked!

Dogs don't like water bombs. It was fantastic. I remained un-bitten.