Dog Eats Man's Toe and Saves His Life

Have you ever been so drunk that you passed out and your dog ate your toe? I haven't either, but luckily for Michigander Jerry Douthett, he has. It turns out Jerry has type 2 diabetes and a wound on his toe had becoming dangerously infected. After a night of drinking Jerry passed out in his chair and the family dog Kiko decided to do a little doggy doctoring. From the article: "'The toe was gone,' said Douthett. 'He ate it. I mean, he must have eaten it, because we couldn't find it anywhere else in the house. I look down, there's blood all over, and my toe is gone.' [Douthett's wife] Rosee, 40, rushed her husband to the hospital where she's a gerontology nurse — Spectrum Health's Blodgett Campus. Kiko had gnawed to a point below the nail-line. When tests revealed an infection to the bone, doctors amputated what was left of the toe."

Sounds Like Maggot Treatment

[eldavojohn]

As seen on Gladiator and from the US Army Survival Manual (FM 21-76) page 40 [scribd.com]:

4-97. If you do not have antibiotics and the wound has become severely infected, does not heal, and ordinary debridement is impossible, consider maggot therapy as stated below, despite its hazards:

*Expose the wound to flies for one day and then cover it.
*Check daily for maggots.
*Once maggots develop, keep wound covered but check daily.
*Remove all maggots when they have cleaned out all dead tissue and before they start on healthy tissue. Increased pain and bright red blood in the wound indicate that the maggots have reached healthy tissue.
*Flush the wound repeatedly with sterile water or fresh urine to remove the maggots.
*Check the wound every 4 hours for several days to ensure all maggots have been removed.
*Bandage the wound and treat it as any other wound. It should heal normally.

By no means a pleasant option but an interesting way to remove infection.

Re:Sounds Like Maggot Treatment

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

Apparently, if you pick the right species, they are surprisingly discerning about only eating necrotic tissue; but I suspect that you Do Not Want to get the bill from somebody who did years and years of med school just so he could pick maggots out of your horrid wound...