I just went over to check on our neighbor. Saturday, I had taken him to emergency with a badly swollen and painful hand. A scorpion had nailed him the day before as he was doing some yard cleanup. After over eight hours of being pre empted by heart attacks, etc., he found he had cellulitis from the sting plus a couple of wrist fractures he wasn't aware of or knew when and how they'd happened.
He's on the mend but is in very bad health and physical condition, though still in his fifties. Makes me feel very lucky, indeed.
Which led to thoughts about cellulitis, which used to be called "blood poisoning," and a little family history my children and granchildren wouldn't know.
Around age 10, my father developed that condition from a foot injury. He was in a bad way and the local docor told grandfather to get him to Bismarck immediately and have that leg amputated. Grandfather was horrified and decided to stop at an old doctor's home just outside town for a second opinion.
That old doctor examined the situation and told grandfather Thomas to take his son home and soak that leg in water as hot as he could stand.
That artificial fever killed the infection and my father had his leg still intact when I viewed him in his casket at age 95!
The original doctor was neither dumb nor incompetent. He just hadn't learned a few things that older doctor knew.
Which proves it's never a waste of time to get a second opinion in critical cases.
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