Work temporarily halted

Owen had been hard at work on the sub frame for the truck, and getting along nicely, I must say, (and so he should have been, as he was spending pretty much, all day, every day working on it) but this all came to a screeching halt at about 11am on Wednesday.

While talking to a neighbour (from up the road, who we know) who was walking his 3 Rottweilers, 2 females, and a very dominant male. Owen was attacked by the large male dog, getting his right hand bitten (it is pretty nasty). He was bitten around the bottom knuckle of the first finger and on the back of his hand. At the knuckle, there is a gash, (which is still weeping more than 4 days later) where the skin was torn by the dog and some fang penetrations on the back of his hand.

As you can imagine he was not, and still is not, happy. He wasn’t doing anything wrong when the attack occurred, he was standing still, talking to the owner, (who warned Owen not to pat the male, (which we already knew), because he is so dominant)), with his hands down by his sides when the dog wandered over, (on its lead) and lunged at Owen biting him. He was bleeding quite a lot and it MUST have hurt a lot. His hand then began to swell quite a lot over the next day.

 

Tonight, (Thursday) I finally talked Owen into seeing a Doctor, about it (Owen is a typical male, and unless he has amputated something, or a big something is sticking out of his body, where it shouldn’t be, or something which should be inside his body, is no longer inside it, or something else equally as drastic, he won’t see a Doctor), but being a nagging pseudo wife can help sometimes, in finally getting him to get it looked at.

The Doctor looked it over, cleaned it up, redressed it, gave him a course of strong antibiotics, and a tetanus shot (as Owen couldn’t remember his last one, and thinks it might have been while he was in the army, more than 20 years ago). The tetanus shot won’t help with this injury, as you have to have it within 6 hours of the injury, for it to work (I didn’t know that, and this had been over 30 hours). He is supposed to go back and get it checked, on Monday (but I don’t know if he will, if it looks and feels ok).

 

He can’t do any work on the truck because he can’t close his hand, make a fist or grasp anything. So as you can imagine this has of course put a temporary halt on the work on the truck for a while, at least until he can grasp things and close his hand properly etc.

He has had to think of things he can do indoors which doesn’t include his hand for at least the next few days, until his hand is on the mend and is usable.

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UPDATE:

Well work has continued again, Owen had to take about 1 1/2 weeks off, to let the hand rest and recover, and to give it time until he could close his hand and grasp things again.

 

To make matters worse about 1 week after beginning again, Owen was walking around in the garage, not doing anything much and his back seized. So he had to take a couple of days off to let this settle, with lots of TLC, hot water bottles and some meds to help things settle down and he is back out there working his butt off again.