Cat Bite = Annoyance

I know, it's Friday and I haven't blogged yet. School is starting to weigh on me and I'm fighting harder to understand Statistics. However, I'm dealing with a physical problem that's now taking away all my planned homework time, at least for today. And that is frustrating.

Two nights ago, I was walking through the hallway in the middle of the night, and I stepped on Zig. Zig is an orange tabby cat that, after dad's passing, has kind of glued himself to me and claimed me as his new person. He's on my desk now as I write this.

Possible physical TMI warning, btw. Stop reading now if you want, though I promise not to post pictures or be too graphic.

I point out that I stepped on him, because I want it clear that I am NOT holding this against him in anyway, though it's frustrating. He twisted around and bit me, sinking a fang into my right calf muscle. For a moment, I thought I was fine, then I felt the blood start to well up and slide down my leg. I went and got Lona, we went into the bathroom, and she cleaned the wound out as best she could, then bandaged it. By the time I'd walked back to my desk, the bandages had soaked through, so she bandaged it again, this time with a gauze pad taped down over the wound. That didn't bleed through, and it felt better.

Flash forward to the next day, yesterday. In which I had to walk to my Statistics class, in the heat, wearing hot jeans. About halfway through my class, I felt the first twinges of pain at the actual site of the wound. I thought I was pressing it against the chair I was sitting on, so I shifted my leg. By the time class was over and I got back to my car, it felt... really weird. I was feeling pain in the FRONT of the leg, too. As if someone had shoved a dagger through the back of my calf muscle and it was sticking through the tibia and fibula, almost breaking the skin on the other side. My leg didn't enjoy driving, and when I went to get out of the car, it didn't want to hold me up.

Now, I should've been more careful. I should have said something about it right when I got home, but I let myself get distracted. As a result, I didn't think about it again until around 9 pm. About the time it started randomly twinging and twitching, which naturally drew my attention to it. And it hurt worse than it did before.

This time I talked to Claudia, and she reopened the wound and scrubbed it out with hydrogen peroxide (OW, if I may say), and then packed it with cayenne pepper to draw out the infection. Thus began what turned into a very long night.

The pain from the cayenne made it worse. My leg kept twitching - I couldn't go to bed, or I would've kept Lona up all night. So I tried sitting up in the living room and sleeping on the recliner with a pillow under my knee to elevate the wound. Not too long after I sat down, I started shivering.

Then I started shaking. I've never shivered that hard or that uncontrollably before. I put blankets over myself, which immediately started me sweating, but I didn't stop shaking. The last time I looked at a clock before I fell asleep, it was about 3:30am. I woke up at 5am, having to use the bathroom. To make matters worse, because my leg didn't want me to stand reliably, I hadn't done the dishes. I used the bathroom and started the dishes, but I was exhausted and my leg hurt. I was leaning on the counter... and I decided to do something about it. I took a cayenne pepper pill (to try and warm me up - it's good for circulation and equalizes your blood pressure, as well as I figured it would only help the infection be removed faster). I also took two ibuprophen for pain/fever, and a digestive enzymes pill to try and counteract the hell I knew the cayenne was going to send my stomach into. It worked to a point, in that the horrible, nauseating heartburn only lasted an hour instead of four or five hours, so that was good.

I finished the dishes around 8am, and then it started hitting me that I'd only slept for like an hour and a half. Lona got up later, and I crashed.... and woke up 2 hours later, almost exactly. I've been up since. My insomnia of the last few days is not helping me get better.

I feel weak and tired, I'm having trouble concentrating and focusing (hence being unable to do homework), and I know that when Claudia's done with what she's doing, she's going to clean out the wound again - remove the contaminated cayenne and pack it anew. I just hope that the cycle doesn't start all over again.

I hate hospitals, but for awhile last night... I was considering going to the ER. Shaking like that was disturbing - I almost couldn't breathe, and my heartbeat was erratic. I rode it out, but... maybe I shouldn't have. Maybe I should've gone to the ER.

Then again... it's only a cat bite.