Day at the hospital.
This is probably directed mostly at folks paddling Lake Erie.
Thursday last, a fellow paddler and I, took the morning off to enjoy a leisurely paddle on Lake Erie out of Buffalo NY.
Part of the idea was to test out the artic tern as to foot position and ‘where’ to install thigh brace material and how much hip padding…in short I was in the water more than once…Used nose clips and ear plugs…but forgot about a tiny scratch on my left foot…
I’m thinking the culprit probably snuck in while we were taking a break at this makeshift beach off the inner harbor (the number of washed up zebra muscles should have been the first clue…but the water looked really clear and clean and dangling ones feet in while eating slices of watermelon seemed ok to do)
By 7 that evening the slight scratch on the 4th toe was inflamed and itching…and there was redness. I scrubbed the area and put on iodine.
Got up the next morning to see a foot that looked like it belonged to one of the Clump Family.
A visit to the HMO and lab tests and shots and antibiotics and two days later the swelling is comming down but the ‘wound’ on the toe still looks nasty.
Unanimous medical opinion…Lake Erie isn’t too clean.
Local conditions vary
There is a lot of water in Lake Erie. You can’t judge the entire lake to be dirty just because you might have picked up a bug at one beach. The bug that got you might even have been picked up elsewhere.
Paddling with open wounds does worry me, though, on any water, although I have never gotten an infection that way. I usually smear on the Neosporin before heading out with an open cut or sore, but I don’t really know that that does any good.
I got a nasty cut while
running the Madawaska this past week-I couldn’t clean my knee right away because I had to be rescued off a rock in the river. I swabbed it when I got back to camp,bandaided it and put a generous helping of duct tape over all-it stayed on til this morning when I took a bath at home-good thing I did that-I had some YELLOW pus there but the cut is healed. I get blood poisoning easily so I take all cuts seriously. Too bad you didn’t have the duct tape handy-it works for watersports…
You are fortunate…
I have a friend that received a puncture wound from a rock fish. The wound wasn’t bad and he didn’t think that much about it. He let it go for a few days and then ended up in the hospital for several weeks with a 50\50 chance of living. It wasn’t the wound but what got into it while in the water.
okay okay
You can have that one…