Wednesday: Medical Adventures

Right, where to start…..

We’re in Miami.  Following on from K’s bat bite last Friday, she needs a course of 4 anti-rabies injections. She can, with a bit of manoeuvring, have those in Belize. The one further treatment that is absolutely essential, but not available in Belize, is the ‘Human Rabies Immuno Globin’, known as HRIG.  

When the non-availability of it became apparent my employer had originally wanted to fly K to the UK to receive the necessary treatment but that would have wasted too much time.  

So now we’re in Miami where they arranged for K to be seen here.  It’s the first time we’ve arrived at an airport, jumped into a cab, and said ‘take us to the hospital’.  We got to Jackson Memorial where we waited about 2 1/2 hours in ER.

When K was seen, she was tended to by a team of three, none of whom had ever had occasion to administer the HRIG.  We could hear them saying to each other ‘do you want to do it?’.  ‘No, you do it’………..in the end a student doctor stepped up. It involved 6 injections, one in each arm, one in the thigh and three in the fingertip where the bite occurred.  At that point, the student doctor asked one of the others if they wanted to take over.  Apparently, she just bit her lip and shook her head…….

We’ve had some beers so she (K,  not the doctor) could recover from the ordeal.