It Always Happens on a Weekend!

From Tony Thain:

After a fractious and tiring Friday in Fort William, fighting the downpours of horizontal rain and hail, Tonia and I were looking forward to a "pottering" weekend and watching the final Formula One race of the season on the TV.

This wasn't to be as Tonia was asked to look at our neighbours pony, which was off colour and not eating. Amongst the checks was to look at the animals teeth, a job that Tonia had done hundreds of times in her previous professional life.  However, despite having his tongue being held so that he could not close his mouth, this pony had a trick up his sleeve and managed to bite down onto Tonia's fingers, crushing her index finger between his back molars.

At home it soon became obvious that our first aid skills and equipment were not appropriate for this type of injury due to the extent of the crush damage to the finger tip and the real danger of infection from an animal bite. Initial first aid was carried out, hand in salt solution and sitting Tonia down as she was looking almost transparent with shock. Initialy, I tried to ring the Strontian nurses station, but the result was an answerphone message, which could have been picked up straight away or if the nurses were dealing with others, some time could elapse before a phone call. As the bowl of salt water was now turning a nice shade of red with all the bleeding, I elected to do as we had been advised - ring the emergency services. I know that this was not a life threatening situation, an assessment that was passed on to the operator, but it was something that needed to be dealt with quickly. 

Within ten minutes the "A" team arrived, comprising Jessie and Maggie, who reassured us that the right course of action had been taken, bearing in mind that I had never before rung 999 for an ambulance. It took them some twenty minutes to sort out the wound as there was too much damage to steri-strip or stitch.

Some time after they had left we received a call saying that the on-call Doctor would be at the Kilchoan Surgery and wanted to see Tonia to administer an anti-Tetnus injection and to give anti-boitics.

It is just this sort of "grey area" that I had been worried about when we lost a District Nurse located in Kilchoan. Previously I would have rung 510202 and one of the nurses would have been on the scene very quickly. Things have changed drastically over the past few months, but on this occasion everything worked well, Tonias finger was treated quickly and professionally, the main ambulance from Strontian, although despatched, was recalled to deal with any more serious emergencies, and the patient was seen by a Doctor and given the appropriate medication to counter any after effects.

Finally a big thank you to the Emergency Responders who are making the new system work, and by their presence are reassuring the community.

The pony? The vet was called and it had to have an anti-biotic and other medication!

Many thanks to Tony Thain for pictures and story, and to everyone for permission to include the photographs.