G60s put me in hospital...Author: jawapro
Date: Tue 02/04/2013 10:08 PM
I’ve often joked that G60s will be the death of me. This is normally due to the amount of time I spend looking at backyards and paddocks while I’m driving around trying to spot the old girls and NOT looking where I'm driving. But this weekend my own collection put me in hospital!
One of the websites is putting together a registry of Aussie G60s, so I headed down the paddock on Monday (Easter holiday) to grab all the VIN numbers so I can register mine.
That all went fine - so I headed back to the house.
After sitting down for a few minutes I thought my left felt a little damp, but when I touched it, there was no water or blood or anything. A few minutes later I felt like it again, and when I looked down I noticed there was a leech on my sock. No big issue - took it outside and killed it with salt. He wasn’t attached when I found him - but there was a mark on my leg where he looked like he had been - hadn’t drunk much anyway and couldn't have been there long.
That was fine - had leeches on my plenty of times before - the last time for over a day before I noticed (he was massive when he fell off).
But then I started getting really itchy, and Mum and Dad noticed my face was really red and swollen. Turns out my whole body was red and swelling up too - so they decided to take me into hospital.
The docs and nurses took it all fairly seriously. They gave me adrenaline and some other stuff I can’t remember the name of and kept a close eye on me for a while.
I got a nasty case of the shakes and my hands went really blue for a while. But I actually didn’t feel that bad - not sick as such.
Eventually it came under control and they watched me for a few more hours (7 in total!) before sending me home.
Now I have to go and get an epi-pen in case it happens again when I’m up the bush somewhere.
I’ve never been allergic to leeches before - so it’s a little odd (my sister is allergic though). It didn’t look like a tiger leech either.
The other possibility is that I actually got bitten by a snake. The marks that we assumed were from the leech could possible have been a snake’s fangs (they were two marks close together). I would have thought I’d have felt a snake strike though - and I certainly didn’t.
Regardless of what caused it - that trip to visit the G60s put me in hospital - and it’s made me far more wary of leeches...
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