I don't think either I or my wife have ever been bitten by a dog. Until now that is. Last week we both got bitten at the same time by a neighbour's dog. Now, it's not the purpose of this post to go on about our neighbour and what should and shouldn't have happened. I was prompted to write this one owing to some positive feedback that developed at the local Health Centre in Gennadi as an upshot.
We were bitten in the early evening of Friday 31st August, as we were walking home from an early evening swim. When we got home I broke out the trusty bottle of Dettol and bathed both wounds, then the equally wonderful and comforting smell of Germoline graced our nostrils as I applied a Band Aid dressing with the cream to the legs where we'd sustained the bites.
Both Dettol and Germolene are always in our first aid kit. They both take me back to my childhood and seem to be two essentials for the home that haven't changed in decades.
It soon became apparent that my 'bite' was barely a bite at all and that it would heal cleanly and quickly. It more resembled a graze than a bite really. I was the lucky one. My wife's, however, when we peeled off the band aid the following morning, was evidently much more serious and a substantial chunk of leg about the size of your average watch-face had been damaged. The toothmarks were clearly visible and the wound quite deep.
Thus it was that, when she got to work that day, her trusty team of fellow women insisted that she go to the pharmacy for a tetanus jab right away. Notwithstanding her general aversion to all things medical and her fear of needles, she complied, paid out €13 and within minutes of entering the pharmacy was back in the car on her way back to work.
When she got home I was right proud of her, because she'd faced down her fears. I still felt, though, that she ought to go to the doctor and see what he/she thought about the wound. She wasn't too keen and resisted for a few days until it became evident that there was redness and swelling around the wound, even though she'd been dressing it with Betadine every night. Toward the end of the week we finally had the time to visit the surgery at Gennadi and that's when what occurred prompted me to write this up as a post.
The both of us aren't too keen on antibiotics, and it's well documented that, having killed off zillions of strains of bacteria over the past few decades, the ones that are left are the ones that are resistant and thus the antibiotics are beginning to lose their effectiveness. You don't need me to tell you that anyway. The fact still remains though that, since Yvonne-Maria hadn't been prescribed antibiotics for probably nigh on 40 years, they were liable to do the trick in her case.
So we waltzed into the Gennadi Health Centre on Thursday morning last and were delighted to find no one waiting before us to see the doctor. The nurse who works there is a woman of probably about five foot five, maybe in her late forties and with her dark hair always tied back in a severe pony tail, no doubt for hygiene reasons. She was pottering in her consultation room, saw us and bade us go right in to the doctor's office.
Doctor Nikos, who had run this centre for several years, has since moved on to a private practice just along the road. He is though, still supportive of the centre and cites the fact that he has a young family as one of the reasons why he had to make some tough decisions in his life about workload and salary. The new doctor seemed to me to be of similar age, quite a nice looking chap, although somewhat more swarthy than Niko, his predecessor. We soon got down to business and the long and the short of it is that he chided my dearest (mildly I should add) about not having been to see him sooner.
Whilst I stared at the half-consumed frappé, sitting, as expected, on his desk, my wife said that she didn't like the idea of antibiotics because they may have side-effects.
The doctor's reply was, I thought, rather succinct.
"Dog bites have side effects." He replied, adding: "and they may be a good deal more serious than those from antibiotics."
He won the argument and Yvonne-Maria relented. He wrote her a prescription with a flourish and told her to pop into the nurse's room for her to inspect the wound again and spray some anti-bacterial stuff on it. While this was going on, my wife chose the moment to sing my praises, much to my embarrassment, at least at the outset.
As the nurse sprayed this stuff that looked like frost on the wound, my better half said, "Of course, you know that my hubby here is the one that organises 'Help For Health Gennadi' every spring, to raise money for the centre here."
"Of course," replied the nurse, whose name we really ought to know by now. "I recognised you both as soon as you came in."
Now, before I continue with the tale of this conversation, I would like to clarify one or two facts. Rarely is any idea truly original. The idea for staging an event annually to raise cash for the local health centre sprang from the fact that our friend Melanie, who runs the Kalimera Café, also known as Lindos Reception, had already held such an event there to support the Lindos Health Centre. It was while discussing this with another pair of ex-pats who live down the road from here, Peter and Maggie Yates, that Peter remarked, "Be nice if someone did the same for Gennadi." So right there and then I decided that I'd do just that.
Since it began, a few years back now, the team has melded into a few regulars, all of whom are worthy of credit for the event. Stalwart workers include Julia Easy, Viv Colbeck, David and Barbara Lewis, Tony and Sue and a few local Greek ladies too. These days the whole event couldn't happen without Dimitri Koronios, who runs the really lovely and intimate Summer Breeze Hotel in the village. We stage it every Spring, usually to coincide with a local village parade, and my job these days is mainly to maintain the Facebook page.
Over the years we've been running "Help For Health Gennadi" we've raised a couple of thousand Euros. So, here we were in the nurse's consulting room, and my wife was on the subject of the charitable event, so the nurse, bless her, replied:
"You know we are so grateful to you for what you do. This year we bought all these instruments with the money you raised." At this point she opened a stainless steel cabinet, inside of which were several stainless steel drawers. She extracted one and showed us a selection of sterilised instruments that Hannibal Lecter would have been proud of (for all the wrong reasons, of course), before also adding that our money was also going to be financing some re-wiring, plumbing and decorating that needed to be done some time soon.
I chipped in here, to cut off her stream of praise, by saying, "Well, look, we all of us need this place to be here and functioning well. Look at us, who'd have thought we'd be in here today, benefitting from your service to the community? We may not see the inside of this place for years at a time, but we're pretty glad it's here when we need it. So I'd say we're only benefitting ourselves by holding the event."
When we walked out of there and into the pharmacy next-door but one to collect my beloved's prescription for a 6-day course of antibiotics, I have to admit to feeling very happy.
No one wants to be bitten by a dog, but if we hadn't been then we 'd never have had that conversation. To see how our money was working for the good of all the locals, not to mention seeing the look on the nurse's face and hearing her words of appreciation, well it darned well made our week.
We were bitten in the early evening of Friday 31st August, as we were walking home from an early evening swim. When we got home I broke out the trusty bottle of Dettol and bathed both wounds, then the equally wonderful and comforting smell of Germoline graced our nostrils as I applied a Band Aid dressing with the cream to the legs where we'd sustained the bites.
Both Dettol and Germolene are always in our first aid kit. They both take me back to my childhood and seem to be two essentials for the home that haven't changed in decades.
It soon became apparent that my 'bite' was barely a bite at all and that it would heal cleanly and quickly. It more resembled a graze than a bite really. I was the lucky one. My wife's, however, when we peeled off the band aid the following morning, was evidently much more serious and a substantial chunk of leg about the size of your average watch-face had been damaged. The toothmarks were clearly visible and the wound quite deep.
Thus it was that, when she got to work that day, her trusty team of fellow women insisted that she go to the pharmacy for a tetanus jab right away. Notwithstanding her general aversion to all things medical and her fear of needles, she complied, paid out €13 and within minutes of entering the pharmacy was back in the car on her way back to work.
When she got home I was right proud of her, because she'd faced down her fears. I still felt, though, that she ought to go to the doctor and see what he/she thought about the wound. She wasn't too keen and resisted for a few days until it became evident that there was redness and swelling around the wound, even though she'd been dressing it with Betadine every night. Toward the end of the week we finally had the time to visit the surgery at Gennadi and that's when what occurred prompted me to write this up as a post.
The both of us aren't too keen on antibiotics, and it's well documented that, having killed off zillions of strains of bacteria over the past few decades, the ones that are left are the ones that are resistant and thus the antibiotics are beginning to lose their effectiveness. You don't need me to tell you that anyway. The fact still remains though that, since Yvonne-Maria hadn't been prescribed antibiotics for probably nigh on 40 years, they were liable to do the trick in her case.
So we waltzed into the Gennadi Health Centre on Thursday morning last and were delighted to find no one waiting before us to see the doctor. The nurse who works there is a woman of probably about five foot five, maybe in her late forties and with her dark hair always tied back in a severe pony tail, no doubt for hygiene reasons. She was pottering in her consultation room, saw us and bade us go right in to the doctor's office.
Doctor Nikos, who had run this centre for several years, has since moved on to a private practice just along the road. He is though, still supportive of the centre and cites the fact that he has a young family as one of the reasons why he had to make some tough decisions in his life about workload and salary. The new doctor seemed to me to be of similar age, quite a nice looking chap, although somewhat more swarthy than Niko, his predecessor. We soon got down to business and the long and the short of it is that he chided my dearest (mildly I should add) about not having been to see him sooner.
Whilst I stared at the half-consumed frappé, sitting, as expected, on his desk, my wife said that she didn't like the idea of antibiotics because they may have side-effects.
The doctor's reply was, I thought, rather succinct.
"Dog bites have side effects." He replied, adding: "and they may be a good deal more serious than those from antibiotics."
He won the argument and Yvonne-Maria relented. He wrote her a prescription with a flourish and told her to pop into the nurse's room for her to inspect the wound again and spray some anti-bacterial stuff on it. While this was going on, my wife chose the moment to sing my praises, much to my embarrassment, at least at the outset.
As the nurse sprayed this stuff that looked like frost on the wound, my better half said, "Of course, you know that my hubby here is the one that organises 'Help For Health Gennadi' every spring, to raise money for the centre here."
"Of course," replied the nurse, whose name we really ought to know by now. "I recognised you both as soon as you came in."
Now, before I continue with the tale of this conversation, I would like to clarify one or two facts. Rarely is any idea truly original. The idea for staging an event annually to raise cash for the local health centre sprang from the fact that our friend Melanie, who runs the Kalimera Café, also known as Lindos Reception, had already held such an event there to support the Lindos Health Centre. It was while discussing this with another pair of ex-pats who live down the road from here, Peter and Maggie Yates, that Peter remarked, "Be nice if someone did the same for Gennadi." So right there and then I decided that I'd do just that.
Since it began, a few years back now, the team has melded into a few regulars, all of whom are worthy of credit for the event. Stalwart workers include Julia Easy, Viv Colbeck, David and Barbara Lewis, Tony and Sue and a few local Greek ladies too. These days the whole event couldn't happen without Dimitri Koronios, who runs the really lovely and intimate Summer Breeze Hotel in the village. We stage it every Spring, usually to coincide with a local village parade, and my job these days is mainly to maintain the Facebook page.
Over the years we've been running "Help For Health Gennadi" we've raised a couple of thousand Euros. So, here we were in the nurse's consulting room, and my wife was on the subject of the charitable event, so the nurse, bless her, replied:
"You know we are so grateful to you for what you do. This year we bought all these instruments with the money you raised." At this point she opened a stainless steel cabinet, inside of which were several stainless steel drawers. She extracted one and showed us a selection of sterilised instruments that Hannibal Lecter would have been proud of (for all the wrong reasons, of course), before also adding that our money was also going to be financing some re-wiring, plumbing and decorating that needed to be done some time soon.
I chipped in here, to cut off her stream of praise, by saying, "Well, look, we all of us need this place to be here and functioning well. Look at us, who'd have thought we'd be in here today, benefitting from your service to the community? We may not see the inside of this place for years at a time, but we're pretty glad it's here when we need it. So I'd say we're only benefitting ourselves by holding the event."
When we walked out of there and into the pharmacy next-door but one to collect my beloved's prescription for a 6-day course of antibiotics, I have to admit to feeling very happy.
No one wants to be bitten by a dog, but if we hadn't been then we 'd never have had that conversation. To see how our money was working for the good of all the locals, not to mention seeing the look on the nurse's face and hearing her words of appreciation, well it darned well made our week.
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