On Taking Two Shots in the Meat of Your Buttocks

Here I am. Sitting in the St. John's Emergency Room. It's been a sliver under a week since I was bitten by a pregnant beagle in the middle of the street. My wound is healing nicely. It's stopped oozing, and I've stopped wearing bandages around it all the time. I can type again, and that disgusting corpse white color is beginning to dissipate.

My doctor at Priority Care told me that Walgreen's could administer the rabies vaccination. Turns out they can, but they can't administer the immune globulin shot, which needs to be taken prior to receiving the actual five rounds of rabies vaccination. The only place to get the immune globulin shot is at the emergency room. St. John's has it in stock, so here I am. Waiting.

The attending physician comes in. I forget his name. He closes the door and sits down next to me. He explains that the immune globulin shot needs to be administered as closely to the wound as possible. Since my bite is on the middle finger of my right hand, he wants to put as much of the shot in the meaty palm side of my finger as possible.

Here's the hitch. The amount of shot is determined by your weight. According to my weight, I need 11 CCs of fluid. The doctor tells me that he only feels safe putting 3-5 CCs of fluid in my finger. The rest has to go into my butt cheeks. In the whole scheme of things, 3-5 CCs is no big deal. 3-5 CCs in your finger? That's a different story. "Much more than that," he tells me, "and your finger could rupture."

Well, a ruptured finger does not a good thing make. "Unfortunately," he tells me, "we can't numb the finger before the shot. We can't afford to put any more fluid into your finger than we have to already. You're going to have to take the shot with no pain killer."

No biggie, I thought. A shot is just a shot. The doctor looks around, then he looks at me seriously. "I'm going to shoot straight with you here, man. This shot . . . it's going to fucking hurt. You're going to be in a world of pain. I've got to stick the needle into your fingertip, and into the beef on the palmar side of your finger in between each knuckle. The amount of fluid we're shooting in there is going to cause swelling and just lots and lots of pain."

"I'm not trying to scare you," he continues. "I just want you to know that this is going to fucking hurt."

I nod. In all honesty, I just think it's pretty cool that the doctor said the f-word twice. The pain, yeah, that sucks, but I don't really have a choice. The doctor leaves and promises to be back in a few, with the immune globulin.

When he comes back, he has this young athletic looking doctor with him. "This is Dr. Duscherer," he tells me. "He's a plastic surgeon. He's going to help me give you a nerve block at your wrist. Your whole hand is going to go numb, but you won't have to deal with all the pain."

"That's cool," I tell him. Dr. Duscherer hooks me up, working a needle tenderly between my veins and tendons in my wrist. He actually has me wiggle my fingers so the tendons will move and he can thread the needle through them. Pretty badass stuff.

A few minutes later, and my hand has been turned to stone. I sit there imagining myself as a superhero with a stone hand, delivering big pimp smacks to all of my evil foes. A nurse enters the room, and I have to slip my pants down. She injects me, once on each side, in the buttocks and drops 7 CCs of immune globulin in my trunk. It takes a while, and we talk about how, the last time I was in the St. John's Emergency room, way back in 1981, I had to get shots in my buns for an allergic reaction I had to a cheap winter coat.

The cool attending physician returns after 15 minutes or so, and goes to work on my finger. I watch him plunge the needle into my finger, and I can literally watch it swell. It gets puffy, like the arm muscles of a bodybuilder. It actually starts to look like I've been pumping iron with that one finger. Lucky for me, I don't feel a thing.

The doctor makes me wait another 20 minutes to make sure I don't have a reaction. My stone hand is still as numb as ever, and now my middle finger is swollen and stiff. It really looks like stone. I can't bend it at all. I could now pimp smack my adversaries, or thump them on the head with my swollen middle finger like it was a blackjack. I really have options now.

While I'm waiting, the doctor makes me call the pharmacist at Walgreen's to make sure they have ordered the rabies shot and that it will arrive the next day. "It's important that you follow up with the first rabies shot as soon after as possible," the doctor tells me. "If not tomorrow (Tuesday), then definitely the next day (Wednesday)."

The pharmacist reassures me that she has all of the paperwork in order and that the shots should arrive the next business day. She'll call me when they get in.

I'm close to the end of this adventure. Or am I? Stay tuned to find out.