TOTAL AQUARIUMS
Chief of the Tang Police
- Location
- 1706 Lynbrook, NY, 11563
If you haven't been by the store yet, we have a 150 reef display right on the front counter. Wednesday night that tank started leaking and Thursday afternoon we had to replace it entirely. All the live rock and inhabitants were removed and placed in buckets until the new tank could be placed and plumbed. Once everything was in place I qquickly set about replacing the refugees from the original setup.
Somewhere along the line I managed to puncture, very slightly, so slightly there wasn't even any blood or pain of any kind, my right middle finger. This is not the first time I have received a small abrasion or other injury from live rock. It was so superficial I barely noticed it until later that night.
Friday morning I woke up and the same finger had swelled a little and felt tight. Nothing I haven't experienced before, it usually goes away in a day or two with no other symptoms. Over the course of the day it got a little worse, turned red and migrated up to the first knuckle (9pm). By about 12am I noticed the back of my hand was a little swollen now and the red patch was becoming more defined. At 3am the infectioned manifested a streak that started on the back of my hand and ended at my elbow. Whatever it was it had gained speed and was aggressive.
I quickly drove to the ER out here by me and over the next 12 hours received 2 IV bags of doxycycline and another antibiotic I can't remember the name of. The Doxy coupled with the pain now coming from my hand was bad enough they gave me Morphine and another pain killer through the IV and kept me overnight. I had to meet with a disease specialist earlier this morning to discuss options and possible further treatment. They released me about an hour ago with a prescription for a heavy dose of cypro to take over the next few days and I still need to come back in a week to check and see if we knocked it out.
I was planning on waiting until the morning to go see my doctor and deal with it but had I done that the infection could have spread to my bones and it would have been really bad, maybe even resulting in amputation. As it was it had already spread to my lymph system when I showed up at the ER.
I am not writing this for sympathy. This happened because I made a stupid mistake and ignored it. I've probably handled, literally, tons of live rock and other aquatic organisms for years and never had any issues. I fell into a false sense of security and this was a serious wakeup call.
There are so many possible suspects as far as what caused this particular event that the massive dose of antibiotics is still just a shot in the dark. They seem to be working and hopefully the cypro can finish the job but it's still a big guessing game. Do not let this scare you out of the hobby or go get padlocks for your tanks. Just take this as a reminder that there are things in our tanks that can cause major damage to us or even kill us outright. I'll post pics of what happened in a bit, but let this be a lesson and a reminder to everyone. Protect yourself. I could of just as easily fallen asleep and woken up the next morning with a VERY serious problem. Don't let any children stick their hands in tanks unsupervised or without any kind of protection.
That pic is of the effected area about 48 hours after contact. This is also after 4 bags of broad spectrum antibiotic IV and a 750mg cipro so it's already better than it was when I went to the ER. I messed with the pic to better show the red and the swelling. The ink is so we can track the infection and make sure it isn't growing.
Somewhere along the line I managed to puncture, very slightly, so slightly there wasn't even any blood or pain of any kind, my right middle finger. This is not the first time I have received a small abrasion or other injury from live rock. It was so superficial I barely noticed it until later that night.
Friday morning I woke up and the same finger had swelled a little and felt tight. Nothing I haven't experienced before, it usually goes away in a day or two with no other symptoms. Over the course of the day it got a little worse, turned red and migrated up to the first knuckle (9pm). By about 12am I noticed the back of my hand was a little swollen now and the red patch was becoming more defined. At 3am the infectioned manifested a streak that started on the back of my hand and ended at my elbow. Whatever it was it had gained speed and was aggressive.
I quickly drove to the ER out here by me and over the next 12 hours received 2 IV bags of doxycycline and another antibiotic I can't remember the name of. The Doxy coupled with the pain now coming from my hand was bad enough they gave me Morphine and another pain killer through the IV and kept me overnight. I had to meet with a disease specialist earlier this morning to discuss options and possible further treatment. They released me about an hour ago with a prescription for a heavy dose of cypro to take over the next few days and I still need to come back in a week to check and see if we knocked it out.
I was planning on waiting until the morning to go see my doctor and deal with it but had I done that the infection could have spread to my bones and it would have been really bad, maybe even resulting in amputation. As it was it had already spread to my lymph system when I showed up at the ER.
I am not writing this for sympathy. This happened because I made a stupid mistake and ignored it. I've probably handled, literally, tons of live rock and other aquatic organisms for years and never had any issues. I fell into a false sense of security and this was a serious wakeup call.
There are so many possible suspects as far as what caused this particular event that the massive dose of antibiotics is still just a shot in the dark. They seem to be working and hopefully the cypro can finish the job but it's still a big guessing game. Do not let this scare you out of the hobby or go get padlocks for your tanks. Just take this as a reminder that there are things in our tanks that can cause major damage to us or even kill us outright. I'll post pics of what happened in a bit, but let this be a lesson and a reminder to everyone. Protect yourself. I could of just as easily fallen asleep and woken up the next morning with a VERY serious problem. Don't let any children stick their hands in tanks unsupervised or without any kind of protection.
That pic is of the effected area about 48 hours after contact. This is also after 4 bags of broad spectrum antibiotic IV and a 750mg cipro so it's already better than it was when I went to the ER. I messed with the pic to better show the red and the swelling. The ink is so we can track the infection and make sure it isn't growing.
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