I was attacked by a dog and spent almost 8 hours in the ER. For people still not taking COVID-19 seriously, please think about others who need access to emergency care.

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Last week I was severely mauled by a dog. I have deep and long puncture wounds, a crushing injury, muscle injury, and my arm has to be repaired by a hand specialist. I want to talk about what it’s like to sustain a major trauma injury in the midst of COVID-19.

On January 7 around 6 p.m., I walked out of my apartment into the indoor hallway, heading to get Amazon boxes out of my car in the parking garage. On the opposite end of the hall, a man was standing with his two big dogs without a leash. I barely noticed.

As I walked, I heard one of the dogs barking and charging at me. I’m not afraid of big dogs — my family has two — so thinking nothing of it, I just backed up against the wall thinking it was OK. The owner was also running towards me with his other dog in tow.

The dog jumped up on me and scratched up my legs, which I’m used to because of my family’s dogs, so when the owner grabbed him to pull him away I thought I was safe to leave. Instead, the dog bit down on my forearm and I started screaming. He started tearing into my arm.

The owner couldn’t get him to stop biting me. 

The owner began to punch the dog over and over. This made the dog bite down harder. I kept screaming and eventually I just pulled as hard as I could and ran into my apartment.

I dropped my phone in the altercation so the owner (while still struggling to handle two dogs) dropped my phone in front of my apartment door and yelled, “Call the police!”

I called 911. I told them what happened and that blood was gushing through my sweatshirt. I told them that I have sickle cell disease, which is another reason it was so hard to get the blood to stop. They told me to wrap the arm in towels and put as much pressure on it as possible. I was screaming because the blood was seeping through the towels.

Read more: Running out of space, hospitals in California are setting up tents and trailers to take in patients

It took the police and paramedics less than 10 minutes to get to me, which felt like a lifetime. 

I couldn’t look at the wounds. The paramedics tightly bandaged and applied pressure on my arm and said, “We need to get you to a hospital,” and asked which hospital I preferred.

I told them George Washington Hospital, and they said “We can’t take you into that area of DC right now and you don’t want to go into DC right now.” The police officer, the paramedics, and I just looked at each other and said…right. Absolutely not.

They started researching for nearby hospitals…every single one of them was on code red. 

I was bleeding profusely, and there wasn’t a place for me to go because all the ERs were filled with COVID patients.

Finally they …read more

Source:: Business Insider