so my landlord owns a cat. i pet it sometimes but usually i'm too lazy. i decided to pet it today, and all was going ok,until i touched it's claw/paw. then it bit me.
i googled cat bites and found that they were much more dangerous than dog bites due to some kind of bacteria in their saliva. it then occurred to me that there are many reasons why dogs are better than cats:
- it's hard for an average non-cat owner to tell if a cat is happy or not (wagging its tail actually means it's mad)
- cats think they're the center of the universe. dogs think you're the center of their universe.
- some dogs can actually defend against intruders. cats just get owned.
- getting bit by a cat is a greater hassle than getting bit by a dog. cat saliva is basically poisonous
- cats can't play catch
- if you're going bald, you can't use rogaine around cats, because cats die upon contact with rogaine
anyway, i fortunately had kaiser health insurance through work, i thought i might as well use it. so i went to the emergency room. maybe it's because my issue wasn't urgent, but i had to wait about an hour and a half until i finally saw a doctor. yay, go kaiser.
once i finally did see the doctor and told him my story, the doctor said cats are more likely to have rabies than dogs, and that cats bites are more likely to get infected (as google said.) but he didn't want to vaccinate and treat me for rabies yet, because i probably don't have rabies. and also because it's an intense process where i get 1 shot, come back 1 day later to get another shot, 3 days later for the next shot, 7 days later for the next. instead he told to keep an eye on the cat for the next two weeks (keep it indoors). to see if the cat will develop symptoms of rabies first. then once that happens, i'll know i'm screwed. The doctor said rabies symptoms might not show up in humans until it's too late, so that's why you gotta watch the cat instead. he also recommended a tetanus shot but since i had one 2 years ago, i didn't need another one.
anyway, i was prescribed amoxicillin / potassium clavu tablets 875mg for $5. 1 tablet orally 2 times a day for 7 days. you can't lie down for 30min after eating it or else it would just sit in your stomach and not be effective. you also need to take it after a meal, otherwise it might cause heartburn, but it'd still be effective.
i left the house for the ER at 1:13am. got back at 3:30. i wasted about 2hrs 17min of my life. but during the drive back, NPR (national public radio) was talking about facebook's IPO (started an hour ago), and it said IPO's are not a good buy. because during those first few days of trading, many shareholders (early employees, early investors etc) are not allowed to sell their shares. this creates even more demand for the stock in those first few days, which might bubble the prices even higher. then when those people do sell, the price might drop. also, facebook only made a billion dollars last year. but it's valued at 104 billion. it'll take about 100 years for it to earn it's worth. and that's a little too long...
btw kaiser charged me $75 for the ER visit. i wasn't expecting that, or else i wouldn't have gone. that's outrageous to me because i already have kaiser insurance and i specifically drove farther to get to a kaiser ER (that's one major bad thing about kaiser - you can't just got o any ER or else you'd go bankrupt before you die from your wounds). now it all makes sense where the doctors' $300,000/yr salaries come from. if i was a doctor who went to school for 8 years, have a quarter of a million dollars in loans, of course i'd want a salary of $300,000/yr (50% is taxes anyways). i think perhaps what's messed up is our education system that costs so much to train doctors. insurance companies are messed up too, of course.
