Sleep With Your Shoes On — Or Risk Waking Up Without Toes

(Before It's News)

The Creeping 'Surgeons' Who Strike at Night: Are they good or evil –surgeons or fiends?

They attack you when you’re sleeping and perform amputations without a shred of knowledge about biology, anatomy or medicine. There are four reported incidents in the last two years with more to come in the future — if they aren’t stopped.

Imagine this: while you are sleeping soundly in your own bed you are simultaneously undergoing major surgery –an amputation, in fact.  The surgeon is not a doctor, oh no — just a concerned friend who believes you need an amputation to save your life. He has no scalpels and no knives, but that doesn’t stop him from performing surgery.

Not only is your surgeon not a doctor, he’s never gone to school for a single day, not even kindergarten. He cannot read or write, is unable to speak or use a fork and knife, and he would die of starvation if someone did not prepare his meals every day and look after him as if he were a baby.

But he knows something important about you:  You have a festering big toe that is turning black. It’s thick with putrid infection. So your friend decides to amputate your gangrenous big toe to save your life. Unskilled or not, your friendly surgeon is up to the job.

This is what happened to Jerry Douthett a good hearted guy who had a few beers and few margaritas, he says, and fell asleep on the bed. Okay, maybe he had a lot of beer and a few pitchers of margaritas and sort of passed out on bed. Whatever the case, when Douthett woke up, his bed was saturated in blood—his blood, and his ailing big toe had been severed below the nail line. Douthett freaked out and began to scream.

Terrier trauma

"Jerry had had all these Margaritas, so I just let him sleep," said Douthett’s wife, Rosee, a registered nurse. "But then I heard these screams coming from the bedroom, and he was yelling, 'My toe's gone, my toe's gone!'"

Something was definitely afoot and it didn’t take the couple long to realize what had happened. Lying next to Douthett, washing his bloody paws, was the couples Jack Russell Terrier, Kiki.

Apparently Douthett was very sick. He had ignored his festering toe, but Kiki was well aware of the extensive infection.

While Douthett slept, Kiki cleaned the wound from dead tissue which apparently was a considerable part of the diseased, gangrenous toe.

Don’t tip toe around dogs

Doctors don’t mince words; they say Kiki’s amputation saved Douthett’s life.  The terrier had removed the infection and forced Douthet to seek the medical treatment he’d been delaying but desperately needed. 

"We see all sorts of problems, and I'm rarely surprised by anything, but I'm tucking this one away as an extreme oddity," said Dr. Russell Lampen, an infectious specialist for Spectrum Health.

Lampen said Douthett’s glucose level was extraordinarily high and it was critical he had treatment immediately. Lampen also comments that the reason Douthett didn't feel Kiki gnawing on his toe was partly due to the nerve damage caused by his Type II diabetes.

Kiki is not the only nocturnal, toe-eating dog on record. Many dogs take on the role of surgeon if they think they are saving their owner’s life.

Shibu breakfast

In March last year, a diabetic Oregon man woke up  in the middle of the night to find his dog had eaten a portion of his right foot including three toes. James Little, 61, had a foot with almost no sensation or feeling due to severe nerve damage, so a deep, serious infection had taken hold without him knowing.

Little’s dog Cosmo, a Shiba Inu, "was acting on its instinct to remove diseased flesh and does not appear to be dangerous, said Douglas County Animal Control Deputy Lee Bartholomew," says the AP.  Last reports were that Cosmo was being put up for adoption after Little decided he didn’t want the dog in the home anymore.

Loving black lab

Another toe eating incident occurred in 2010, when a 10-year-old girl who suffered from spina bifida woke up  for school and discovered all of the toes on her left foot had been chewed off. She screamed for her mother who immediately called 911 and performed first aid. The family dog, a black lab who slept on the child’s bed and was a totally loving devoted companion to the girl, had apparently removed the toes because it sensed the little girl had a killer infection.

Further research showed the little girl had been suffering from a serious foot infection that was not responding to antibiotics even though she'd been seen by doctors for over a year.

The girl’s foot was intact at 9 pm when she’d gone to bed but toeless at 7 am when she awoke for school.

Cavalier King Charles Spaniels just helping out

In February last year, seventy-two year old Frank Rose woke up and realized something was wrong when he saw his two Cavalier King Charles Spaniel pets with blood on their muzzles and then realized some of his toes were missing. Rose who suffers from neuropathy did not feel the amputations.

Rose’s biggest concern was to ensure his beloved pets would not be removed from his home.

Veterinarians believe that dogs who are chewing off diseased tissue are trying to help the owner and in some cases have saved their owners from potential deadly infections.

Still be advised, if you have a foot or toe infection, and a dog in the house, you might want to wear a pair of steel-toed boots to bed. You can never be too careful.

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