West Texas A&M University Police Officer, Cpl Monty D Platt was bitten by a feral cat. Cpl Platt was responding to a call on the university campus.
Subsequently, and we do not have details about this, he was prescribed medication to prevent infections from the bite, the CBS Austin report states.
The medication prescribed caused serious illness. On Thursday, July 30 he was feeling very unwell and taken to an urgent care centre. He had suffered a severe reaction to the medication.
He was then taken to a burns unit at UMC in Lubbock according to the University Police Department (UPD) because the reaction was so severe that it had caused serious injury.
He was placed on a ventilator and treated for the “wounds”. He deteriorated. Last Tuesday his kidneys shutdown. His temperature had dropped and he passed away, I believe, on Tuesday evening.
UPD announced that there would be a memorial service for Cpl Platt at 10 AM on Friday, August 11, today. It will take place at St Anne’s Church at 605 38th Street in Canyon. There will be a graveside memorial at the Dreamland Cemetery Association at 26500 US 87.
The headline caught my eye. I have taken the headline from the CBS report. It implies that the feral cat’s bite had ultimately killed the officer but as we can see some sort of medication killed him. It may have been an unusual reaction. I’d like to know what the medication was. In fact, I think it is important that we know what the medication was.
What immediately comes to mind would be a rabies inoculation. My guess is that it would have been that to take preventative action but perhaps there may have been additional medication (see useful comments below). Of course, we don’t know whether the cat was truly feral or a domesticated campus cat. We have no idea how the bite was incurred. I’ll try and add some more detail later.
This is a sad story and my condolences go out to the family of the police officer.
http://www.newschannel10.com/story/36101264/wtamu-police-officer-dies-from-medicine-reaction-after-feral-cat-bite
This story says he was feeling unwell two weeks after being bitten by a feral cat.
I’m quite curious. Since he was bitten on duty there should be an incident report. And an animal bite would likely mandate he go to at least an urgent care or ER. Because doctors know the risk of cat bite and infections he would have likely and rightly so been given oral antibiotics and perhaps a shot.
My husband nearly lost his hand and possibly part of his arm to a cat that belonged to in-laws. We knew within 24 hours this was not something to try and home treat.
local redness and infection can usually be treated at home. Anyone who has cats has at least once had a wound that looks like you’ve been in tiger pit. or a puffy nibble.
My husband had blood work to determine the need of antibiotics. It will be interesting to see what the actual circumstances of the bite and either immediate treatment was sought or he delayed going until there was an infection in his system.
Beautiful.
I’ve had many, many bites and scratches and never sought medical attention.
Last time that I had an infected cat bite (almost to the bone) I used the old method of poulticing it to draw out the pus. My immune system did the rest. The problem is that many people are not willing to put up with the discomfort involved in they body healing itself. In the last 20 years I’ve only needed antibiotics on one occasion (and I genuinely needed something to help my body). The immune system is like a muscle – it needs to be used.
(The above, naturally, does not apply to persons who have compromised immune systems.)
I have been bitten more times than i can count by domestic and feral cats. I was always careful to say it was a scratch, as I am allergic to many antibiotics. And I have noticed that many ER nurses and doctors both are then more anxious to give me some kind of antibiotic shot and don’t pay much attention to me when I try to tell them what I am allergic to. They are more interested in wanting the poor cat to be quarantined. I scrub the wound(s) and apply a natural ointment. And I have NEVER had a reaction from a cat bite.
Actually I believe my vet is one of the only ones that was still injecting enrofloxacin INTO a cat.
That aside the incident took me on a long journey to understand what happened. Most of my research took me to human equivalents of that antibiotic and the information is shocking. But surely I thought the old standbys are safe. Not so. Necessary and more than worth the risk but the side effects can be real. It’s much easier to track these adverse effects in human medicine where reporting is not so haphazard. What happened here is a tragedy and the cause of his death is a by cat bite. The treatment was a result of the bite.