We had an "exciting" night last Thursday and Halle ended up being a "medical mystery"/"freak show" at Shands Medical Center. Halle went to school, went the work with me so I could teach a class, and came home. She seemed perfectly fine. She had taken her shoes off in the child care in the fitness center and I helped her put her shoes on. She was FINE! Jamie and DJ got home from DJ's soccer and I had a meeting up at the church. I got home from the meeting and Jamie had a really concerned look on his face. He asked if I knew why Halle's foot was black. I didn't, but thought by black he meant bruised. I went to her room where she was fast asleep to look at her foot. Her big toe, and onto the ball of her foot was BLACK--JET BLACK--DEAD TISSUE BLACK! Jamie has scrubbed it, soaked it in soapy water and nothing... She said there was a "caterpillar" in her shoe at playgroup and they had killed it...
We decided it was best to be cautious, and called after hours pediatrics, they were closing in 10 minutes and told us to take her to Shands because they had Pediatricians on staff in the ER... We got to Shands around 10:30 PM and the waiting room was FULL! We signed her in and waited for the Triage nurse to see us. He was so SLOW!!! Luckily, at 11:00 there was a shift change, and the new nurse got us back around 11:30. He was immediately concerned, and called the Pedi to come look at her foot. The Dr said she had "no idea" and would get us back ASAP. A good 30-45 minutes later, they called us back into the emergency room. People in the waiting room had been waiting 5, 6, 8 hours, and we were lucky to be fast tracked in.
A nice intern had been trying to research caterpillars, bites, etc while we were waiting. She presented to her resident ( the doctor we say in triage) and they both were still concerned. She had feeling, a little swelling, good cap refill, and no pain, but a BLACK toe. They called in there attending. She looked at it and had asked Halle more questions about the caterpillar--we tried to have Halle draw a picture and show us the color on the stained glass window... It was redish she said and had no fuzzy. There is a wooly caterpillar that bites and releases toxin, but it is painful... Halle had no pain, but the doctor (a gray haired veteran) told us in all her time, she had never seen this and called in another attending and paged Ped's surgery to make sure the tissue was ok. It looked burned, or like a giant blood blister. More attendings came, more interns, and the peds surgeon. They touched, pinched etc. Together (6 in the room) they came to the conclussion it was a "dye" injected into her foot, and classified it as a rash and sent us home with follow-up instructions to come to there clinic. at 2:00AM, we left while some of the people who got to the ER before us were still waiting to go back. We were treated very nicely and I am thankful for the doctors who took the time to see us--despite leaving without an explanation.
The mystery was bugging me, so the next day I called Halle's principal and told him the story of the caterpillar and toe, and was concerned for her friends who squished the caterpillar with their hands. He knew the boys when I told them their names and went to talk to them and make sure their fingers weren't black. The boys told the principal it was a centipede and their hands were fine. The principal called me right back and gave me an update (love being in a private school) and had been researching centipedes etc when I went to pick up DJ who had fallen from the moneky bars and hurt his lower back...
When I got the kids home, I called the Entomology Dept at the University of FLorida and described the event to a very nice Professor there. He said it was probably a millipede since centipedes BITE with two fangs and it is PAINFUL. He went on to say that there is a species of millipede that releases Quinones as a defense. The Quinones are yellowish in color, but over time, turn the skin JET BLACK! He said he will pick the millipedes up at night, and in the morning his fingers are black as black... Since we don't have the bug for him to identify, we feel this is probably what happened. It all fits together--skin darkening over time, the caterpillar in her shoe, boys calling it a centipede, no bite marks, no pain etc. The Entomologist said the skin should be fine when it sheds in its normal skin cycle--28 days! So Halle will have a lovely black toe until then...
The millipede had crawled into her shoe, she her shoe on with the millipded in it. I took some pictures Friday... You can't really see it, but some give you an idea.
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