Toe-tally gone! A diabetic retired builder from Cambridge woke up to the sight that his pet puppy chewed his toe away!
David “Dave” Lindsay, 64 years of age, had woken up to his wife’s horrified scream in the middle of the night.
Puzzled and confused, he almost blacked out to find that his right toe is missing from his foot.
Lindsay exclaimed, “I was asleep on the couch when my wife walked in and shouted, ‘Dave, the puppy’s chewing your toe!'”
“My puppy had near enough chewed my big toe off! It chewed down to the bone and cracked it,” he added.
David's toe bone had been severely fractured and his toenail was left hanging on the flesh by his 7-month-old bulldog Harley.
It was, however, because of the severe condition of his toe that Dave realized that he couldn't feel his affected foot.
In his words, “But because of all this, I discovered that my foot is completely numb, I can’t feel anything.”
Dave's wife wrapped up what remained from his feet and took him to Addenbrooke's Hospital where he received treatment for his toes.
To his surprise, this dog mauling incident would be a life-saving indicator of his dire condition.
It turns out that medics discovered that David's numbness in his foot was due to blocked arteries in his legs.
CT scans on his fractured toes revealed that David has two blocked arteries in his lower limbs.
Had he not visited the hospital sooner, his legs would be deprived of blood flow, putting his whole two legs in a condition where they would be needing immediate amputation.
Thanks to Harley's prompt action, Dave saved both his legs and is now being assessed for stents.
The stents would then assist in opening up the arteries and facilitates proper blood circulation to his legs.
Dave spent nine days in the hospital under intravenous antibiotics to stop the infection from spreading to his bone.
He said he has no plans to get rid of his life-savior, no matter how naughty his pup is.
“So I’m waiting to find out if they can put stents in. I’ll be keeping the dog,” Dave said
Dave, who previously lost his two large Neapolitan Mastiff dogs last 2022, said: “You’ve got to laugh about it. He’s done me a favor by chewing my toe.”
“I’ll try to keep my toe too, but if not I told the doctor to cut it off and I can take it home for him!” he added.
David was released from the hospital after spending additional few days in there to finalize the treatments on his legs.
