Friday, July 9, 2010

Wow, second blog on the spider bite! I may get a complete "from start to finish" out of this!

Day 9, July 9, 2010

First, I have to say Thank You to fellow journalist and aspiring quilter, Nancy Patterson. She's the one who suggested I blog about my spider bite. Of course, those stuck reading this might not thank her. :)

Pop found a dead brown recluse in some laundry from the bathroom that I'd put in the laundry room. I'm hoping it's the one that bit me and I'm so glad it's dead! I read somewhere in all the research I've been doing on brown recluses and bites, etc., that each home in the USA has approximately 65 brown recluse spiders hiding in the baseboards, closets, etc. They like dark, closed-in, tiny places.

I'm running the gamut of symptoms -- nauseated, hard chills, periods of intense pain and I still feel pretty much like a slug. I hate the chills, they make my skin crawl and when the skins crawls on my arm, it's excruciating. Even taking a pain pill last night I couldn't sleep. I was wider awake than I normally am during the day. Go figure. That may be a symptom also? I'm blaming everthing else on the spider bite. Figure I might as well take advantage of it~ :)

The heat and sunshine are really horrible. Ten minutes in the sun and I am sick as a dog for several hours.

I'm scared to say this, but I think it might be getting a tad bit better. Everyone that looks at my arm thinks it looks "a little" better. I'll take that!

What little I slept last night I had horrible nightmares. Kept dreaming that the hard spot, which is "dead" white looking and actually feels "dead" came off somehow and I had one of those huge holes in my arm. I was SO relieved this morning when I looked at my arm in the mirror (since it's on the underside almost of the upper arm, a mirror is the only way I can actually see it).

I'm staying in the house now, might go to my quilt guild meeting tomorrow, just have to see what phase of the symptoms I'm experiencing. If I can remember how, I'm going to post a couple pictures of "the bite." :)

1 comment:

PJ said...

Oh, Bumpy, I'm so sorry to hear that you were bitten by a spider. I hope it doesn't cause any long-lasting problems for you.

I was bitten by a spider many years ago - don't know what kind it was but I was in California at that time. My ankle, right/inside, became inflamed over a period of two days at which point I became delirious... was taken to a local doctor who gave me antibiotics and then he wrapped white gauze around my ankle and poured sterile water on it. He said I had to wet the dressing each morning, take it off and replace it with a clean gauze bandage which I had to wet down. I can't tell you how much it hurt to take that dressing off each morning but all the dead flesh stuck to it and kept the wound clean. After about 6 weeks, I could walk again fairly normally. I have a 2 x 5 inch scar on my foot under my ankle bone. Pretty ugly even after all these years.

I still refuse to kill a spider, though... but I am scared of them. Best wishes for a speedy recovery...and thanks for blogging about your bite.
pj