The birds and the bees....or maybe just spiders!!!

So remember our last blog- American pastimes? All sorts of feel-good stuff....until I got bit by a spider and got an infection!

Here I am- so happy and naive to what would happen later...

Going to bed the night of the BBQ, Patrick saw a tick on himself so I had him check me for one in a spot I had an itch (incidentally, the top of my right butt cheek- not embarrassing at all, I know). He didn't find a tick but said it looked like a spider bite. Not a big deal (yet).

So the next day it was bigger and we decided we better keep an eye on it. One of my coworkers has a son who just last week had a spider bite that swelled up, caused him to break out into rash over his entire body, had red streaks going toward his chest, and was vomitting and had chills. I wanted to avoid that if possible.

Unfortunately, Monday after work I was getting itchy on my arm where red marks had formed, and the diameter of the spider bite was expanding. Patrick went to the store to get me Benadryl and itch cream. But after two nights of taking the medicine and everything only getting worse, we finally went to the clinic yesterday morning. (The itch was getting to be unbearable!!!)

Thank goodness I still am on my mom's insurance (I haven't received my own quite yet), because the visit and medicine would have been a ton of money. As the doctor's assistant put it, it looked like the spider didn't wash out its mouth before it bit me. It didn't look like a venemous bite, but it could be a staff or bacterial infection. And the arm- probably poison ivy. (Go figure, after all my boasting that I didn't get any after all my friends did.)

Yup...shoulda kept my big mouth shut.

After taking massive amounts of the antibiotics and steroids I received yesterday, my arm is definitely showing some improvement and my itching is diminished. Hopefully this ugly bite will soon go away too!

Gross! (and really itchy!)