Happy Birthday!

Happy Birthday debris4spike! I hope the upcoming year is good for you and full of blessings. (And that you get to see James in concert somewhere....)

Mosquitoes Tried to Kill Me

So when I was young - single digits - I used to get allergic reactions to mosquito bites, huge red welts that lasted for ages and itched forever. I outgrew that - and then after 2000, I didn't get bitten again until this summer (because Las Vegas doesn't have them and I avoid mosquito conditions as much as is humanly possible). This year we had lots of rain, lots of flooding and standing water, and I think some got in before we shut the windows and turned the air on, because this month I woke up several times with multiple bites. Apparently whatever desensitization I developed to mosquito bites, I've lost over the past 15 unbitten years because I again developed huge red welts - an inch or two in diameter, up to a quarter inch high, that lasted forever, developed scabs, left scars, and still sometimes itch. Lovely. Very attractive.

Sunday, before lunchtime, I began to feel pretty sick - chills - the kind that make you shiver so much it hurts, fever, headache, body aches, nausea bad enough I didn't even want to drink water. (And poor Irish had just finished cooking lunch. "I made chili! Want some chili?" No. Please don't even say the word "chili".) I slept most of the day in the comfy chair and when I got up, my leg hurt, kind of like a bad charley horse. I figured it was cramped up from sitting for so long and went to lay down. It still hurt when I went to bed for the night and when I got up the next day and was also getting red and swollen and tender to the touch. Great, I thought, I've given myself a blood clot from not moving from that chair for so long. By the evening, it hadn't gotten any better, so I put clothes on and we drove up the the ER, which is about a mile away.

It turns out it wasn't a blood clot (thank God, and I'm not being flippant there - Irish has had them and they're scary). It's cellulitis. I suspect I didn't have the flu Sunday at all; that was the onset of the infection. Do you know what caused the cellulitis? Those four nasty, still scabbed over and itching after 3 weeks mosquito bites on my calf. Cellulitis, left untreated, can cause blood or bone poisoning. The mosquitoes tried to kill me. And they've cost me a minimum of $254. I hate them. I've always hated them and now it's personal. The doctor told me they've seen 3 people in the ER because of mosquitoes this month. I know 3 isn't a big number, but Bremen only has a 4-digit population. Anyway, they gave me a Bactrim pill and a tetanus shot ("When was your last tetanus shot?" "I don't know...probably decades ago." I suspect it was when I was 18.) and a scrip for 10 days of Bactrim, so I'll be better shortly. (I hope. I've read some really scary stories on the Internet about cellulitis.)

I'm reasonably certain that mosquitoes are actually demons from hell that are allowed to leave every summer and entertain themselves at humans' expense. I know they're evil. Cellulitis! Malaria! Yellow Fever! Die, you freaky "little flies"! Die!

So that was a miserable experience (and I understand now that I've had cellulitis, I'm more susceptible to it) but I really am glad it wasn't a blood clot and the treatment seems to be working, so hopefully all will be well that ends well.