What’s the only thing that can make you feel more dumb than going to the ER for mosquito bites? Going to the ER a second time for mosquito bites!
On Thursday evening, I got two mosquito bites on my left forearm. (I’m happy to say that one died mid-suck thanks to good reflexes on my part.) By the end of the night, there was a big ole welt. And I woke up a few times that night wanting to scratch.
But by the morning the welt was covering half my forearm.
I put some steroid cream on it and took Benadryl. By that evening, I had a dull ache from the pressure that was building in my arm. Tim and I agreed that if it wasn’t gone by Saturday, we’d go to Urgent Care.
That plan would have been fine — if I could have stayed up until Saturday morning. Every time I tried to doze off, I’d wake up from a flare of pain in my arm. After an hour or so, I gave up and joined Tim in the living room. He helped me confirm that my entire left arm was now swollen. I was also pretty sure that my left quads were getting puffy and tender. That’s what ultimately convinced me to go to the ER.
Once again, we lucked into a nearly empty waiting room and were seen immediately. The doctor was worried about how fast the swelling was progressing. (We weren’t too thrilled about it, either.) So I was given a five-day regimen of Prednisone, some Vicodin for the pain, and told to keep up the Benadryl.
The steroids did their thing and took most of the swelling away by Saturday night. As of Sunday, the bites looked pretty harmless. Hooray for modern medicine!
Despite the relative ease of the cures, this mosquito thing is really quite a debacle. I mean, maybe it’s because I’ve never been allergic to something before, but I cannot believe I’ve had to go to the ER (twice!) for mosquito bites.
It’s really making me rethink my somewhat cavalier attitude toward the little winged suckers. (It’s also got me seriously considering a line of citronella-candle jewelry. A friend even suggested a great tagline: “Look good — but not to bugs!”)
In the future, I need to be a little more proactive on the bug front. That includes loading up on bug spray in the summer. Also, being sure to spray down if I’m anywhere close to standing water. At least mosquito season comes along with the 100+ temperatures, so it’s not too hard to convince people to stay indoors with you.
That said, I can’t avoid all mosquitoes all the time. Inevitably, I will get bitten again. So I need to be prepared to override my “It’s fine, I’ll deal with it myself” attitude and just make an appointment with my doctor. Usually, it’s good not to run to the doctor for every little bump and scrape. Since I keep landing in the ER, though, I may need to rethink my strategy on this one.
No related posts.
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
The major amount of mosquitoes in the southwest is an unfortunate byproduct of the foreclosure crisis. When people abandoned their houses, and developments turned into ghost towns, the shiny pools everyone wanted were left to fester. I remember Vegas had to put special laws on the books to allow them to go into the vacant properties to drain the pools. We were advised to keep repellent on at all times. Hope you feel better!
[Reply]
Ye gawds!!!!! That is alarming, to say the least.
True that, what a.b. says. Actually, though, the ghost swimming pools have only aggravated a program that began to build when stupid developers bladed the desert and installed fake lakes for their elbow-to-elbow fake communities. We never had mosquitoes before we had fake lakes.
You know, just the other day i read somewhere (sorry…can't recall where) that mosquitoes can't fend well with a light breeze of the sort generated by an ordinary table fan. The idea is always to have a couple of fans going in each room, directed into the areas where the humans hang out or sit around. The fans should blow on you, not wave back and forth. If you have ceiling fans, run them on "high" to get the air swirling around.
Outside, you can not only have fans going, but consider mosquito coils. The ones you get in this country are less effective that the mosquito coils you can get overseas (less toxic to humans, too….), but they work to some degree. I wouldn't use the things indoors, though.
Snopes, alas, concurs with Consumer Reports that the beloved Avon Skin-So-Soft strategy doesn't work, at least no longer than an hour: http://www.snopes.com/oldwives/skeeters.asp Drat!!
[Reply]