I think it was a spider, man

I got bitten by something - I think it was a spider. I have a couple of those bites. The last one I got was a bit serious, almost as if the spider was saying, "Pay attention to me, dammit!"

I'm paying attention, now.

I don't know where my new pet lives, where he hangs out, what he eats (other than my hands and feet), or if I accidently squished him at some point. Since we are not friends, despite our apparent cohabitation, I hope I killed him. And I am not sorry if I did.

Harley is Mama's Teeny-Weeny Little Guy and he is the only teen-weeny little pet welcome in this situation we call a house. So the spider has to pack his bags, man. He gotta go because Harley called dibs years ago.

So I was bitten, felt the swelling, washed my hands and applied peroxide. It seemed fine.

I went to work the next day and things seemed fine until about 2:30 - 3:00pm. Then my hand started to ache and I couldn't bend my finger without feeling some pain. Then I started to see red lines creep up my hands.

Well, I'm not stunned as a mitt.

When I was younger, I lived in a rough neck of the woods. We used to be 'rampsing' around all the time. Rampsing, for those of you not in-the-know with Newfanese, means running and jumping and generally playing, like kids do. It's an all-encompassing word.

It would be nothing for one of us to get splinters (i.e., slivers of wood) in some body part, or have a nail pierce our skin or other body part (I once, or twice, had a nail driven into my foot), among other things.

And our parents / grandparents would get out the bread poultices to draw out the infection and if it was really bad, off to the doctor we would go for antibiotics and the requisite tetanus shot. I believe I had a splinter in my foot once and my mother held me while my grandmother tried to take it out with tweezers (or maybe knitting needles or pliers or coat hangers or wrenches or something). Suffice to say (It suffices to say/suffice it to say - say what you want, I don't care as they are all correct :P), when you are young and ticklish, that is torture. I hate tickling and consider it assault if you do so. Just try it and I will punch you in the face :) .

Anyway, those red streaks are a sign that something is infecting your body BADLY and you need to get to a doctor ASAP. It's a burning sensation and your skin is tender to the point where it feels scalded right where you can see the lines. Those lines race toward your heart, and this infection can be fatal.

Panic Situation.

I'm in the middle of teaching my last class of the day and trying not to be weirder than I usually am, so as soon as the bell rings and they are out the door, I race downstairs to get a second opinion, and ended up getting about ten more opinions from the family, so I headed to the hospital.

It didn't take long to get fixed up with meds and home I went. It was pretty painful yesterday but that was nothing compared to last night, which the doctor said would happen.

Time was passing so slowly. At 7:30, I thought it must be about 11 so I would go to bed. At 8, I thought the same thing. The night dragged on. I can't go to bed too early or I'll wake up and be awake for the rest of the night. I waited until 11pm and then bundled Harley off to the bunk where I was so glad to go to bed I just about cried.

At 2am I woke up and my arm was aching and on fire. I couldn't take any more meds legally and I'm afraid to take extra stuff (ibuprofen, people!) because I don't want to be the person who dies of an accidental overdose, which would be just my luck. That would p!ss me off.

I fell back asleep and felt this Tasmanian Devil-like thing start moving by my leg and whip up from the blankets, squealing and barking. Harley was mad. I don't know why he was mad but he scared me. He wouldn't go back to sleep. I have night terrors and sometimes I think he sees bad things that I can't see. I was afraid but in such a state that I couldn't focus. This was at 4am.

He kept walking all around me and sitting on me and barking in my face. That scared me even more because then I was worried that I was dying and he knew it. So I struggled to stay awake for awhile.

The pain in my hand and arm was so much that when I lifted it, it felt like someone had been sitting on it for hours. I couldn't even touch it with a sheet.

I got up, and looked up some stuff about sepsis and then laid back down. I didn't know how much time I would have to get myself out of the house if I was really bad off.

I didn't know how fast I would die if 'poison' reached my heart or brain, and if I would have time to call an ambulance and get out to the park on my own for them to find me. But I lived, and so far all is well.

I figured if I was lucid enough to do all this reasoning in my head, then I was probably ok, and if I was really finding myself a bit immobile, then I would go call an ambulance.

Once, I had shellfish food poisoning so bad that I could barely move and didn't call an ambulance because (1) I could barely move, (2) I didn't know how I would be able to get myself dressed, and (3) I had no way to let them into the house and I lived in a basement suite.

I don't really trust myself on the ambulance thinking anymore, considering I could have died in that situation.

In this situation, I would have had to call them, get myself dressed, put Harley in a safe situation, get myself dressed and up the stairs, out the back door, across the neighbours' fields and through the park and hope that the ambulance would come to the park, since the road construction still is happening and the road is still a mess.

That's a lot of work. But I've been doing that for awhile, and as I said before, I feel like Batman.

Batman will beat the spider, man.