Anti-Itching

Will is always wanting me to go camping. He swears it is great outdoor fun and that since I love to garden, I should love communing with nature whilst camping.

No. No way. I will not camp. The one reason: bug bites.

When I garden, I basically have to dip myself in DEET and liberally reapply every hour in order to prevent mosquitos from eating me alive. That is a lot of bug repellent poison being soaked into my body. That is why I love gardening in the early spring: the mosquitoes are not out in full force and I can be in the back yard, pulling weeds for hours with nothing but sunscreen on. And clothing. I am not *that* kind of girl.

But.

I forgot about the spiders.

I have 13 spider bites from this weekend. To be fair, one spider did bite me 11 times while I was sleeping. Across my chest, where my pajama top hit. Apparently, I rolled on him during my sleep and he had to bite me 11 times for me to move and him to break out of my camisole. The other two bites are on my left elbow and the right side of my neck. See here:

You can see the raised welt and the redness on my neck from the bite, the scratching, and the applying of liberal amounts of Cortisone cream. It seemed to be getting better and then the one on my arm started to swell a bit. It is about the size of a 50¢ piece. And slightly warm to the touch. I finally called my doctor's office this afternoon and after she said that spider bites were serious-especially 13-- she was sorry to say that she couldn't squeeze me in and I should go to the emergency room. I decided to just skip the 7-8 hour wait in the ER and reapply the cortisone cream.

I think I made the right choice: no ER for a prednazone shot and no camping ever. If I can't survive the back yard, how in the world will I survive the deep woods?