The Bite

Random ordeal...I got bit by something 10 days ago when we were in Idaho. Not certain what it was, but I think it was a horse fly. I actually got bit a couple of times, once on my back and once on my inner thigh, a few inches above my knee. It was a Friday, I didn't think much of it. My leg got swollen around the site of the bite, it was itchy. A couple of days later, it was still extremely itchy, had started to feel pretty tender and was bright red. I still didn't think much of it, assumed it was some kind of an allergic reaction to whatever bit me. Day 6, post bite, rolls around and I now have an open wound that is oozing (I know, not for the faint at heart). My husband told me on day 5, I should see a doctor. I called and made an appointment for the end of the week which would be day 8, thinking I would end up canceling it because I'd be all better. By the evening of day 6, my husband thinks I should see a doctor right away. I decide to phone the on-call nurse for my insurance - a 24 hour hot line I have used 3 or 4 times in the last couple of months, I love it. The on call nurse has saved me a doctor visit at least twice, recently, and my $25 co-pay, and in this case got me to seek help when I really needed it and didn't think I did. I ended up going to the ER on the evening of Day 6, thinking they would probably just give me some thing to put on it and send me home...little did I know I had a nasty infection growing in my leg.
The ER doctor took one look at it and said, "Oh honey, you have a serious infection going on in there." She proceeded to tell me there was a walnut-in-its-shell sized abscess underneath the site of the bite and she would have to open it up, culture it, pack it with wicking and would put me on antibiotics and prescribe some pain meds. Oh, "and follow up with your doctor TOMORROW to make sure it is getting better and we are giving you a tetanus shot." I told her that I wouldn't likely take the pain meds, she told me to fill the prescription, just in case. Thank goodness I listened to her advice! She then proceeded to numb my leg with five injections. I thought numbing was supposed to prevent pain, not inflict it. I won't go into the gory details of what she did next, but it wasn't pretty and felt like minor surgery, scalpel and all.
I returned home a little shell shocked, how did this silly bug bite get so ugly so fast? I was in a fair amount of pain when the numbness wore off, and thankful for the pain meds I took faithfully for the next few days. The next day, day 7, I went to see my doctor to discover things were not looking better, were actually worse and if we didn't get this thing under wraps quickly I was going to end up in the hos-pi-tal...inpatient style with an IV drip of antibiotics. I started thinking this was serious. My doctor put me on another antibiotic, in case the one from the ER wasn't the right one since we were not seeing any improvement, the culture hadn't come back yet, so it was hard to say. She drew a circle around the swelling with a sharpie, so when I came back on day 8, we would know which direction this thing was headed. I promptly filled the second antibiotic prescription and started it.
Day 8 I wake up and the redness is worse, the swelling has spread as much as an inch around parts of the sharpie mark on my leg. I feel horrible. I spend most of the day in bed, sleeping or in and out of a fog. As I zone in and out of the fog, my mind begins to go to scary places. You hear stories of random things like this where people end up hospitalized, dying, being paralyzed, having their internal organs shut down...infections going systemic. I kept thinking about my kids...what if I had to stop nursing Elsie? What if I had to be in the hospital for weeks? How would Sean keep working and who would take care of them? What if I died and my kids had to grow up without me? I realized somewhere in the midst of my mind running wild, I was more worried about what I would leave behind, about what I would miss, than I was about me. I wasn't as scared about what dying would feel like as I was about what life would be like without me for my kids, my husband, my parents, about what it would be like for them to lose me. Funny thing this ego is, eh? I was worried.
I made my husband come with me to the doctor on day 8. The doctor said things were not looking better, but the culture had come back and it was a strep infection that antibiotic number 2 should kill, and since I hadn't yet been on it for 48 hours, she was going to give me until the morning of day 9 before hospitalizing me.
Thank goodness, I woke up on day 9, after 12 hours of sleep, redness dulling and swollen-ness shrinking significantly. Hallelujah, I am not dying!
Today is day 10 I feel 100 times better. The hole in my leg is still nasty, but improving. I have some energy back and I feel human again. It's good to be alive...nothing like a little brush with a horse fly bite to make you grateful for your health!