Friday, November 23, 2012

A Thanksgiving to Remember

This will be a thanksgiving to remember. Let's start at the beginning, shall we?

I was getting ready for school monday, November 19th, when I pulled on a pair of jeans that had been on the floor all night. I felt something poke me twice, but didn't think much about it and went about my day. That night, about 12 hours later, I took my shirt off to take a shower and noticed a red, sunburn-like rash all over my stomach and back and a bite mark on my upper right thigh.

The next morning, the 20th, I woke up to a swollen red face, but went to work anyway. I only felt a little sick, nausea, headache, and kinda sore, but not too bad. A couple hours into work I started feeling worse and got a fever of 101 so a friend drove me home early. That night I went to the after hours clinic and they gave me some antibiotics and steroids for the swelling in my face and sent me home. At that point, the red rash was darker and very itchy.

The next day, the 21st, I got up and only had a little swelling around my eyes and my face was pink. I went to school and work without a problem. When I got home, I pulled out the jeans I had worn on monday and turned them inside out. A little brown spider fell out. It was dead, but looked like a brown recluse. I put it in a ziplock incase I needed to go back to the doctor, I could show them.

On Thanksgiving, I woke up at 10 a.m. to go to my aunts house for lunch with my family. But then I saw that my legs had dark red streaks and I was bleeding under my skin all over my body. I showed my parents and they took the food over to my aunts house and off we went to the ER.

I stayed for 3 hours while they ran blood tests and tried to figure out if it was really a brown recluse that bit me. I was finally released and told to return in 48 hours to check the rash, bleeding, and bite. They switched my antibiotics, gave me some anti-itching meds, and told me to keep taking steroids to bring down the swelling. Now my skin is peeling and feels sunburned and EXTREMELY itchy.

Now I'm at home and doing okay. I got back in tomorrow. The bleeding rash thing is still very itchy, but the meds they gave me knock me out so I don't want to take them in the daytime. Hopefully I won't have another IV thing (they left it in after drawing blood incase I needed meds right then). I'm not a big fan of needles *shivers*

Today I found another brown recluse in the house and it was ALIVE!! You should have seen my mom and I scramble to kill the thing before it tried to escape! It was funny, but seriously, these little guys can do so much damage. It's unbelievable!

Below are some pictures of my trip to the ER:

My IV line.


The bite 11-22-12

The bleeding rash spreading down my legs. This was all over my back and stomach too.


And finally, me. I call this picture "E.T. Phone Home."

I hope your thanksgiving was less eventful than mine!
A. J. Spindle