Look, some of my blog topics are going to be very serious, and some are going to be a lot more light-hearted. We will run the whole gamut of the human experience here. Today’s topic is definitely going to be on the more light-hearted side…

So as my family can attest, I have a history of reacting to bug bites. I remember that as a kid I would get huge lumps of mosquito bites. We’re talking reactions that were swollen, hot, hard, several inches in diameter. If I was unfortunate enough to be bitten right on the back of my knee, I wouldn’t be able to fully bend my knee for a couple of days. 

Thankfully that reaction has died down to a more tolerable “still react badly but no longer look diseased” kind. 

Well, naturally there are delightful things to react to here. There are teeny tiny little ants under our clothesline, and inevitably, every single weekend, when I do laundry, I get bitten. I immediately get a big swollen reaction about the size of a quarter, that after a couple of days fades away into a blister, that after about a week in total disappears just in time for me to do my laundry and get bitten again.

Then last week Wednesday afternoon, I discovered what I thought was a mosquito bite on my arm, up near my shoulder. It was itchy. I tried my best to ignore it and not to scratch it. 

Hours later, when I was lying in bed, I suddenly thought, wow, my arm hurts. I looked at the bite. It was a big red swollen reaction, much bigger than the usual quarter-sized ant reaction, but also way more than my typical mosquito bite. I revised my premise from mosquito bite to ant bite – after all, I had first noticed the bite when I was working out, and there are always ants crawling around on the floor in my workout location. (This kind of comes with the territory when most things are outside and inside spaces don’t really have doors that bugs can’t easily get through or screens on windows.) So, an ant bite… but definitely bigger than my typical “clothesline ant” reaction. I grabbed the tube of hydrocortisone cream that I just leave out on my night table here (no point in putting it away!), slathered it on the bite, and went to sleep. 

On Thursday morning, my bite hadn’t decreased in size at all. I showed it to several people because it was quite impressive in size. But over the day, the swelling spread… and spread… and spread. By Thursday afternoon, my arm was swollen from armpit to elbow – literally. It was hot, obviously red, and noticeably swollen. I went home to get some Benadryl, and on the way stopped to show people how much it had grown over the day. They (very reasonably) suggested that maybe it was time to see a doctor. And yeah… that’s probably good advice. Except I am used to reacting to bug bites. And what is a doctor going to do? Give me antihistamines? I have some here, and I took some. Administer an epipen? If you catch up on my medical history, you will immediately understand why unless I actually think I’m dying, I don’t want to experience additional epinephrine running through my body. I took the Benadryl, took a regular antihistamine, slathered on some more hydrocortisone cream, went back to school, and tried desperately to stay awake for the last hour of work. (Thanks, Benadryl! You always make life so fun!) After school, I took a shower and finally drew a line around my reaction so that I could track the swelling and growth. 

The swelling did seem to stop then. I think gravity was actually exerting its influence, since the only place that the reaction was outgrowing its line was around the bottom, by my elbow. Around 7:30, I deemed it late enough to take some more Benadryl. I took two and pretty much immediately fell asleep. When I woke up, the swelling still hadn’t grown any more. 

Thankfully by Friday afternoon, my arm was looking impressively better. The swelling had really gone down, and while it was still red, it wasn’t so hot any more. It took until Saturday afternoon for all the swelling and redness to actually go away. It also took another week (!) for the itchiness to go down.

Once the swelling had disappeared, you could finally see the location of the bite again. It wasn’t just one bite – it was actually three. I’m not sure if that’s what caused the extremeness of the reaction, or if it was also the type of bite. When I showed her my arm and described things, my very wise sister hypothesized that it had been a spider bite. 

“Don’t you think you should have an epipen just in case?” my mom asked when I talked to my parents that weekend. Again… I’m going to do anything I can to avoid the feeling of extra epinephrine. I also really don’t think I’m in danger unless I get bitten near on my face or neck. But also, in an abundance of caution, I do think I’ll go to a doctor much earlier in the reaction timeline next time! (And praying there ISN’T a next time!)