Needless to say, I just had on my Crocs (go ahead and shudder if you will, but they offer my poor work-abused feet proper cushioning) and no socks. Who needs socks when it's warm out?
We were getting close to being finished, enjoying working together and seeing our hard work accomplish what was needed (stump removal) when I felt a little something on my foot.
Just as I lifted my pant leg and moved my foot to have a look, someone jabbed a high powered electrically charged pointy tipped jack hammer into my foot!!!
I started jumping around and yelling "ow!" and "fuck!" like a madwoman. I briefly caught the look on Maart's face ~ I swear he thought I'd been possessed by demons.
No, not possessed. STUNG. By a damn wasp. What the hell was it doing in my shoe anyway? There's nothing in my shoe fit for any wasp.
"FUCK!" I yelled. "I just got stung by a wasp!!!! FUCK, it hurts! What do you put on a sting anyway!?!?!?" The last time I'd been stung by anything, I was still in grade school. So we're talking well over 40 years. And I sure don't have any memory of it hurting this much!!!
"Vinegar." Maart says. "There's a jug under the sink." So I hop and hobble as fast as I can into the house, find the jug, soak a tissue and hold it against the sting.
It did nothing. Applying an icepack was the only thing that remotely helped, because it numbed the area. Can only do that so often before the risk of frostbite becomes very real, unfortunately.
(the white stuff is hydrocortisone cream applied after the vinegar poultice)
My foot was exquisitely painful for the rest of that day. And at bedtime, it felt like a swarm of electric eels was squirming under the skin. I had to take drugs to fall asleep. Lots of drugs.
Since then, the pain has gone away and it's just majorly itchy. My foot has swelled a little bit, and is very red. At first, I was getting concerned that perhaps I was developing cellulitis, which is quite a serious skin and deep tissue infection that usually requires IV antibiotics (I took the MoS to the ER for just that last year).
(three days post sting)
But after doing some medical research online, I discovered that cellulitis with stings is uncommon, but having an intense localized reaction is not. And given that I have no more pain, I have no fever or chills, I don't feel ill, and the swelling is quite minor, I have diagnosed it as a localized reaction. Apparently this will last for 4 - 7 days. I am already at 4 days. I think I have a few more to go, considering how it is today. *sigh*
It's enough to drive a girl crazy, however, with the itching. I have been applying a fairly strong steroid cream 2 - 3 times a day, as well as the ice packs, and that helps. Guess I will just have to tough it out!
(this morning ~ wearing shoes is a bitch, let me tell you!)
