Yesterday, I was bitten by something.
I picked up my kitty cat in the morning as usual, for snuggles. He has epilepsy and was in the kitty ER just last week due to grand mal seizures; things are back under control so he’s home with us again, but he still wants reassurance and his morning cuddles before he gets his breakfast. (We feed him his phenobarbital ground up inside wet food twice a day. Easier than trying to pill a cat.)
When I picked him up, I felt a pinch on my left arm and immediately knew I had been bitten by something.
I assume it was an ant, as we live in the South and the ants always become a bad problem this time of year. It’s hot and dry, or hot and too wet, and the ants seek out the cool air conditioned dwellings of the human’s homes because they are drier, or have a source of water in the form of toilets and drips and other things. Just last week I stepped in a fire ant pile outside and I was in total agony for about a day.
The bite had all the symptoms I knew would be coming — immediate tiny puffy area, and severe itching. I took a Benedryl and an Advil, and went to work as normal.
My “ant” bite continued to get worse throughout the day, though. Eight hours after the initial bite, I looked down and saw the pimple — also expected from a fire ant bite. What I didn’t expect was the rash, over an inch in diameter, that had formed around it. I made the mistake of scratching the zit part off, which is unusual since a fire ant white head is solid and doesn’t break unless you try VERY hard. This just… oozed off. There was a small open pit where it had been, in the dead center of the ever growing circular rash. It was also sore to the touch (different from my usual fibromyalgia related anodyna), and very very hot.
Maybe this wasn’t an ant bite after all.
At home, I started looking up the signs and symptoms of spider bites. We’re right on the edge of the eastern range of the brown recluse, so that was a (very scary) possibility.
But it turns out there’s no anti-venom for those spiders, nor is there a standard procedure for how to treat them. The websites all say “seek medical attention immediately” but going to urgent care when it only itched and had a slightly sore rash seem like a silly idea.
So I did what I always do when my kitty bites me and breaks through the skin — I took a Sharpie marker and drew some margins around the red spot. Then I swabbed it down with an alcohol wipe, put on some antibiotic ointment, and put a band aid over it.
And waited.
This morning, I checked the margins to see how the rash is spreading. (There’s some growth, but nothing alarming.) I changed out the bandage, drew new margins, and went about my day again today.
It’s now 36 hours past the initial bite, and the top image is what my margins now look like. Rash growth has been about half an inch in the last 24 hours.
I’m still not convinced I need to go to urgent care for this, but I’ll continue to monitor myself for the next few days. So far I’ve failed to experience any nausea or flu-like symptoms that indicate a systemic reaction. If that occurs, I’ll drop everything and get myself to urgent care (or the ER, if its early in the morning.)
Maybe it was an ant bite, just a particularly venomous one. Maybe it was an itsy bitsy spider. Since I didn’t catch the critter who did it, I may never know.
All I do know is that I’m grateful whatever it was bit me, and not my epileptic cat. I can self-monitor and potentially save thirty or a hundred dollars on a copay. I’m definitely sure I don’t want to deal with another feline emergency room bill.