Fangs for the Memory

In arm's way again.

While cleaning out my salt water aquarium this morning, I had a brush with mortality. Up to my arm pits in sea water, I felt an unmistakable piercing sting on my arm. An insect sting is a helpless feeling for someone with my skin disease. Splashing a lot of water round in the process, I recoiled my arm to dry land. Something envenomous just left two fang marks on my forearm. I had no idea what stung me but my arm immediately burned and itched. The sting area reddened. I wasted a lot of mental energy trying to figure out what in the heck could have stung me.

I reached my svelte 120 pound wife on her cell phone at a Weight Watchers meeting? I explained the bizarre event and she escalated to frantic mode. I popped chewable Benadryl out of the medicine cabinet and waited for her and God's next move. I started to sweat profusely and felt a little weak so I sat down. I clutched the Epi-pen as if it were the antidote to my life but I did not use it. Ninety percent curiosity and ten percent stupidity got the best of me. I speculated whether the last four years of immunotherapy would actually prevent my Mastocytosis from flooding my system with excess histamine causing me unconsciousness and anaphylactic shock.

While I worked on my science experiment, my wife raced home. She found me in the kitchen, the same room where I labored following previous bee stings in 2001. Call it deja vodoo on a footstool to death's door. My wife began to sob when I said I wanted to wait it out and not go to the emergency room. I speculated about a list of villains including microorganisms, poisonous coral, and water spiders. I tried biofeedback to lower my blood pressure and calm my body for the next 45 minutes. Gradually, the swelling on my arm stopped, the sweating subsided, and my airways were never in jeopardy.

I think longingly of all the days I have invested sitting in a hospital getting immunotherapy but this was my first litmus test with an insect sting. My arm still hurts like hell but I am not laying in a hospital hooked up to a vent and tubes. Three cheers for immunotherapy but a guy should be safe in his own home. Why do I have so many encounters with insects? I feel like I am never out of arms way.