Over the last couple of weeks, I received a few spider bites. OUCH. I am convinced that one of them was a black widow bite because of the sickness and toxicity I experienced as well as the localized pain and intense itching... thank goodness for herbs though! Now on to my experience.
I was at the park for a picnic and after sitting on a bench for a while, I noticed a very itchy welt on my calf near the back of my knee. I figured it was a mosquito bite because it resembled a fresh mosquito bite with its raised whitish welt appearance. I quickly grabbed some plantain leaves and crushed them up to place on my bite. It gave a little relief but not the relief I am used to with a mosquito bite. I got more plantain and crushed it up and placed it on the bite. A little more relief followed... it was time to go home and I had to put kids to bed so I wasn't able to deal with it much. I can't remember if I put some old plantain ointment on it or not but the next day it was worse. All day I kept plantain ointment and fresh plantain packed on it but it still got worse. Over the course of the day, my calf swelled up, my leg got a bit stiff, and it hurt to walk! Boy did it itch too. By night, my calf was totally red, swollen, and hot. It still hurt and it itched. I kept at my plantain and added a little BFC to it. That seemed to ease some of the itching. I had to keep off my leg and use some ice to bring down the inflammation. I ended up resting all day because it was so miserable of a bite. On the fourth day, I remembered the Immucalm or Kid-e-Soothe formula. I took a couple droppers of Kid-e-Soothe (that is what I had on hand and it is the same as Immucalm with marshmallow and astragalus). Almost immediately the swelling started to go down. Now it looked like I had a weird old bruise surrounding a bite site. I kept at the Kid-e-soothe as well as more Complete Tissue because I figured there was some tissue damage given the looks of the bite site. By the fifth day, that weird bruise look had shrunk and I just had an occasionally itchy red dot. Over the next few days I used the Complete Tissue and Kid-e-soothe as needed. Success!
Fast forward a few weeks. I was sitting in a chair at this old amusement park and all of a sudden my ankle was itching HORRIBLY! I looked down and there was a bite (looked like the same swollen bite I had had a few weeks before). We rushed home to get some plantain for me. This time it was unbearably itchy immediately. Worse than a mosquito. I downed some Immucalm and kept at it the whole time. This time my ankle did swell up but not as much. As long as I kept the immucalm and some plantain ointment that had some comfrey in it on the bite, I was mostly itch free. Thank goodness for that Immucalm!
2 comments:
It's not a black widow. We don't have them on this side of the state, AND they are nocturnal.
Second, two of my children have both had bites like this. One of those children was almost hospitalized because the skin was about to split.
It is some kind of bug bite. I wonder if they are mutated mosquitos.. ya know like a west nile virus type thing.
Actually we do have black widows on this side of the state. I have seen then at my house. I got bit in the evening at the park. It very well could have been something else, but the likelihood was that it was a widow. As for the second bite, it was in Lake Tahoe again at night. I don't know what it was, but it was not as severe. I do believe it was a spider though. Now the darn other bites I have gotten are mosquito or biting bug related.
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