Wednesday, September 06, 2006

More adventures with wildlife

The last few days have been full of crazy animal experiences. First we had the fox. Also, every day I have my own adventure with wildlife while I'm sitting at the computer catching up on all of my internet surfing and blog writing. I do this while I eat breakfast (I've been in a rut since I've been pregnant because I have a bit of a 'thing' for Quaker 100% Natural cereal. So we have cereal, yogurt - because I don't drink milk - and water or chocolate soy milk), just to kill two birds with one stone. Right before I come down here I feed the cats upstairs, so I get a few moments of uninterrupted eating time. Then Cherry and Jasmine come down, jump up on the desk, and proceed to stick their noses in my food and drink. It was bad enough when we just had Cherry, but its even harder to fend off two cats at once.

The third animal experience happened yesterday, when Brian had a run-in with... something. Brian went home to work yesterday afternoon, and called me while he was driving home. Actually, he had called a few times, but I was really busy in the lab and not able to get to the phone (also, my phone gives you three rings before it goes to voice mail, and thats never enough time for me to get there). When I finally picked it up, he said 'Um... I'm driving home, but I think I might be in trouble'. Huh? When I got him to elaborate he told me that when he had gotten in the car, something had bitten him on his ankle, but he didn't see what. He said it really hurt, like someone had hit him in the leg with a sledgehammer. Now, Brian has a very high tolerance for pain. Like, the guy had kidney stones and only sort of flinched a little. So when Brian is telling me he's in a lot of pain, I know its bad. I told him to drive back to the Urgent Care facility he had passed on his way home. He wanted to go home first because he wanted to look at the bite to see if he could figure out what had bit him - a snake, maybe? I had visions of him getting home and passing out from like, poisonous snake venom or whatever, and not being able to reach me and me getting home later to find him unconscious or dead. So I made him go back to the Urgent Care place.

They looked at it and decided it wasn't a snake (only one hole) but they didn't know what it was. They suggested either a brown recluse spider or some strange caterpiller that apparently is around here now, or maybe a hornet. They sent him home with a prescription for an antihistimine and a pain killer, and told him to come back if he started throwing up. Oooookay. So we still don't know what it was, but his leg hurt really badly the rest of the night. He said it was throbbing, and every throb felt like someone was jamming knitting needles into his leg. Later in the evening he told me about his drive home after the bite. He had driven for a while and felt okay, but after a while the pain was so bad and so distracting that he felt like he had to pull over. Then his leg started to feel numb and he felt a little woozy. He quickly realized that he probably should have not started driving in the first place.

This morning everything seems okay, he said it just feels sore around the area of the bite. Anyone have any ideas of what the heck bit him?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Whoa! I'm hoping for the caterpillar because Brown Recluse spider bites are nasty.

peppersnaps said...

holy crap! that's scary! sadly, I have no insight... but I think if there was a visible hole, it had to be something like a hornet with a stinger, etc. A little spider mouth wouldn't make a hole like that, would it? But what do I know? Glad he's feelnig better!

Karl Broman said...

Regarding "I get a few moments of uninterrupted eating time": enjoy that while you can.