The Bite

For those of you who wanted to know more about my spider-bite, here is the story.

Sunday night I noticed the bite. It looked just like a small, regular, red spider-bite on my forearm. It was probably from a spider up in the Tetons, where we had been hiking that weekend.

Monday it started getting a bit swollen and red. I figured that was just because I scratched it a bit. Then Tuesday morning I saw that there was a red line streaking up from the bite, ending just past my elbow. I wasn't sure what exactly was happening, but I figured (stupidly) that it was probably fine.

That evening, however, the red line was getting darker and bigger, and it was now nearly to my armpit! We were at our Andelin reunion up Logan canyon, and my aunts and uncles all figured I had better go get it looked at immediately. So, we borrowed a car and drove to Logan Regional Hospital where we checked into the ER.

All the nurses wanted to look at it...I was the current freak show, I guess. A PA and an MD both came in to check it out. They determined that it looked like the bite had been infected--either a staph infection or a strep infection. Luckily, it was easily remedied with an antibiotic--cephalexin, 4x a day. The doctor also drew purple dots all over my arm so they could see later how much it changed. The line has faded away now and the bite has returned to a mere ordinary red dot. I do still have some purple marker dots though.