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stung at the Secret Spot
Saturday, August 15 2009
It was a sunny hot day, the kind genuine scorcher familiar from other summers but not this one. At some point Gretchen and I went to the Secret Spot on the Esopus with the dogs to swim and cool off. I also collected any rocks that happened to stand out, preferring any that happened to be red, granite, or strongly pattered. Then Gretchen spread out a blanket and we read our books (various volumes from the Series of Unfortunate Events tridecology). Meanwhile Sally was on the other side of the creek under a partially-undermined tree digging for a woodchuck. Later when she returned to our side of the creek, I heard a small landslide and looked over to see the woodchuck coming out from under a different partially-undermined tree. His tunnel system probably encompassed the root balls of both.
As I was reading, I my toes were off the blanket in the grass. I guess I must have accidentally squished a bumblebee or large hornet with my big left toe, because suddenly I'd been stung, and it was a very painful sting indeed, the most painful I'd experienced since I was a teenager (back when I used to eradicate bumblebee nests in the barn and my parents paid me by the corpse).
I immediately waded out into the Esopus, hoping the water would cool the stung toe and make it feel better. But the water wasn't all that cold and what felt better was walking in the sand with my toe pointing downward, so as to poke it in. I eventually found my way to a small tributary flowing in from at the north bank, and its spring-fed waters were cool enough to make my toe partially numb.
When I was a kid, I had to occasions where I had to be rushed to a hospital because of a systemic allergic reaction to a bumblebee sting. I'd been stung since and by bumblebees and had no such reaction, but for some years there I used to carry a so-called "ana-kit" containing epinephrine (Latin: adrenaline) in small syringe to use in case I experienced another bad reaction. So I was understandably concerned that perhaps this bad sting would lead to a dangerous reaction. I monitored myself for patches of hives far from the site of the sting, which is how my reaction first manifested in the past. After about five minutes I had what looked like a nascent patch on my lower left ribcage, but it was hard to distinguish this symptom from the many mosquito bites to which I was also being subjected.
I told Gretchen is was probably best that we go home, and she agreed, saying I should take a benadryl.
The benadryl, in concert with alcohol, had the effect of knocking me out for a large part of the rest of the day. My toe continued to hurt, though it never swelled very much. If I manifested a systemic allergic reaction, it was mild and required no special medical attention.
A couple weeks ago along the Stick Trail, Gretchen was stung by something (probably a hornet hopelessly defending a bear-disturbed nest) and it took several days for the nagging pain to abate.
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