#Spider Dax chronicles

[stardustedknuckles]

Got damn, it’s been 2 years… time needs to like… obey the speed limit

I rounded up a bit, if it helps. But yeah. Which also means Bells hells will have been going for two years in about two months. Surpriiiiiise. I was in the hospital when I saw the announcement about the new campaign. I was on Ativan and did not care and after I saw the announcement the seventh or eighth time my brain clicked on and went "wait we care about this, why don't we care about this" and I didn't take anymore Ativan.

[stardustedknuckles]

My anxiety acting up is genuinely probably just my asthma as the season finally begins to change, but also I did just realize we are very near the first anniversary of Getting Bitten By A Goddamn Recluse so like. Love that for me. Got a spray bottle full of mint tea and lemon juice and haven't seen spider or bug in the house since I started spraying it around about once a week but the next couple of weeks are going to be fun.

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After six reschedules with wound care they finally just never called back and that was fine except the bite has opened a little again and it sure would be nice to have some reference as for why and how to help it close again. It’s been six months can it leave me alone forever finally or what.

[stardustedknuckles]

The spider on my wall two nights ago was not a recluse but the one on the wall of the garage just now absolutely was. I genuinely just have no idea how to act here. For every one I see I'm sure there are three hiding that I will never ever encounter, maybe even under my bed or in my closet. They were likely there before I got bit and will be there as long as I live in this house, at the very least as long as there's a hole somewhere letting in mice and tiny snakes. And I just have to be okay with that. Somehow.

Edit: the weirdest part of seeing the one in the garage was that I knew to look up for some reason. I specifically turned to look at the ceiling where it was. I don't regularly look up for spiders. Down, sometimes, because I'm more worried about stepping on one. I would make a spidey sense joke but I'd rather this just not be a thing you know.

[stardustedknuckles]

Autistic bug lovers are the mvps for real though. Updated the trans discord about the recluse cuz the compulsion to confirm it is making me late to pride and one of them was like oh hey give me your address and I'll come take it outside for you. No don't feel silly, it's legitimately terrifying for you, I got this and I'll let it go far away from the house.

Me: o.... okay 🥺

[stardustedknuckles]

Brains are fucking weird. I saw that recluse in my tub last night and of course it was still stuck under the cup this morning, so I... Spent a half hour looking up if it could be any other spider (it could! Southern house spiders look REMARKABLY similar and even have a marking behind their heads, though it's generally thinner than a recluse mark) and swapping the cup for glass so I could get good pictures of it and count the eyes. It took an hour because spiders are super fucking difficult to photograph with that amount of accuracy and I kept having to add light.

I finally got a definitive photo. 3 dots across the face, two eyes each even if too small for me to see individually. Definitely a recluse.

And I don't know what the point of any of that was but I felt like I could not walk away until I had properly identified it with that safety barrier between us. I'm not going to pick up the glass and kill it. I'm too afraid of it. I'm certainly not going to risk sliding something under the glass and dropping it on the way out the door, and also no offense but I really don't want to put it back out where it can get in again. I really wanted it to be a house spider so I could let it go. But it's not. And I used up an hour of my day and I still have to like. Do stuff. Just go about my day with something terrifying trapped in the bathtub. Wtf are brains.

[stardustedknuckles]

Also on one hand I'm glad I was able to chat with someone on reddit who's on day 8 of her recluse bite and reached out based on my posts, and on the other hand it turns out that reliving a traumatic experience even to help someone else can really leave some shitty feelings in its wake.

[stardustedknuckles]

Processing my spider bite and all the stuff that came with it is going to take months and years, but every now and then I get a piece of the experience lodged in my head and today I'm wondering what the nurses thought when I walked in feverish but cheerful with my backpack already loaded with my meds, my switch, my stuffed dog, and a hoodie.

Oh and the rash from head to toe, complete with the red line running from the bite up to my armpit/towards my heart.

Like the whole way there dad was saying they'd probably give me a new antibiotic and let me go again, but he took me because that line was the only thing I knew to look for, the only signal I really had that this had progressed beyond the at-home regiment of Tylenol and ibuprofen, interspersed with 3 days of prednisone and an antibiotic that had me convinced for a few hours a day that I was going to die. I remember the triage nurse's face when my response to her saying it was a good thing I came in was "oh good, I was worried this was a bill I could've avoided and I was overreacting." Dad didn't think it was serious and on some level neither did I, but I asked and he took me to the hospital and thank god. (that nurse's face though lmao. Just stunned, then: "no this looks really really bad and I've been here for decades.")

I'm thinking about how people say that if you can walk yourself into the emergency room you're not a priority, contrasted with how very, very close I came to septic shock. I didn't realize until after it all that I had actually been septic when I walked in. I just wasn't crashing yet. How if I hadn't seen on Google to watch for that specific symptom I would've probably gone to sleep dealing with the same nausea and fever I'd had for the three days since I'd been bitten and how much of being alive or not is just stupid, ridiculous luck. I still wake up sometimes with my heart racing like I'm back in the hospital because for the first three nights I was there my mind slammed me awake just to make sure I could still wake up at all. (then they gave me Ativan and that stopped that for a few days.)

There's no big point to this post. I just pulled out a shirt I hadn't worn since before the bite and got to thinking specifically about how I'd never even been to the hospital, let alone stayed seven days, and packed a bag even as I assumed they'd wave me back out the way minor emergency had done twice already.

I'm not afraid of spiders as I finally turn the corner on the wound really starting to heal - I'm afraid of the sheer ridiculous randomness of my life being turned upside down because I smashed one literally in my sleep when it crawled on my arm. The bite woke me. There is seriously nothing I could've done to prevent it - that's what fucks with me. I did everything right, and in the end it was still up to luck. It is so hard to imagine trying to put effort into a life when it can go just like that, and at the same time I want more than I ever have to try.

[stardustedknuckles]

I don't recommend getting bit by a brown recluse but a weird side effect of acute anemia brought on by the bite was my body full on shedding like a damn snake for like two damn weeks. A side effect of THAT is that it included the skin on my heels and now I have the tender feet of a five year old and a chance to keep it smooth now going forward

[stardustedknuckles]

Closed up but still gnarly as hell. Don't get bit by a brown recluse bc you smashed it in your sleep, kids.

On the other hand (arm?) I hope it scars. I've earned that much I think.

[stardustedknuckles]

My first night in four whole months sleeping without a bandage on my arm (or the wound they've been protecting) is gonna be soon. I can feel it.

[stardustedknuckles]

Okay I know at least a couple of you want to see my brown recluse bite. The chances of getting bitten are so low and the chances of it being a true bite and having ~effects~ even lower. Scientifically, I won the shit lottery and now it can be for your entertainment. If I understand right, I did experience necrosis - it’s just that it looks nothing like the horrible black photos you see online because it’s hypothesized that those are less “natural venom effects” and more “buddy you got MRSA.” I did not in fact get MRSA. Just everything else it’s possible for a spider to do to you.

Anyway under the cut, a progression up to today. It’s not gross tbh, just uh. Colorful. It’s pretty much entirely a surface change - nothing deep or particularly traumatizing happened. The threat of winding up with a hole in my arm scared the shit out of me for days but I saw my doctor on day 12 or so and she reassured me it was doing fine actually.

Day one: ya boi got bit three hours ago and went back to sleep.

Day 3: Hmm. This looks a bit like Great Britain.

Day 4: Hello from the hospital. You can see why I might be here, with my rashy swollen arm. Rare effect number one: systemic reaction. Not pictured: rare effect number two, half your red blood cells explode and you look like you’ve had acute anemia for years and not literally a week.

Day 6: Haha this looks kind of cool tbh, hope that doesn’t all go necrotic. (hi Jesus, no house calls please I wanna stay here on earth thx) (I was doing real bad y’all, they didn’t tell me til after how shaky it was for a sec.)

Day 10: Just got home from the hospital, can now properly focus on and freak out about my fucking arm. Also it kind of looks like a profile of the grinch now.

Day 13: the crackly stuff is dried lidocaine don’t worry.

Day 22: I skipped over the blistering that happened along the border, you’re welcome. This is the first day it’s truly looked like something healing instead of a worrying gooey mess (from triple antibiotic that I keep on it. It apparently heals better moist, so I keep it gooped up and covered. This is the best it’s looked bc the bandage absorbed all the goo and gently removed the thin skin left from the blisters.)

So yeah! I’m pretty proud of keeping that blood blister safe so it can heal under the skin. I can tell my nerves are repairing bc I can occasionally feel the liquid move and yeah it feels weird but you gotta know it doesn’t even rank on the weird shit this wound has pulled on me. It gets flatter on its own every day, as does the wound around it. 

Having a gf who’s an ICU RN is really comforting bc I send her these and she goes “oh wow it’s looking so good!” and I go “haha okay cool good to know because it’s literally terrifying.”

But up top! In the last photo! It really is evening out and closing up and I’m so pleased.

So yeah when I bitch about doorknobs or sleeves or not being able to carry anything heavier than a cereal bowl (which I had to work up to) this is why. Every time I pull my arm too much to the side or flex the dead (!!!) muscles too hard the wound pulls at the edges and we’re trying to avoid that. Thank god I can type, and even more that doing so no longer pulls. It used to, just a little.

[stardustedknuckles]

Sparing anyone the unwilling sight of the bite itself but I'm looking at the atrophy of my bitten arm and just. I have never been strong so much as just stubborn but it is weird and sort of disheartening to see how much capability has just been stripped from the muscle of my arm. I know it'll come back one day but it is so weird to not be able to use my right arm not because it hurts, but because it very simply cannot and will not do some things. Open a well-taped package, lift a 15 pound weight more than 4 times, push the hole in the cat litter box to open it... like I said I didn't think of myself as having any real strength but having almost zero is just wild.

[stardustedknuckles]

I love going to my pharmacy.

Me: hey Justin! The middle finally fell out of the bite!

Justin, the rad head pharmacist who's been periodically on this journey with me since I got bitten and always asks how it's going: 😀!!😎🎉

Kathy the clerk, who has also been given periodic glimpses into a situation that freaks her right out but who is determined to stay nice: 🤢🤗💀

[stardustedknuckles]

Ever since starting to try to square up to the idea of having anxiety/trauma from the brown recluse bite (instead of ignoring it) I keep finding myself checking for spiders. I think this is a sign of progress but also every time I check for spiders I'm acutely aware that I'm having anxiety and then the whole thing seems counter productive. Brains, man.

[stardustedknuckles]

There's something neat about the fact that with all the medicines we've come up with in the world, a good old granulated kind of honey from New Zealand is what's best for my wound right now.

I mean this in a "it's really cool when nature is the best suited thing for a specific instance" way, not the "eschewing science" way bc let's be real, there was no plant in the raw that would've kept my ass from dying from the bite that caused the wound in the first place.

It's just not often I get to see raw nature be the best at something so starkly.