Something got me
Yesterday morning I reached over to hit the snooze bar on the alarm and felt a sharp, intense pain in my wrist. I immediately jumped out of bed and went in the bathroom to take a look. I thought I had impaled my wrist on something on the end table and was expecting to have to yank something out of it but no, there was only a small white wheal with an area of redness. It had to have been a sting or a bite. I went back in the bedroom to try and locate what got me. No sign of spider, wasp, centipede or scorpion to be found, but the most likely suspect was what we call a "yellow jacket". Around here, a "yellow jacket" is actually a paper wasp and the real yellow jackets are called "ground hornets". There's a big nest on the awning right outside our bedroom window and they occasionally venture inside through the opening that exists between the A/C unit and the side of the window. I've been known to stay up later than I wanted to because there was a yellow jacket in the bedroom when I wanted to go to bed and while our dog Theo does a good job of catching them, it can take him up to 30 minutes to eliminate the threat. If it was a yellow jacket sting then I knew what to expect A golf ball sized red lump would develop at the site of the sting and my hand would expand to the size of a latex glove blown up like a balloon. I would also feel like I had the flu and start puking in a couple of hours. Only it didn't happen. Instead, pain shot down to tips of my fingers and up to my elbow and I had an annoying headache all day. There was very little swelling or redness. Then last night I woke up with chills. Bone-shaking, teeth-rattling chills. I managed to go back to sleep only to wake up later with chest pains. It freaked me out a little and I had to think for a minute to be sure I wasn't having a heart attack, but it was only muscle cramps. Very strange. This morning my wrist looks the same as it did yesterday, but the headache is gone. The pain has subsided to a dull ache that runs from my fingers to my shoulder, but the itching is far worse than poison ivy and reminds me more of chicken pox. I'll probably never know what got me, but this ain't half bad. Beats the hell out of golf ball sized lumps and puking!