Sometimes I just want to lie down on the floor, pound my fist on it and laugh hysterically. Or cry hysterically. Or both. This week has been like that. A few nights ago, in his neverending quest to have the most bizarre injury in the annals of Maine, Geekdaddy managed to get bitten by – we think – a small brown spider when he put his hand on the cellar door. (This is the same cellar door that the EMT’s took him out through on a stretcher a few weeks ago, when he sprained his knee.)
I found a spider on the door and captured it in a glass, but I didn’t know if it was the spider that bit him. It was the only insect I could find in that area. We looked it up and it looked like a Brown Widow. He called the ER and they said to come in if it gets swollen or painful or there’s necrotizing tissue around it. That didn’t sound too encouraging. I found a number for a place in NH that answers questions about spider bites. He called them and they said there’s never been a confirmed Brown Recluse bite in Maine and they didn’t know from Brown Widows. They gave him the same advice as the ER folks.
I told him he should have told them that he’s the guy who got bitten by a cat and had to have rabies shots.He’s the guy who tried to build a playhouse and got hit on the head with a board and had to have his eight yr old kid call 911 so he could be treated for concussion. He’s the guy who got his hand smashed in a door by a two year old and then had to get the two year old to open the door so that he could get his hand out, because he was in too much pain. And let’s not forget that he’s also the guy who “died” during his colonoscopy (his heart stopped) and then we had a rollover accident on the way home and got sent back to the same hospital.
While I was looking things up and worrying my head off, he medicated himself with his standard treatment for trauma: two benadryl capsules and a couple of light beers. Twenty minutes later, he was snoring and I was checking his hand with a penlight every half hour. He woke up fresh as a daisy and I came to in my chair, muzzy-headed, sticky-eyed and haggard looking. Geeks are very resilient, which is a good thing.
I’d like to say that the rest of the week was without incident, but I can’t. Besides taking Son to driver’s training three days a week, I’ve been very busy doing some strange things. Strange even for me, that is. Last Monday, for instance, my late son’s birth mother and I finally met.
It was exhausting emotionally for both of us, but it was necessary and I think it was a good thing. Mike would have been happy to know that both of his mothers managed to find common ground and some kind of closure to one of the diciest relationships two women can have. I gave her some of his ashes and she gave me a picture of him when he was hours old, and a lot of information about his birth family and her other kids.
The next day, we signed the papers to list our house with another realtor and yesterday, we had a windstorm that blew a branch onto the power lines and caught on fire. I was driving home from town and looking for meteors, when I saw a burning bush. Unlike Moses, I didn’t talk to it or listen for edicts, I just raced home and told the geek to call the power company. The power company said we should call the fire department, so we did. Then we grabbed a flashlight and walked up to the end of the driveway, but not too close to the wires.
We heard sirens in the distance, but it sounded like the trucks went right past our road. A short while later, we heard sirens coming back and then they stopped at the end of our road, which is a half mile down from our driveway. We could hear the radios and walkie-talkies, but then the trucks started up again and left. We were baffled, so the geek called 911 again.
They told him that the firefighters had gone to the residence and the danger was over. This was news to us, because the fire wasn’t at our residence and no firefighters had showed up anywhere near our residence. The geek relayed this to the 911 dispatcher, who patched him into the fire department dispatcher, who said that the trucks had gone to the beginning of our “private” road and then stopped. This is interesting, because our road isn’t private. It’s a discontinued town road, which means that the town still owns it, but they don’t maintain it.
Obviously, come Monday morning, we need to talk to our selectpeople about this, because we would have been in deep trouble if it had been our house burning instead of a maple tree. As it happened, the fire put itself out, so everything was okay, except that we still didn’t have electricity until the power company guys showed up, cut the power to our road, cut the limb and turned the power back on down the road. This, gentle reader, is why we have a huge generator that runs off a huge tank of propane gas. Apparently, we should also consider a high-pressure hose or two to cover us until we get the private/public road issue sorted out.
I just looked at the calendar for this week and there’s something written on every page. Three days of driver’s ed classes for Son and then road-lessons on Thursday and Friday. We have books due at the library on Monday, art and theater lessons to look into in a neighboring town for Daughter. The car’s front end is making a loud squeaking noise again and it’s due for its last free maintenance before its warranty runs out at 100,000 miles.
I’d really like to make it to the ocean again before summer is over and two of the cats and the dog all need their annual checkups and shots before the end of the month, which is fast approaching. We have no idea whether the house will sell or not, so we have to simultaneously plan to move/stay. The geek has no problem with that, because he can hold two completely opposite thoughts in his mind and believe in both of them, but I’m not quite that flexible.
I’m just hoping that we get through a week without anything weird happening, or at least, with only a couple of weird things happening. Well, okay, I’ll settle for a week where we don’t have to call 911. As we all know, I’m a willow. I can bend. But there’s a limit.
Breathe Lill breathe. That said I can fill you in on the widow thing a bit. We are full of them in this area, both black and brown. Treat it like a bee sting is the medical advice here as long as it is an adult that has been bitten. Also unless person is allergic to bee stings then seek medical attention ASAP. Brown recluse and Hobo spiders cause very painful bites that begin to fester and well rot. Lovely things those are. Poor Geek Daddy he does have a knack for unique injury. Where are you headed when your house sells? Just curious. We are doing the stay and add on, rent and buy move north or stay south thing. Good luck.
Heather
(Hi, found your blog a while back through unschooling maine and have been reading regularly since. I love your writing!)
Your life sounds very familiar! Been there quite often. Dh likes to get the weird injuries, too. When he gets home from Iraq he will be getting the sesamoid bone removed from his left foot because he broke it who-knows-when (like over a year ago) and it has never healed.
I was bit by a brown recluse about a year or so ago (it bit me on the inner thigh in my sleep). And yes it is painful and festers and does rot. I still have a blackish/purple area on my leg to this day. It is about the size of a quarter and the drainage scar in the center is about the size of a pencil eraser.
The biggest the inflamation on my leg got from the bite was the size of a tea-cup saucer. It became red and raised and VERY painful within 24 hours and had necrotizing tissue in the middle was the size of a half dollar. Lots of antibiotics (suspected MRSA) and a few weeks later my leg was almost as good as new.
Interesting that they say that there have not been any documented brown recluse bites in Maine. Mine was diagnosed, but was probably never “registered” or whatnot.
~S
Oh my. Well, yes, just keep breathing, take each day as it comes etc. But you know that I’m sure! Sounds like things a very intense — luckily, life has a tendency to wind back down.
Geez, S., who knew you had to register spider bites? I’m glad you recovered, but sorry you had to go through the ordeal of being bitten. I’m breathing, Heather, through two days of taking Son’s geriatric cat to the vet’s for complications from vaccinations. It was touch and go, but I think she’s going to make it. So am I. And keep holding that thought about life winding down, Beth. I’m all over that.
Shine On,
Lill
Geez, I’d say just stay at home and don’t move much, but apparently nature attacks you there too! I once had a friend visiting from Germany and after being escorted by us all over America, witnessing bee stings,fire ants, tornadoes, hurricanes, wild skunks, poison ivy,and so on he asked us quite seriously one day “Is there any place in America where nature is NOT your enemy?” That was the funniest question I ever heard. But true, because in Europe the most they usually have to cope with is an odd flood.
Hnag in there momma! Soon you’ll only have to deal with being snowed in from that long driveway of yours.
Kim, please don’t mention the “S” word. We’ve already had the “F” word – frost – north of us this week, so “S” can’t be far away. And speaking of “S” words, my cat got sprayed by a skunk last week and still spells pretty rank. He doesn’t understand why no one loves him anymore, so I’m letting him get on my lap while I read at night, but I put a towel under him. We’ve used the de-stinker enzyme stuff and it helped, but only time really removes all the scent. Then there’s the porcupine that shows up in the backyard every night. It’s only a matter of time before the dog gets stuck again. She’s stupid about porkies and got stuck by one seconds after we let her out of the car on the day we brought her home. Apparently she liked it so much, she’s made it a habit. Yeah, Maine is just crawling with Nature, as the geek says.
Shine On,
Lill
Poor cat, he probably just doesn’t realize how bad he smells. I can tell you what we used when I worked on the northern end of the state, I was a vet tech in a clinic. This sounds wild but does help remove the odor. I had to buy this in large quantaty for the clinic, I got some very strange looks. Massingale douche powder or I guess any brand, mixed poured on animal allowed about five minutes then rinsed. It does work.
Last spring, when we were painting our new house, Bruce had a spider bite. At first it seemed like nothing, but then he was in real pain and the darn bite grew instead of healing. It took a doctor’s visit and antibiotics to finally make him all better. And guess who did the painting in the meantimne.
It was a brown recluse.
Hope Geekdaddy’s home remedy worked. And I hope next week is better for you than this one.
Finally, do you already have a new house picked out to move into? Or are you going to be looking once you have contract on the old one?
Good luck with it either way!
Gosh Lill what a week….just plain manic…hope things calm down and you do make it to the seaside before the summer ends.