I am a logical person. I do not believe in superstitions. I'm an accountant, for goodness sake; we deal in specifics and quantifiables. Very little that is squishy or new-agey in my outlook. If I am ailing I take full advantage of Western medicine. Chakras, auras, chi -- I know what they are, I have many good friends who are into that stuff, but I don't pay a whole lot of attention.
I am beginning to waver.
Right about the time I had this I realized that every physical complaint I had was localized somewhere on my left side. Shoulder and elbow that periodically refuse to stop aching? Left. The trick knee that has bedeviled me since 1977? Left. Hip that gets sore when I sleep on my side? Left. Fall and scrape a knee? Always left. And so on. The broken blood vessel (all gone now, no remnants, whew) was on my left hand, too. Rational being that I am, I chuckled at the whimsy of chance. "Left side disturbed? Oh, how silly! Now, what did I do with that dpn? and where's my coffee?"
The Bite of Unknown Origin has me rethinking my worldview.
To recap: on the last night of our vacation (Sunday) I noticed that the left side of my left wrist (see? double left!) was sore and slightly swollen. Closer inspection also revealed a tiny dark pinprick in the center that was probably an insect bite of some kind. Oh, well, we've been in the outdoors for two weeks and at least we haven't had any mosquitoes; one unknown bite is really pretty darned good compared to the number of skeeter bites I would have accumulated at home by mid-June.
The next morning (Monday) the wrist was swollen, red, hot, and quite tender. Humph.
The 24-hour drive home was rather less comfortable than it should have been -- big comfy seats in the van, four people to share the driving, a cushy bed in the back, lots of knitting time (luckily, the wrist was not bothered in the least by knitting) -- due to the annoying soreness in the wrist. By that night (Monday), though, most of the redness was gone. It was just a bite that caused a bit of a problem and now it's over. Good.
We continued driving through Monday night, and by the next morning (Tuesday) the wrist was really swollen and really red and really tender and really hot. I resolved to call my doctor as soon as I got home. We pulled into our yard mid-afternoon on Tuesday and by 3:30 I had an appointment the following morning. By the time of the appointment I was getting shooting pains in the wrist. Yikes.
The nurse practioner I saw agreed that it was indeed a Bite of Unknown Origin, probably from a spider (which I had already surmised), and that it looked rather nasty. (Yup.) She did reassure me that it wasn't the bite of a brown recluse (again, something I had already surmised) because the skin at the bite site was still intact. I've seen pictures on the web of the progress of a brown recluse spider bite, and they were some of the more horrifying images I had ever seen. Think necrotic area that spreads. If you want to be informed and grossed out, google it; I prefer not to see them again.
She prescribed a week of Benadryl for the histamin reaction, three days of Prednisone for the inflammation, and ten days of sulfa for any possibly infection. I'd never taked Prednisone before, and I seem to remember that long-term usage has some fairly dire consequences, but I figured three days was nothing to worry about. (If I am wrong, please enlighten me. It is too late to do anything about it, but still I like to have all the facts. I should have queried the NP but I didn't think of it at the time.) The Prednisone really relieved the soreness -- less than an hour after the first dose the wrist felt much better. I could still feel the problem, but it no longer screamed for my immediate attention.
It's now Saturday and the sulfa seems to have the infection in check, although progress is slow. I'm cautiously optimistic about the whole thing, something I was definitely not on Tuesday.
But this whole left side thing has me pondering. Is my body trying to tell me something and I've not been listening? Should I seek out the help of a holistic practitioner of some kind? What kind? Or should I just shrug and get on with life? What do you think?
ETA: I started thinking about selective perception and that maybe I'm only remembering half the ailments because I have already decided that left is The Side. After a fair amount of navel-gazing, I have remembered a couple right-side ailments, one in 1966 and the other in 1987. I chipped a bone in my foot in about 1992 but for the life of me I can't remember which foot. In the retrospective process I also remembered a couple more left side problems, so I guess that overall the left preponderance hasn't changed.
