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Not exactly about food, but way too much about anaphylaxis! (Part I)
I recently had a life-threatening accident that was both scary and life changing. Several people has suggested that I post the story of what happened on this page. So inspite of it having nothing to do with food, here is my traumatic story.
This story actually begins a couple of weeks ago when my son Nathan was playing shoot ‘em basketball in the backyard. Seemingly out of no where, he was attacked by a swarm of wasps. About a dozen stings later, he is crying hysterically. Fortunately, he was okay again an hour later. When my husband went to find the wasp nest, he couldn’t. Thinking that it was a freak accident; we just had Nathan stay away from the basketball game.
Cut to yesterday afternoon, I was cleaning my carport because I’m having a yard sale on Saturday. The day before I had checked the basketball game again, but still found no wasps, so I moved it out into the yard. I wanted to mow the grass around the carport, so I moved the game back under it. Well I few seconds later, I feel a painful sting on my left arm. When I look up, wasps are pouring out of the back of the game. (It had been up against the wall, so that’s why we didn’t see it!) I screamed for Nathan to run, and was about to take off running myself when I remembered Elora, my six month old daughter.
She was sitting in her walker about a foot from the wasps nest. I quickly picked her up, and right when I did a second wasp stung me on my right thumb. (I’m still thanking God that it stung me and not her!) Then we ran to safety. I tucked the kids inside the house and went back outside to get the phone that I had dropped in the yard in my escape. I wanted to see how many wasps there were.
When I got back to the carport, I was astounded to see hundreds of wasps on the 4-inch nest hanging from the back of the basketball game. I was pissed, mostly because of adrenaline pumping through, and also because of the immense pain in my thumb and arm. So I decided to fight back. I went inside to get the gallon jug of bug spray that we keep on hand, since we kind of live in the woods. When I got to the nest, I removed the nozzle and doused the wasps in pesticide, then I took off running and safely got away. I ended up pouring ¾ of the gallon on the nest. (Take that stupid wasps!)
But when I got back into the house, I was feeling kind of funny. Kind of like I do when I take heavy pain killers–woozy and kind of light headed. So I did what I always do when I have a medical situation, I called my mom. She is a nurse of course, but she didn’t pick up. So I called the next best person, my nanny. I knew she had a home-remedy for stings, so I called her up to get the recipe. She told me to make a paste from corn starch and lemon juice. I had the corn starch, but not the lemon juice. So I asked her if she could bring some over. I did this for 2 reasons. 1- because I really didn’t have any lemon juice, and 2- because I was starting to feel worse and I was alone at home with the kids, so I needed some help. (David is on a business trip in Las Vegas.)
When I hung up the phone I walked to Nathan’s room to check on the kiddies. I was able to stand at Nathan’s door for about a minute before I collapsed on the floor. I felt like I could barely move my arms or legs. I was able to call my sister and tell her what happened before the convulsions started.
Posted by admin on September 20th, 2007 under Life with Beth
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