Okay, I wasn't going to blog on this, because I hate it when people whine about their illnesses. But hell, it's been front and center in my life for five days now. So I'm going tell you all about it and if you don't want to know, for which I wouldn't blame you, you're invited to skip today's post with no hard feelings.

I got bitten by a brown recluse spider!

Actually, that's already a little bit of hyperbole, because I never saw the spider. So it could have been some other kind. Like a black widow. No, seriously. This was last Sunday. I felt a sting, thought it was a sand flea -- I was lying near a log on a rocky beach -- and it wasn't until a few hours later that this painful itching place on my upper arm forced itself into my conciousness. So I took a look, and boy, was THAT the ugliest bite I ever saw. Including it had a white ring all around it. Still thinking nothing in particular, I disinfected it and smeared it with antibiotic ointment, which as it turns out is the right thing to do. Then on Monday I went to play basketball. Which as it turns out was the wrong thing to do. Tuesday I had a fever, aches and pains -- you know, those "flu-like symptoms" conditions give you when they don't have the wherewithal to come up with symptoms of their own. So I thought, hmm, ring around the bite, flu-like symptoms -- a deer tick? Lyme disease? Though I had a vague idea Lyme disease doesn't come on that fast. Still, I thought I'd do a little googling.

Arrggh.

I mean, I'm grateful for the education, diagnosis, and treatment hints, but YECH. First of all, know this: all spider bites have a raised white ring around them and nothing else does. I learned this from looking through a gallery of disgusting bite photographs until I found some that matched mine. Second, this: of all the biting spiders -- and there aren't many, in fact -- the only one reliably found in the US on the east coast on a hot beach under a log is the brown recluse, though it's uncommon. Third: poisonous spiders, including the black widow, inject a toxin into their victims FOR WHICH THERE IS NO TREATMENT! None! For any of them!

The good news is, even black widow bites are rarely fatal. The danger is if the wound gets infected, which mine hasn't, or if you're allergic and have an anaphalytic reaction, which I didn't. Or if three dozen of them bite you at the same time, which could happen if you disturb an egg sac soon after the babies hatch. In that case the amount of toxin can overwhelm your system, the way the single spider's toxin is supposed to overwhelm the system of the dragonfly or mouse or whatever the damned thing is SUPPOSED to be biting.

So what do you do if you get bitten by a poisonous spider? Absent an allergic reaction -- you know, where your throat closes up -- or an infection, when you hie your butt to the hospital immediately, here's what you do: nothing. You develop flu-like symptoms in 2 to 4 days, depending on how much running around you did before you figured out what was going on, thereby spreading the toxin around your body. Like, you know, playing basketball. You take a lot of Tylenol -- for some reason you're specifically told not to take aspirin or ibuprofen -- and you develop painful swollen lymph nodes near the bite site as your body works overtime to produce its own anti-toxins. And you feel CRAPPY for two weeks! And then it goes away. If it doesn't go away you're supposed to go to the doctor. What for, I ask? But I'm counting on this to go away so I don't have to find out. You hear me? I'M COUNTING ON IT!