As was foretold, we've added advertisements to the forums! If you have questions, or if you encounter any bugs, please visit this thread: https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/240191/forum-advertisement-faq-and-reports-thread/
Options
Spiderbites?
Muse Among Men
Suburban Bunny Princess?Its time for a new shtick Registered User regular
Suburban Bunny Princess?Its time for a new shtick Registered User regular
If ye be squeamish, ye might as well turn away. I am delighting in these graphic descriptions:
Just yesterday, I awoke to find the tips of the fingers on my right hand red, swollen, and itchy. Overzealous inspection of my afflicted thumb in class today revealed that it was the doing of some malicious spider, this revelation coming via a tiny set of 'fang-marks' it left in it's wake, and some sort of other odd side effect barely visible beneath the translucent layer of skin (sort of like poison-oak/ivy/sumac when it's regressing and looks all icky and bubbly). Needless to say, I am gonna kill that spider so much once I get home. Any help or advice you can give a gal? It's driving me batshit insane - seeing as I cant move my fingers properly with the swelling, and the itch is a torment I hate having to bear.
Any advice you can give is greatly appreciated - as long as no one makes 'funny' Spiderman references . . .
Just yesterday, I awoke to find the tips of the fingers on my right hand red, swollen, and itchy. Overzealous inspection of my afflicted thumb in class today revealed that it was the doing of some malicious spider, this revelation coming via a tiny set of 'fang-marks' it left in it's wake, and some sort of other odd side effect barely visible beneath the translucent layer of skin (sort of like poison-oak/ivy/sumac when it's regressing and looks all icky and bubbly). Needless to say, I am gonna kill that spider so much once I get home. Any help or advice you can give a gal? It's driving me batshit insane - seeing as I cant move my fingers properly with the swelling, and the itch is a torment I hate having to bear.
Any advice you can give is greatly appreciated - as long as no one makes 'funny' Spiderman references . . .
Muse Among Men on
0
Posts
You spoil my fun.
Can't say I've had much experience with spider bites (it's usually mosquitos here)
All I can really suggest is getting some ointment on it, that should usually help the itching, maybe not so much the swelling but that should go down in a couple of days depending on how sensitive you are to them. In general, my experience is that the more frequently you've had these types of bites (or any insect bites in general), the faster they go down. I know someone who gets bitten by mosquitos and the thing's gone again in half an hour.
It sounds very similar to a spider bite I had a couple years ago which I should have gone to the doctor for but didn't. Mine didn't itch, just hurt like hell, I thought it was a badly sprained ankle (which I couldn't figure out how I got) until I noticed the bump with fang marks. After describing it to a a person who does first aid/cpr/emergency response training for the teachers at local schools and daycares they said it was a Brown Recluse and that the ones here in Va (and the SE US in genera) don't do the same necrotic deal as the ones you normally hear about which are in the SW US. Probably should have gone to a doctor for that one.
And I'm trying calamine lotion, I'm hoping it will help (though I am thinking I may just be allergic to spiders). If you must . . . go ahead and reference Spiderman. But a person can only do it ONCE, or else they be subject to my awesometacular fury.
Happened while asleep, didn't see a spider, didn't see what bit you...
In fact, you have an unidentified bite, most likely from some kind of insect, indicated by size etc. You don't seem to have any basis for assuming it was a spider, and since statistics suggest most bites that people assume are from spiders are actually from other things, it probably isn't a spiderbite. Probably important to point that one out so you don't freak out at all the people who will crowd on this thread crying 'brown recluse' or 'black widow' based on their indepth knowledge gained from years of studying that episode of When Insects Attack!
The 'odd side effect' is likely just a standard localised reaction to poison on/in the skin (generally looks slightly yellowish and weeps clear fluid if pressed), which would be why it looks like poison ivy etc.
Anti-histimine & cortisone cream are both fine suggestions, also you can try Preparation H for the itching.
Have to say, I always go straight to a First Aider when I need someone to identify a spider or insect bite, they are the recognised experts. It's not as if doctors regularly misdiagnose random lesions as Brown Recluse bites in the US, and clearly First Aiders have more medical training than doctors and more years in spider identification than arachnologists :roll:
One, there are few to no brown recluses in Va, and you would have to be so far west that you would pretty much be a Kentuckian.
Two, there is one species of Brown Recluse spider, and it does not vary, being one species. So you do not have different Brown Recluses in the SE to the SW, and they do not differ in venom.
Three, that misinformation sounds like a common confusion about Brown Recluse bites - the toxicity, amount injected by, and immune reaction to a bite varies enormously. Some bites can cause serious necrosis, others will just itch for a week. This does not mean they are different spiders, it just means the bite effect is situational.
Four, serious Brown Recluse bites are very rare, and except for a few places, the spiders are pretty rare too. Estimates point to some ridiculous number (95% or higher) of reported bites being misdiagnosis. This is called 'hysteria'.
Finally, even if you were bitten by a brown recluse, think about the population of the US, and use some logic:
All of this can be discovered in under 30 minutes by visiting entymology department websites at a variety of universities. Alternatively, you can just search for 'brown recluse', and get a thousand websites full of bullshit, rumour, or hawking anti-venom products which hype up the terror. For example, search for brown recluse images, and you will get plenty of 'brown recluse spiders' which patently are not, such as this one:
http://www.utopiasilver.com/images/testimonialimages/brown_recluse_spider_clip_image004.jpg
I'm sure most of you can recognise a black widow, mostly because, well, it's black. Not brown. All of this can be discovered from universities & people who know what they are talking about, but generally people prefer to come on H/A forums instead, and so the myths persist.
...and to the OP, there are no populations of Brown Recluse spiders in California, despite the common myth. There are related recluse species around Ca / Texas / Arizona; in California you pretty much only get the desert recluse, which lives in the largely uninhabited eastern deserts, and moreover, has a much less venemous bite.
PS In other news, not every spider found in the northern states or Canada is a Hobo Spider, and daddy long-legs do not have the most toxic venom in the world but jaws too small to penetrate human skin - they aren't even spiders, and don't even have any venom.
sorry, but there had to be something to break up the overtly verbose response above.
PSN: SirGrinchX
Oculus Rift: Sir_Grinch
Okay, I'm done now.
Some dude from a forum who looked it up on the Internet, though, is always top notch advice and better to believe than someone who has at least some training in treating various injuries in the immediate area. Unless you come back with "I work with spiders" rather than "I looked it up on the internets" as you suggest others should do (which may be good with input of others but hardly something to be trusted all on its own), I'll go with the person who has more training than either of us.
Perhaps someone who isn't trying to sound like a condescending prick and knew what they were talking about would have responded with "No, that's a common-ish mistake, but I work with this shit and what this sounds like is X, which has similar results and is far more common in the area." As opposed to "olol, I know that can't be right because I looked up it on the internets.
It could be tons of things, it's much easier to work out what it's not than what it is, especially when all you have is sketchy information and no hands-on evidence. TL : DR Internet Diagnosis = Bad
And Jimmy:
First, I didn't say you were freaking out. I said that the tendency of people (ie you) to post "OMG that sounds like a Brown Recluse!" based on mis- or no information could freak the OP out. It also adds to general public misinformation and hysteria, which is bad.
Second, yes, people tend to learn things by comparing similar situations. In medical cases, they also tend to wildly misdiagnose and jump to the most extreme and unlikely cause by comparing similar situations. Also, smart people don't tend to place comparing similar situations or what-some-bloke-told-them above Facts, when Facts are to hand.
Third, I love when people try to defend stupid positions just because they are feeling insulted. Your argument seems to be "Let's ignore the information from the experts which you researched, because I don't like how you spoke to me. Instead let's listen to a random person on the grounds that he seems to know more than both of us." Because as I pointed out above, even proper medical training is no guarantee that someone knows fuck all about spider bites, as doctors regularly misdiagnose them. Also, by your logic, since I know nothing about stocks, I should put my money in the hands of an intern who has just finished his first day on Wall Street, because he knows slightly more than me.
And then your 'looked it up on the Internets' jibe. Except I quite explicitly said that if you just do a random internet search, it will bring up lots of misinformation. I actually directed people towards sites where you can be sure you will get a) correct information, and b) unbiased information, namely university arachnology department websites. Written by arachnologists. So, professional spider experts. By the way, I didn't just look this up earlier, I did a fair bit of reading into the subject years back to combat a fear of spiders. This doesn't make me an expert, but it does mean that I can get some basic (and verifiable) facts correct, such as no Brown Recluses except in a tiny part of the extreme west of Virginia (see this map), and no variation in Brown Recluse species (see links below) - ergo, your bloke doesn't know what the bollocks he's talking about.
So the hard choice is: professional spider experts and swallow your pride, or bloke with some first aid training who has provided factually dodgy information because you don't like me.
I think I'll go with the pros.
PS OP, I'm not going to start guessing at what it might be, but two things. One, are there multiple bites? You seemed to suggest the tips of your fingers might have been bitten too? If there are multiple bites, it's not a spider (they bite once and run). Two, the fact that your whole hand has swollen up simply suggests an allergic reaction to whatever it is. Even bad cytotoxic (ie local tissue damage, not neurotoxin) spider bites only swell up the small area around the bite on day 1, your kind of swelling is not symptomatic.
I want to go to the doctor in hopes she can subscribe some cortisoides or something . . . it's rather unfair how allergic I am. All it takes to send me into a personal hell is floating pollen or dust particles that have picked up a bit of the ushiole residue.
It's not good for you by any means, but it'll clear that shit right up. Actually, it'll pretty much prevent you from having an allergic reaction to anything while you're on it.
If you have access to medical diagnosis/care, and it is causing you great pain and massive swelling three days after the fact, I recommend you do not wait two weeks to see a doctor. But I don't think calling the hospital for a prescription is either a possibility or a good idea.
My high school calc teacher was addicted to nasal spray. Literally, like, she tried to quit, but then her father and her husband died in the space of a few months and she couldn't. She was really allergic to ant bites and bee stings, but she had so many antihistamines in her from the nasal spray, that when she got bit by an ant, the bite swelled up, then disppeared in a matter of minutes.