total hypochondriac

Two of the bug bites right near one another on the top of my right foot have turned purple in the last day or so. I’m not terribly concerned about it, because the swelling has gone down and they aren’t nearly as painful or itchy as my other bites, but I got curious today and googled “bug bites turned purple” and OH. MY. GOD.

Evidently, brown recluse spider bites will turn purple at the edges as your flesh dies and rots off. I have now seen the most hideous, disgusting pictures of rotting flesh in the whole world, and since I’m completely neurotic and a bit of a hypochondriac with a terribly vivid imagination, I’m now slightly worried that I got bitten by a brown recluse spider and my foot is going to rot off.

That would suck.

10 Replies to “total hypochondriac”

  1. Phillip Anderson, a Missouri physician who specializes in brown recluse spider bites, explained in an article for the medical journal Missouri Medicine, “Almost all brown recluse spider bites heal nicely in two to three months without medical treatment at all. Also the long-term medical outcome is excellent without treatment.”

    Some say the greatest danger of a bite of this nature is not the direct effects of the venom, but rather the introduction of secondary bacterial infection due to the patient’s continually scratching the site (spider bites can itch terribly!) or otherwise failing to keep the wound clean.

  2. Whoa, what? Every person I’ve known here in Texas who has been bitten by a brown recluse has had to have chunks of flesh removed. Blech!!

    This one guy I knew, who had spent some time in prison, said he was bitten TWICE by a brown recluse, in his cell. Once on his chin and then again on his foot. Apparently they bite their “prey” and then leave the crime scene only to return to what they expect to be a dead carcass for consumption.

    See, spiders are total works of Satan. TOTALLY.

  3. For rillz, ~A is right. I work with a guy who had a brown recluse spider go crazy inside his sock and bite the hell out of him and like, his whole foot swelled up. They shot him up with cortisone and told him to wait it out and he was fine. Maybe that’s because I live in Missouri, I dunno.

  4. I’m now obsessed w/ looking at these awful (but addicting) pictures. I find myself hoping I bump into someone that was bitten just to see it in person. Yeah, someone else. Definitely not me.

  5. A rotting foot!? I sense a Flickr opp. …

    The word “recluse” bothers me when it’s pronounced “wreck loose,” for that always makes me think of someone who’s out of control, not someone who’s generally hidden. I prefer a pronunciation like “Reh-CLOOSE.”
    -Inspector Reclouseau

  6. Yikes.

    On a random note, I have something to tell you.

    It’s like you’re the cornflakes and I’m the milk and I’m just trying to make some cereal and maybe the milk sat in the cornflakes too long and now you think it’s soggy and then you put it into the microwave to evaporate some of the milk thinking that it would be re-crisper and then it didn’t but I’m gonna re-crisp you because I love you. I wanna be with you in the cereal way.

    :-D

  7. Cortisone is the cure-all for skin ailments. The dermatofybroma/bite/skin cancer thing on my leg, which was never officially diagnosed, responded nicely to a shot of cortisone.

    That seems to be my dermatologist’s answer to everything — shoot it up with cortisone. I got a shot in my leg and one in my ear at my last visit.

    Run and get some of that shit, Lorie.

  8. I once had these two awful and painful bumps in my armpits, close enough to the boob that I seriously thought I had breast cancer. It turns out that the ‘bumps’ were spider bites and I totally freaked myself out googling such gems as ‘chemotherapy hair loss’. I wish I were kidding. Point is, it’s probably nothing, but Google might actually be Satan here.

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