BITE! BITE! STING! BITE!

Last year, I wrote about being stung on the foot over the 2010/11 New Year’s holiday. Would you believe me if I said I was stung again this New Year’s Day, once again on the foot? The same foot, as luck would have it.

In the end, I lost all interest in New Year’s Eve. The thought of spending it with a bunch of coupled-up luvahs did nothing for me and instead, I stayed in and watched Bridesmaids (I did laff, Natasha. I laffed good. Especially at the bit when she gets fired from her job. I laffed so hard, I nearly choked) and it’s a decision I thought I would regret, but didn’t and still don’t.

I woke up on New Year’s Day feeling fresh as a daisy. What a novelty! It was lovely and warm so I took my book out into the backyard and read in the sun. The grass was thick and spongy and green and I decided to lay down on it to read, too lazy to go inside and get a towel. A page in and something jabbed me in the arm: some plastic off one of Woody’s broken toys. A few more pages and I felt a similar jab of pain in my right foot. I kicked my foot out, irritably, but the pain intensified until,

“JAYSUS CAH-RIST,” I yelled out. Sitting up, I saw something – a bee? a wasp? – fly away and the pain got worse and worse, and I was screaming out, “BITE! BITE! STING! BITE!” while hopping around on one foot, going blind from the pain.

Now. I think you all know I drop the f-bombs with regular frequency (because sometimes it’s just funny to say fuck. And sometimes, no other word does the job well enough. Sometimes, it’s nothing other than being really, really satisfying to say) but I thought new year and all, I should probably cut the usage down. Just a bit. Keep it tucked away for special occasions. Let it get some of its shock value back. But then, you know, BITE! BITE! STING! BITE! and it’s all shot to shit.

I did tweet my reaction but during The Great Stinging Incident of 1 January 2012 post-mortem held later that evening, it was unanimously agreed upon that I didn’t actually swear once. All those naughty words, I just said them in my head. I AM A GROWN UP.                               (… an effing grown up ... )          

Anyway. So Doctor Dad (who, once upon a time, was christened Doctor Fucknuckle by my brother because of Dad’s blood pressure machine, his favourite toy, and his penchant for whipping it out at the dinner table to measure the blood pressure of guests. I only wish I was joking. And casual f-bombing obviously runs in the family) did his thing with the cotton wool, Betadine, and tea towel full of ice cubes. I kept the ice on my foot for about half an hour, got bored, and because it wasn’t hurting so much anymore, went for a bike ride. I went to bed, feeling awfully smug that I didn’t turn the air blue earlier in the day with my potty mouth.

And then I woke up to this:

DUN DUN DUN! (Oh, my God, go to that link. Best link ever.)

My foot had ballooned overnight. I couldn’t walk on it; if I put any pressure on it at all, it felt like the skin would split, and my toes were so swollen, I could bend them only a fraction. It was all red and painful looking. I kept it elevated for periods of time (until I got bored and uncomfortable) and covered it in Stingoes because it was like the biggest, most intense mosquito bite evah. Finally, at 9pm, Dad made me go to the doctor. The doctor drew the purple outline around the redness and told me if any red escaped outside the line, to report back to him the following day.

And it did escape today. It escaped about another inch or so, right up to my ankle. Dad was doing his best scaremongering act and said my foot was probably going to ulcerate and then I’d have to have it amputated. “Pfft,” I said, but secretly imagined what it would be like to have a plastic foot. I scared myself so back into the doctor we went tonight.

This different doctor believed I’d been stung by a bee, not a wasp like I had thought. I thought it couldn’t possibly have been a bee because I’d been stung by a bee in high school (on. my. thumb. My thumb!) and didn’t have this insane reaction, but she said because there was a stinger left behind in my skin, it was a bee. Wasps have stingers, apparently, but they don’t leave anything behind after the stinging orgy.

I am now armed with antibiotics in case of infection and a cream, and have been told to keep my foot elevated for a few days (smart-arse cousin wrote on Facebook what he assumed my reaction was to that news: Thanks Doc, so just keep doing what I’ve been doing for the last few months? I’d be angry if it wasn’t true) so I’ve been watching movies, lying on the couch with my foot up on the couch’s back, laptop precariously balancing on my stomach.

Being incapacitated is boring. Bee stings hurt. Lying on your back all day is uncomfortable. It’s hard to drink a cup of coffee when you’re lying down. But the cruellest part of all of this? The new shoes that arrived today from the States, the shoes that I am head over heels in love with because they are so fucking beautiful (I just added that f-bomb because baby steps, that’s why), are totally and completely useless to me right now because my big fat stupid foot won’t fit into them. The left one is comfy, the left one is perfect, but the left one is useless without the right one! So they’re just sitting there on the floor, in all their prettiness, mocking me and my gammy foot.

Life is cruel. Bees suck. Happy new year.