Spiders Are Not My Friends

I have this thing about spiders.  The thing is . . . I hate them.  I'm not really afraid of them - well, I guess that depends on the size and color :).  But the spiders that you find in your house occasionally - I just step on them - or have my husband do it.  Okay, fine.   I always have my husband do it. 

When we lived in a desert dump of a town in Southern Nevada about ten years ago, I was bitten on the hand by a spider.  I remember because I spent a week in the hospital because of it.  I was bitten on a Sunday night (the truth is, I'm just assuming it was a spider because I didn't see it. But I suppose it could have been a centipede. Either way - not fun).  I woke up during the night and my thumb was throbbing, bring me to tears.  By Monday morning I could see a little colored line starting at my wrist and beginning to make its path up my arm.

I went to the only clinic in town, and boy were they excited to see me!   (Not sure why, really, other than they were all standing around doing nothing when I walked in.)   I was given iv antibiotics for about three hours and told to come back the next day.  By Tuesday morning the poison was still making its way up my arm so the clinic wanted to send me by ambulance to Las Vegas. No thanks, my husband can drive me. So, I got my husband out of school to drive me with haste to the hospital.

Well, it was election day.  Bush v. Gore.  Remember that?  Of course you do.  My husband felt it was our patriotic duty to stop and vote first.   I also think it's everybody's patriotic duty to vote.  However, I had spider venom coarsing through my veins.  To be fair to my husband, though, I don't think he had yet realized the seriousness of my condition.  But, to his credit, when he saw my face turning white and my arm turning purple and swelling bigger by the minute, we immediately left the voting line and headed straight to the hospital, with haste :)

They had been waiting for us at the ER and I'm sure wondered what took us so long.  Long story short - I didn't die. And we didn't get to vote (our man won anyway).

So, when I saw that spider in my bathroom tonight, I thought of that night over ten years ago . . . And then I stepped on it.

Democracy

Vote here, but only if you don't have
spider venom coarsing through your veins!