Arizona Scourge

It's been a while since I blogged about one of AZ's greatest scourges.  Almost three years, as a matter of fact.

Can you tell what I'm talking about by evaluating the contents of the little boys' garbage?

Do you need a closer look?

We had just finished family prayer last night about 8:45.  Brad, Ben, and Lily had all left the room and I stayed to sing bedtime songs.  Just as I crossed the threshold to the hallway, I felt something like a pinprick on the outside of my left foot.  A split second later, I knew what had happened--I'd stepped on a scorpion.

"I've been stung by a scorpion!  Find it!"  I looked around, and sure enough--there camouflaged in the dirt-colored carpet (also scorpion-colored) was a two-inch long scorpion.  He was still alive, but not for long.  I smashed and Brad disposed.  Then I hobbled to our bedroom.

I've had this experience before--when I was pregnant with Lily, a scorpion was tangled my a blanket and I was stung a few times.  That was nothing compared to this time.  Within minutes, pain was shooting up my leg, followed by the traveling numbness characteristic of a scorpion sting.  It was awful.  I elevated it, iced it, then took some Tylenol, but no relief came. We had some spare crutches in the storage room, so at least I was able to hop to the bathroom and brush my teeth and get on pjs.  Brad even tried turning on a little HGTV to distract me, but nothing worked.  Around 11:30 I got out of bed, grabbed the crutches and tried walking around our bedroom to alleviate the pain.  I was having muscle spasms all the way up my thigh by this point, and I would have done anything to stop them.  Then, my mouth and tongue started to go numb, along with pain in my back--probably my kidneys processing the toxin (or so Dr. Google said).

I tossed and turned for the next two hours, falling asleep for a few minutes of respite, then reawakening to dizziness, excruciating pain, and and numbness--you know the feeling you get when your foot falls asleep and you're trying to reestablish circulation? That's what my entire lower leg and inside of my thigh felt like.  Finally, around 2 am, I couldn't take the pain any more, and I took some cough syrup with codeine to try and relieve my suffering.

The codeine knocked me out for two more hours.  But when I awoke, I was overwhelmed with a new sensation--body covered in sweat and the need to throw up.  Half comatose, I sat up and yelled, "I'm going to throw up!"  before the codeine and exhaustion took over and I fell back asleep.  Brad tried to waken me, but I was out again.

Morning came, and at least the searing pain had lessened, but the numbness had spread to the sole of my right foot, my left inner thigh, and my right hand.  And the nausea hadn't dissipated either.  I crutched my way to Ben's room around 9 am to give him a few directions, and the effort was so great that I couldn't get off the bed for five minutes.

As the day has progressed, some of the symptoms from the toxin have disappeared.  My mouth, hand, and right foot are no longer numb, as well as my upper left thigh.  I'm still experiencing mild numbness below my left knee, with moderate to severe numbness and pain at the sting site on my left foot. I walked without the crutches for a little while, but I'm back on them tonight.  Hopefully by tomorrow I'll be able to walk unassisted, but I think I might fall closer to the 72-hour side of the symptom spectrum, instead of the usual 24 hours.

I didn't need this this week.

Don't let this post scare you away from visiting Arizona.  I've never seen a tarantula in the seventeen years I've lived here.  Promise.