Spider Bite

I was lying on the couch, talking on the phone to my adopted son Chris. We talked about getting our knuckles tattooed together. He told me that he recently went to the ER when a little red bump on his leg turned into a great big red blotch. They told him it was a spider bite and gave him some stuff to put on it.

An hour later, I noticed a bright red blister on my wrist. Much brighter than this picture. It’s hard to use your phone to photograph your hand. It was an angry purple-red. I looked through a magnifying glass. Does it look like a tiny penis burrowed in there? I was concerned.

I Googled spider bites, since I’d just been talking about them. And the photos looked just like my wrist! How could this happen? It’s too much of a coincidence.

Was it a Hobo or a Brown Recluse? Would it cause necrosis of the flesh, or vomiting and paralysis? I washed it wish soap and put neosporin on it. It got bigger and looked inflamed. More Googling and more dread.

It was nearly midnight and I was home alone. I called Chris and I called my nephew, who said he would come over. I called a free 24 hour nurse hotline and she told me to keep it clean. She read a statement absolving her of all responsibility.

Meanwhile, my stitches hurt. Ten stitches under the arm for a biopsy that no one is worried about, a whole other story.

Stitches, spider bite, I’d given up dairy products for two weeks to see if that was good, insomnia, Trump, senility, and so on.

My nephew arrived on his bicycle and we Googled spider bites together. I told him about the 5 Kinds of Becky and he told me I wasn’t a Becky so stop taking it personally. We discussed the parameters of the words “problematic” and “angst.” I love him so much. Times 100 or even a thousand.

I told him that if I died in my sleep from the spider bite, it would be okay because it wouldn’t be my fault. No one could get mad at me for dying. He was alarmed and told me that it wouldn’t be okay with him.

I woke up alive. Chris had texted me, “mommy, are you alive?” and I was touched that someone cared. I went to the Nurse Clinic at CVS, where a lovely nurse named Anulika confirmed that it was a spider bite. She told me how to care for it and prescribed something. We talked about how much we love Swiffer, and about eyebrows. We felt strongly about both topics and for a moment our souls were as one.

So in the end, I am ready for death but I’m a people person. Plus, I get to be Best Man at Chris’s wedding, a dream come true if I make it to October 31.