grrrr. I should not have to argue about this

[BlaqueKatt]

ok so BG: last monday I had a little bump on my arm, looked like a pimple, monday night I either scratched it in my sleep or it popped. Tuesday I had a dime sized reddish ring around it(covered it in antibiotic ointment), wednesday it was the size of a quarter. Thursday about golf ball size. all this time it's been puffy, painful, and very warm to the touch(infection!), and the original wound has gotten larger. By this point I know it's cellulitus, from the progression over the past few days.


So thursday I manage to snag a doctor's appointment.

I go in and explain everything above, including that I'm 99.9% sure it's cellulitus, this is what I get from the "medical professional"

MP: I think it looks like a bite
Me: yeah it kinda does now, didn't a few days ago though.
MP: are you sure it's not a bite?
Me: nothing I know of causes a pimple when it bites, so yeah relatively sure.
MP: because it looks like a "classic" brown recluse bite.
Me: well considering Those spiders aren't anywhere near here, and 80% of suspected brown recluse bites are actually misdiagnosed MRSA, or simple staph infections*, I don't think it is.
MP: Well, we'll give you antibiotics and culture it, but I'm positive it's a brown recluse bite.
Me: they don't live in WI, are we done can I go now?



It was staph, antibiotics have cleared up the reddness, swelling and pain already, but the central wound is still there, albeit much smaller.

*more info on this from the university of California Riverside Spider research department, for anyone who is interested

[teh_blumchenkinder]

o____o staph? Icky. I'm just glad you could get into the doc's office! And, y'know, they took a culture... oy.

[Seshat]

I was thinking 'staph' right from the start. That's how my brother's staph infection happened.

And if there's no brown recluses where you are, how did the doctor's mind go to 'brown recluse bite'?

[Sapphire Silk]

MP: because it looks like a "classic" brown recluse bite.
Me: well considering Those spiders aren't anywhere near here, and 80% of suspected brown recluse bites are actually misdiagnosed MRSA, or simple staph infections*, I don't think it is.

Ugh. Not every cellulitis is caused by an insect bite. They are caused by all sorts of things. Without actually seeing the insect, it's hard to confirm a bite unless you see fang marks.

Any infection of the skin and soft tissues is a cellulitis, but BlaqueKatt kept careful track of the original injury and gave pretty good information to the doctor, so the only reason I can think of that he went to brown recluse is he had a case as a resident that he either missed or was the only one he saw, so it stuck in his mind.

I'm glad you went to the doctor and got it checked out though.

Staph lives on our skin, it is part of our normal flora and fauna. It is an opportunistic pathogen, meaning it is usually harmless but will take advantage of a break in the skin to cause a infection. It is the most common cause of cellulitis. MRSA is Methocillin Resistant Staph Aureus, which is becoming more and more common in the community because of the abuse of antibiotics.

[BlaqueKatt]

And if there's no brown recluses where you are, how did the doctor's mind go to 'brown recluse bite'?

media hype-BRS bites have been "diagnosed" in Alaska, and other states that don't have them, I don't really expect a physician to know what critters live where, but I get annoyed when they argue about it-"everyone" has seen the pictures on the internet of "brown recluse bites", it's usually the first thing some physicians think of when they see a skin lesion, because the horribleness sticks in your brain, even if it's incorrect horribleness. I lived in Missouri, brown recluses are all over down there(85% of households have them, most people don't notice, or don't know what they are, and it's never just one, you have one you have hundreds of the damn things), and because they're all over, we knew they were pretty harmless. I used to brush them off the bed on a regular basis. Amusingly people would panic when they came to visit, and would see one run across the floor, though only after I let them know what it was.

[Sapphire Silk]

Theoretically, a brown recluse could get shipped up to a place like that in a shipping container, say of food stuffs. Cockroaches do this all the time; if you lived in a place with roaches and move, you need to check your boxes before unpacking them to make sure you didn't bring your old roommates along to the new place.

But that's rare with brown recluses.

On another note, my brother really did get bitten by a brown recluse. He caught the spider and showed it to the doc. He ended up very sick and spent a couple of days in the hospital.

[Seshat]

Staph lives on our skin, it is part of our normal flora and fauna. It is an opportunistic pathogen, meaning it is usually harmless but will take advantage of a break in the skin to cause a infection. It is the most common cause of cellulitis. MRSA is Methocillin Resistant Staph Aureus, which is becoming more and more common in the community because of the abuse of antibiotics.

Oh!

I thought it was Multiply Resistant, as in resistant to multiple antibiotics.

Well that's kind of good - for me. Cause if I get it, they wouldn't be able to use Methocillin on me anyway. Allergy to the penicillin family.

[NateTheChops]

Ah, cellulitus. I've had about enough fun with that little condition. I also had an allergic reaction to the first round of medication that landed me in the hospital for a couple of days.

Fun.

[kpzra]

I saw more than one brown recluse in Alaska while I lived there. They were common on Ft Richardson when they would hitch rides on packed house hold goods...lots of infantry there who came from Benning or Bragg.


I had cellulitus in/on my knee from a small cut from shaving. It started in some scar tissue I have from staples, so I didn't really notice it at first, then it was a rapid spread. By the time I was able to see my doctor (3 days) she was ready to admit me as it had spread to where I had no function in my knee. She also did the worse case talk, as one doc wanted to amputate since nothing was working at first and it kept spreading.

[ShadowBall]

Gotta love when you have to go to a doctor and make the diagnosis for them. Besides, don't brown recluse bites turn all kinds of pretty colors besides red?

Some doctors are just plain dumb, period. When I was 16, my doctor diagnosed me with an infection worthy of a month's worth of antibiotics following a urine test full of bacteria. Turns out that such bacteria in a young child would be bad, but it's normal and harmless in a teenage girl. Probably didn't help I was still going to pediatrics. Same doctor who said I had RA after a fluke ANA test.

I digress. Glad you were about to get some treatment for your infection. I hope it goes away and you get to feeling better soon.

[BlaqueKatt]

*sigh* and now one of my facebook friends is posting pictures of undeterminable origin and veracity off the internet of "brown recluse bites" and claiming they're more valid than peer reviewed medical journal articles(and amazingly one of the pictures is a stock photo from the mayo clinic archive of MRSA-I showed her that and she's still insisting it's a brown recluse bite *headdesk* I really hate willful ignorance. Of course she also just posted a picture of a grass spider claiming it was a brown recluse in her house(it's in a web for pete's sake)

[Eisa]

My mom had the opposite thing happen before. She was bitten by a hobo spider at work. Her charge nurse took her/had her go [can't remember] to this urgent care place. Well, the doctor there didn't like the charge nurse, so he tried telling my mom that it was shingles. She was like "you can still SEE the fang marks! "


I would think it is possible to somehow come in contact with a stray brown recluse, but I also think you'd notice other symptoms, wouldn't you? Those are nasty spiders. -shudders-

I'm glad you got it checked out, but sorry--that sounds really yucky and having to tell the doctor what it isn't sure doesn't help.

[BlaqueKatt]

I would think it is possible to somehow come in contact with a stray brown recluse, but I also think you'd notice other symptoms, wouldn't you? Those are nasty spiders.

Pain for a few hours, only 5-10% of bites actually require medical attention, the other 90-95% heal on their own in a few days, like any other insect bite. it's mostly hype, kinda like the frenzy over sharks, killer bees, and the like, they're the current "boogyman". I was never bitten when I lived in missouri and my house was loaded with them, as in you'd see 10-15 of them a week, just chillin' or running across the floor-little buggers are fast, the cats loved chasing/killing them.

[Eisa]

-twitch- AAAAAAAH!

Would be my reaction.

Our house is/was filled with hobo spiders...they'd come up from the basement. My mom's been bitten...3-4 times, I think? They will crawl over other people and leave them alone just to bite her. It always looks painful as hell.

[fma_fanatic]

media hype-BRS bites have been "diagnosed" in Alaska, and other states that don't have them, I don't really expect a physician to know what critters live where, but I get annoyed when they argue about it-"everyone" has seen the pictures on the internet of "brown recluse bites", it's usually the first thing some physicians think of when they see a skin lesion, because the horribleness sticks in your brain, even if it's incorrect horribleness. I lived in Missouri, brown recluses are all over down there(85% of households have them, most people don't notice, or don't know what they are, and it's never just one, you have one you have hundreds of the damn things), and because they're all over, we knew they were pretty harmless. I used to brush them off the bed on a regular basis. Amusingly people would panic when they came to visit, and would see one run across the floor, though only after I let them know what it was.

We had them in the basement of the old house we rented. That was one of the reasons we moved (the other being the landlord decided it was okay to yell at me when he came over to do some needed repairs).

We caught a few in the spider traps and I think that was enough for me. I was bitten by a spider, but whether or not it was a brown recluse was undetermined, but the bite hurt like a sumabitch for a week or more. The ER didn't want to take any chances and gave me antibiotics for it. I have a nice little scar now.


I'm terrified of spiders, so if I see one, they get taken care of by the husband.