I'll preface this post with my current situation, on Tuesday I went with Kata to a friend's house/business called The Bloomin Bog in the outskirts of London Ontario. Kata is an avid knitter and is part of the Knit London group on Ravelry (I'm a member too, but I'm not a knit knut ;) ) and Tuesday was a yarn dyeing and going away party with a pot luck. One of the members, Jenny is leaving London for Montreal, hopefully not for long, but at least for a year. Anyway approx 12 of us were there, I was the only male, and we were dyeing yarn using Kool Aid and some Jaquard Acid dyes, Kata died 4 skeins of yarn and I assisted ably.
Since it was outdoors and The Bloomin Bog is a water plant nursery with a large number of outdoor ponds, there's a huge amount of insects at any given time, dragonflies, mayflies and unfortunately close to and at dusk, lots and lots of mosquitoes. Well at the time I thought I was doing fine, not really being bitten, but later that night after we got home and I'd passed out (see 2 posts ago), I realised I'd been bitten quite a lot, at least 10 welts were forming on my legs and one on my left arm. I put some cortisone cream onto my bites and went to sleep thinking nothing of the situation.
The next morning my bites had started to react a lot more, the skin was, as you can imagine, very itchy but I managed not to scratch for the most part and used more cortisone cream to take care of most of the itch. As the day wore on though, things got worse, more and more the skin around the bites became inflamed, hot, sore and itchy, by last night no matter what I did the skin was hot and sore. When I took Blackie for a walk, my legs were on fire, the more I walked the more itchy the skin felt, the heat of my own muscle activity working against me.
I had been a real grumpy bastard much of the day thanks to the pain and irritation, but by last night I was pretty fed up and extra grumpy. I put lots more cream on the bites and hoped that I'd be fine over night. No such luck though, I had a hard time sleeping, I woke up around 4:40 with my legs on fire, itchier than I've ever felt and I couldn't take it. I got out of bed and tried using more cream, but nothing, I had been scratching in my sleep, or at least half wakefulness, and my left calf muscle was swollen quite badly around a bite.
Now by this time I was starting to get concerned, but since I'm relatively cool in those situations and I know first aid, I went to the freezer and grabbed out a cooler ice pack, applied it to the site (wrapped in cloth) and held it there for a good 5 minutes to bring the swelling down and reduce the itch and fire in my skin.
The ice pack was only partially working and since both my legs were bad, I went to the kitchen, grabbed a couple of dish cloths and soaked them in cold water and applied them to my skin. Finally some relief. I kept doing this for the next 45 minutes, re-wetting the cloths as my body heat warmed up and dried out the water.
By that time it was approaching 6 and I was really tired, but there was no way I could go back to bed. So I put on my Creative Zen and continued listening to Lewis Black's "Me of Little Faith" audio book (I'll blog about the topic of religion and faith another time, but his book is a good listen and most likely also a good read) and fell asleep for an hour or so. I've carried on using the wet cloth application all day, apart from when I took Blackie out for a walk this morning (another pain filled journey) and its helped a lot, the swelling is gone, much of the irritation has reduced and I'm certainly hoping my body will have taken care of itself by tomorrow.
So, now that I've been through all that, I'll get back to the topic of parasites. The mosquitoes were just doing what they've evolved to do. Suck blood from any handy mammal (bird etc) that's nearby so as to provide itself with the energy and nutrients to reproduce. Its only the females that suck blood, they use a host of chemicals in their saliva to prevent the host from noticing them until they've taken their fill, the saliva contains chemicals that prevent clotting, and increase blood flow. The problem is these chemicals can cause an immune reaction, just as in my case. For some people this can lead to anaphylaxis which is often fatal, thankfully that didn't happen to me.
Fortunately Canada doesn't have much in the way of Mosquito borne diseases although West Nile virus has been confirmed, however its still rare, so I'm probably good... There are other parasites in Canada of course, there are ticks, which often carry Lyme disease, there's the black fly which carries Onchocerciasis but these only live near fast flowing rivers so they're not that common in the city except near the Thames river (I've been bitten by a few black flies. Kata and I visited Harris park a couple of weeks ago and we were harassed by black flies, fortunately I didn't have any reaction to their bites, Kata however had some inflammation).
Well I guess I should get to my point, I've been writing long enough. Parasites suck, literally, but its hard to get rid of them, apart from spraying their habitats with insecticides or introducing predators, there's not a huge amount you can do, certainly not in a massive country like Canada. I'm sure if the level of disease spread by these parasites rises, as is possible due to the increase in global temperature that global climate change predicts, there will be a concerted effort by the government to wipe out these parasites.
Until then I guess I'll have to "suck it up" and take precautions to protect myself, bug spray, citronella candles, that kinda stuff...
Since it was outdoors and The Bloomin Bog is a water plant nursery with a large number of outdoor ponds, there's a huge amount of insects at any given time, dragonflies, mayflies and unfortunately close to and at dusk, lots and lots of mosquitoes. Well at the time I thought I was doing fine, not really being bitten, but later that night after we got home and I'd passed out (see 2 posts ago), I realised I'd been bitten quite a lot, at least 10 welts were forming on my legs and one on my left arm. I put some cortisone cream onto my bites and went to sleep thinking nothing of the situation.
The next morning my bites had started to react a lot more, the skin was, as you can imagine, very itchy but I managed not to scratch for the most part and used more cortisone cream to take care of most of the itch. As the day wore on though, things got worse, more and more the skin around the bites became inflamed, hot, sore and itchy, by last night no matter what I did the skin was hot and sore. When I took Blackie for a walk, my legs were on fire, the more I walked the more itchy the skin felt, the heat of my own muscle activity working against me.
I had been a real grumpy bastard much of the day thanks to the pain and irritation, but by last night I was pretty fed up and extra grumpy. I put lots more cream on the bites and hoped that I'd be fine over night. No such luck though, I had a hard time sleeping, I woke up around 4:40 with my legs on fire, itchier than I've ever felt and I couldn't take it. I got out of bed and tried using more cream, but nothing, I had been scratching in my sleep, or at least half wakefulness, and my left calf muscle was swollen quite badly around a bite.
Now by this time I was starting to get concerned, but since I'm relatively cool in those situations and I know first aid, I went to the freezer and grabbed out a cooler ice pack, applied it to the site (wrapped in cloth) and held it there for a good 5 minutes to bring the swelling down and reduce the itch and fire in my skin.
The ice pack was only partially working and since both my legs were bad, I went to the kitchen, grabbed a couple of dish cloths and soaked them in cold water and applied them to my skin. Finally some relief. I kept doing this for the next 45 minutes, re-wetting the cloths as my body heat warmed up and dried out the water.
By that time it was approaching 6 and I was really tired, but there was no way I could go back to bed. So I put on my Creative Zen and continued listening to Lewis Black's "Me of Little Faith" audio book (I'll blog about the topic of religion and faith another time, but his book is a good listen and most likely also a good read) and fell asleep for an hour or so. I've carried on using the wet cloth application all day, apart from when I took Blackie out for a walk this morning (another pain filled journey) and its helped a lot, the swelling is gone, much of the irritation has reduced and I'm certainly hoping my body will have taken care of itself by tomorrow.
So, now that I've been through all that, I'll get back to the topic of parasites. The mosquitoes were just doing what they've evolved to do. Suck blood from any handy mammal (bird etc) that's nearby so as to provide itself with the energy and nutrients to reproduce. Its only the females that suck blood, they use a host of chemicals in their saliva to prevent the host from noticing them until they've taken their fill, the saliva contains chemicals that prevent clotting, and increase blood flow. The problem is these chemicals can cause an immune reaction, just as in my case. For some people this can lead to anaphylaxis which is often fatal, thankfully that didn't happen to me.
Fortunately Canada doesn't have much in the way of Mosquito borne diseases although West Nile virus has been confirmed, however its still rare, so I'm probably good... There are other parasites in Canada of course, there are ticks, which often carry Lyme disease, there's the black fly which carries Onchocerciasis but these only live near fast flowing rivers so they're not that common in the city except near the Thames river (I've been bitten by a few black flies. Kata and I visited Harris park a couple of weeks ago and we were harassed by black flies, fortunately I didn't have any reaction to their bites, Kata however had some inflammation).
Well I guess I should get to my point, I've been writing long enough. Parasites suck, literally, but its hard to get rid of them, apart from spraying their habitats with insecticides or introducing predators, there's not a huge amount you can do, certainly not in a massive country like Canada. I'm sure if the level of disease spread by these parasites rises, as is possible due to the increase in global temperature that global climate change predicts, there will be a concerted effort by the government to wipe out these parasites.
Until then I guess I'll have to "suck it up" and take precautions to protect myself, bug spray, citronella candles, that kinda stuff...
1 comment:
My poor baby, I wish I could take all the pain away. In the mean time, keep on the cloths, and I can take the puppy out for his evening walk :P
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