March 2020

 After being stung by a swarm of bees in February... oh, right.  That part.  

I was getting into new good habits.  Taking the puppy for a walk in the morning, taking the other two for a walk at my lunch.  I was loving working from home.  Everything was going pretty well with the boyfriend after he got home from rehab...

Anyway, I was walking my little dog, and my old dog at my lunch.  We’d rounded the corner and begun the walk back home when I saw a guy in a golf cart get out, wave around his head, then get back in and drive past us, staring at us the entire way.  And I thought to myself, “Huh, I wonder if he was waving away a bee”, and then kept walking.

Moments later I heard a buzz, then felt one buzz my head.  A few moments later, more buzzed, and then one hit and man.  I’d never been stung by a bee before.  So, having the experience in your 50’s by a swarm of them, well...  Me and the dogs getting pummeled by stinging bees, in my hair, under my shirt, under my glasses, started to run.  We ran up to a door, which was not ours, and Mickey was getting stung - he’d been shaved earlier in the week - so I let the leashes go, yelled “run” to the dogs and called out to the girls who were inside the house.

When the ambulance got there, moments after I’d been able to tap out a misspelled email to my supervisor that I wouldn’t be returning to my desk the rest of the day, they put me right into the back of the ambulance and asked me a bunch of questions while I tried to joke and make them laugh (they don’t by the way).  Then the one with the computer and the questions looked up nd said “you are allergic to bees looks like”, which, by the way, is the best way to find out, in the back of an ambulance heading to the ER

There, the nurse who was tending to me told me he was giving me a shot of adrenaline because my inflammation, after shots of Benadryl and a breathing treatment, a steroid shot (which hurt like hell, by the way) was still not going down.  If I was not allergic to bees, said he, I would feel jittery for a few hours.  If, however, I was allergic it would probably knock me out.  I don’t remember him walking out of the room.

March to come.