I know y'all are excited for this post, but like I said this is a journal for me as well. So I'm documenting stuff...the good, the bad, and yes...the ugly. This summer I had several run ins with fire ants. Now, I had been bitten before by red ants in CA, and fire ants are a whole new story. First off they just swarm you and your whole limb, appendage or whatever just feels like it's on fire...I guess that's where they get their name from. Of the 4 times I was attacked, 3 were in or near my garden. I had a fairly good reaction to the first bites and with each preceding attack my reaction to the bites worsened to the point that the attack documented below drove me to the doctor. The doctor almost gave me a steroid shot, but thought it was infected so gave me antibiotics instead. The pharmacy was late filling the prescription and I thought I was feeling a little better so I never got the prescription filled and opted to let it heal on its own. After every attack it took weeks for me to heal, it was so annoying. With this particular attack I was barely able to walk and couldn't put on my shoes. I took benadryl which wiped me out and ice packed my foot all day for about a week. I started wearing my snow boots with my pants tucked inside and keeping a distance any time I had to water the garden. I'm hoping next year we can take some precautions to ensure we don't get as many fire ants... they are evil. I don't want to have to be getting an epi pen just so I can garden.
Fat foot compared next to my normal foot, you can see some of the scars on my normal foot though from when I got bit on that foot before.
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