ACCOUNTANT BY DAY

So yesterday morning I woke up with a little bump at the outer side of my left nostril, and I didn’t think much of it for most of the day. I went over to my crafty friend’s house and we had chicken soup and fed things to her dog, and then I drove home and I noticed that the little bump had become a big, painful bump. When I got home I looked at it in the mirror and decided it was one of those nasty cystic pimples that start deep below the surface of your skin and get all sore and feel HUGE like you have some kind of ENORMOUS GROWTH on your face. I don’t get those very often, but I’ve had two others before this since starting Yaz. Except, I changed facial cleansers about the same time and only just changed back to my old brand, so I’m not sure which one is to blame.

Anyway, I was chilly and completely exhausted for some reason, and it was past ten by the time I had gotten home, inspected my giant pimple, and brushed my teeth. So I drank some water and went to sleep. Later I woke up around 1:30 and had to go to the bathroom. So I went to the bathroom and then laid back down to go to sleep. But my giant pimple had begun to hurt, more than it seemed reasonable, so I got up to look at it again. I turned on the bathroom light, and once my eyes had adjusted I took another look.

And I saw this thing, was it a PUNCTURE MARK is that a PUNCTURE MARK it is a PUNCTURE MARK and my GOD there is another one next to it and I HAVE BEEN BITTEN BY A SPIDER, I AM 85% SURE I HAVE BEEN BITTEN BY A SPIDER. Concerned, I put the toilet seat down, and tried to wake up a little bit to decide what to do. I began trying to decide what kind of spider had bitten me, and whether my face was going to fall off or not.

I decided I was reasonably certain that it was not a black widow spider, since I have not been hanging out in any camp toilets, and that it was not a brown recluse, since I have not been rolling around in the attic for fun. Also, I don’t see how I could get bitten in the face by a spider without noticing, unless I was asleep. And the only spiders I have seen in our bedroom are wolf spiders, which are horrific looking but actually rather benign.

Wolf spiders and I used to have this understanding, which was that I acknowledged their environmental worth and did not kill them when I saw them in the house, since they kill bad insects, in return for which they were supposed to avoid doing scary spider things that would make me uncomfortable. Then one night I came into the bedroom and saw one hanging out on my pillow. I interpreted this as basically the most thorough betrayal wolf spiders could have committed against me. So I threw a tantrum until my boyfriend helped me find THAT SPECIFIC WOLF SPIDER in the bedroom and kill it. Since that day, I tolerate their presence in other parts of the house, but if I see one in the bathroom or the bedroom then I totally panzer it. Because the bedroom has, like, become the Balkans as far as wolf spiders are concerned.

Anyway. I thought about going back to bed, but realized I could not bear to do so until I had researched spider bite first aid on the internet. It would be a real shame to wake up with half my face rotted off. And, I mean, who hasn’t had some considerate friend e-mail them pictures of people with horrifying spider wounds before? So I felt reasonably concerned. I had a spider bite once in college and I got blood poisoning from it. And my old roommate and current next door neighbor told a bunch of people as a joke that I got blood poisoning from her, that she was the one who bit me. And they believed her.

On the internet, I learned some helpful facts such as “in general” spider bites are not lethal, which means that sometimes they still are, and that spiders bite “defensively”, which means nothing to me because they still bite, period. I also saw a lot of pictures of spider bites that would look horrible on someone’s arm and HERE THIS ONE WAS ON MY NOSE, MY NOSE HAS A SPIDER BITE on it and will rot off! Finally, I found a page on the Mayo Clinic site, which I trust more than clinical research pages on university servers, which gave specific symptoms, and noted that if your symptoms worsen you should seek medical treatment within 24 hours. And then I began to obsess over whether that meant 24 hours from worsening symptoms, or 24 hours from the bite. Because, I might already have passed the 24 hour point on the bite itself.

I took some acetaminophen as suggested by the Mayo Clinic, then decided to go to bed and consider making an appointment with one of the nearby clinics in the morning, if my spider bite showed any signs of doing any of the stuff mentioned in the Mayo Clinic writeup. After I laid down, I began to think about the puncture wounds, which were about an eighth inch apart, and this made me realize how huge the spider would have to have been. It took me a long time to go to sleep because I kept trying to decide how large the spider was, and how long he hung out on my face.

I had a bunch of dreams about my face swelling, and when I finally woke up just before my alarm, I went into the bathroom to get ready for work. I tried to decide whether I had body aches or any of the other symptoms of spider venom. Actually, I felt a lot better, other than being sleepy, and my spider bite did not hurt nearly as much. I began to harbor faint hope that my face might not actually fall off.

I inspected at my nose in the mirror.

As I looked at my spider bite in the morning light, I began to notice that, wow, I have very large, dirty pores on my nose. Then I began to notice the puncture wounds looked a bit like my large pores. Or, more accurately, exactly like my large pores.

The upside of this ordeal, in which I conducted exhaustive internet research and lost nearly two hours of sleep, is that I am SO PREPARED if anyone I know gets a spider bite.

And I’ll know to check them to make sure it’s not just their DISGUSTING BLACKHEADS!