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| Horrible Bite! |
Sorry to put up such a disgusting photo,
but I thought I’d return to the topic of being bitten by insects.
All sorts of insects bite you over here –
mosquitos, flies, ants….
Ann (thank you if you’re reading!) gave me
a very good tip for stopping bites from itching and that was to boil some
water, put it in a teaspoon until the spoon gets scalding hot, then press the back
of the spoon (without the water in it) on your bite. She said leave it for one
minute, but actually the spoon never stays hot that long.
It’s a bit scary to do. Her advice was to
put it to your skin as hot as you can bear it, but also be careful not to scald
yourself. Apparently, this kills the histamine. The upshot is that I’m
continually worrying whether I’m going to scald myself and if I’m not scalding
myself, is it hot enough to be effective. It’s a lose-lose situation! She also
said an alternative is to put the bite under a hot shower. Generally I haven’t
done that because it’s harder to localize the shower water in the one place you
want it.
It works and I feel as if I can sense the
histamine reacting, like a finger crawling just under my skin. Sometimes I
might need to repeat it the next day. At this point, I should say I am not a medically-qualified
professional. If you act on anything in this blog, it is at your own risk and I
am not taking responsibility. No guarantees are provided, either. I’m simply
reporting my experiences.
Anyway, occasionally I get bites that come
up with a lot of pus (as pictured). I’ve assumed it must be a particular kind
of insect. The bites are always much itchier than a usual bite. They start off
small, sometimes with a large red area round them, then over a few days the ball
of pus grows, taking up the red area. The bite gets less itchy as the pus ball expands. At some point, the ball of pus feels very tight, as if it’s about to
explode with the tension.
Sometimes, I treat a bite early with the
hot spoon treatment and it immediately forms a tiny spot of pus. I’ve found
(corroborated by others on another page I found, which inspired me to write
this) that if I smear it relentlessly with insect-bite lotion (totally
disregarding the packet of one of mine that says to use it not more than three
times a day! My other lotion doesn’t have this precaution), the bite will die.
Again, I’m not advising you ignore the prescribed limitations as there must be
risks involved. I’m merely reporting what I did.
I can’t remember if I gave the one pictured
the hot spoon treatment when I first got it (they start off small, very itchy,
but innocuous-looking). Anyway, I obviously didn’t catch it properly. I took a photo
because I’ve never had my arm actually swell before and the red area was half
of my arm, which was extreme. I was a bit concerned that the ball of pus would grow
to that size.
Once you’ve got a big ball of pus like
that, though, it’s natural to wonder if you should just burst it and let it out
(particularly if it’s got painfully tight).
In the past, I’ve found that if I sterilize
a pin in boiling water and stab at the ball of pus, it will release the
pressure as some of the pus comes out and then the pinpricks will heal over and
more pus will come in and take the place of the stuff that’s leaked out (as
basically all the pus has to come out and at this stage, it’s still forming and
growing). The skin underneath (if you squeeze all the pus out and don’t have
the ball reform) is red and sensitive. My guess is that the longer you leave
the pus sitting, the less sensitive that patch of skin will be when you do get
rid of the pus.
If you search the internet, you’ll find
medical advice saying you should not pierce the area of pus from bites as it
increases risk of infection. But I’m pretty sure they are thinking of normal,
small bites when they say this rather than these humungous ones. Sometimes the
large ones can just burst of their own accord without you realizing, but at
times they are so tight, it’s really hard to resist the temptation to reduce
the pressure.
Others report putting gauze over these
bites after bursting them (as the rest of the pus still has to come out and you
have to try to ensure you don’t get infected). Again, this is not medical
advice. If you do this, it’s at your own risk. I imagine it’s pretty horrible
if you get infected.
Anyway, this time, I had this massive
swelling. I decided to use the hot water treatment in the shower, as I was
worried that the pus ball would grow to be the size of my arm. I put the water
on to its hottest, and sprayed my lower arm in bursts of one second (that was
as much heat as I could bear) repeatedly over a few minutes.
To my complete astonishment, ten minutes
after I’d done it, the swelling had completely gone. The ball of pus was still
there, but my arm was no longer red and swollen. That was a massive
improvement. I was also taking antihistamine tablets, so maybe it was a coincidence
with that, and you can’t conclude anything from a sample of one. However, I was
hugely relieved.
It's now almost better (I did puncture it
after a while, let it reform, and then fully drained it after it got a bit
saggy and remained so for a few days).
There should be more research on how to
handle these types of bites!
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