El Andalous - Mosquito Bite Gone Wrong

 

Beautiful Risbecia

I’ve been stuck at home, but not because of coronavirus. For me, it was an infected mosquito bite. It was one of those big ones with a lot of pus that I wrote about before. Somehow, this one burst twice without me intending it to. It was on the top of my right arm and I unwittingly banged it twice and wham! The bubble burst.

I swam, and I’m not sure if that’s my mistake. Anyway, the skin was still sore at the time, and it was hurting, so I gave up. I’m not sure if it was already infected, whether it got infected from my swim, or if it was never infected at all but just took a long time to heal.

Anyway, that was eleven days ago. I waited for it to heal, but got impatient so went to the pharmacist. He prescribed me an antibiotic cream, which I used diligently (actually, I used it one more time a day than I was really allowed, but I wanted it to heal and I wanted to swim).

It didn’t seem to get any better. I went back, and this time he added an oral antibiotic. I wasn’t too sure about this, although I had read that this was exactly the correct procedure. However, they’re always saying these days that people take antibiotics too easily and my bite wasn’t hot to touch. It was just sore and my arm was swollen.

Nevertheless, whether because of the antibiotic or just the passage of time, the wound did improve. I went in to ask if I could swim, and he advised me not to as it would hurt. That was what stopped me from swimming in the first place! He said to wait for two days. I did. It still looked a bit tender, but I thought I’d give swimming a try.

It was a failure on several accounts. Firstly, although it was fine when I first stepped in the water, as soon as I started really swimming (ie, as exercise rather than just moving slowly), I could feel the wound starting to hurt. Ugh. Secondly, I discovered that my goggles were leaking, so even if I wanted to swim, I couldn’t. I’m now hoping that part of the reason I kept stopping before really was because of leaking goggles and not laziness. I was never sure if I was using leaking goggles as an excuse to stop, but the leak is so bad now, it’s obvious.

So, I’ve spent most of my days working on my other novel (Time Tells). I’m feeling quite excited about it now. I should have achieved some extra things like cleaning my flat, or doing my tax return, but I was in too much of a sulk to do anything like that.

I was back in the sea today, this time for a snorkel as a slow introduction to me being in the water again. It was wonderful. Different days seem to be good for different fish. Today, there were a lot of cigar wrasses (what’s the opposite of “close, but no cigar” – “bullseye, I see a cigar!”). Excitingly I saw a beautiful risbecia, which is a type of sea slug, and I think it was mating. That was the first time I’d ever seen it (let alone seen it mating). So it felt like the sea was welcoming me back!