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Reaching into my tomato plant to see if one was ripe (5 so far, 14oz - 1lb 3oz),
came back with a bee stinging on my wrist. This plus watching a nature video
last night on nasty bugs got me wondering - anyone ever run into any bites/
stings worse than a bee ? My worse was a fuzzy black wasp in Alaska - only
hurt like a bee, but itched like crazy for 2+ weeks. The bee only ranked a
1.5 or 2 on the pain scale - the worst were bullet ants and tarantula hawks at 4.
 
I've taken care of a few rattlesnake bites while practicing in Tucson. Not good.

Had another patient who, along with his dog, was attacked by a fox while hiking. The abnormal fox behavior forced us to treat as a rabies exposure.

Had to punch a hole in a guy's trachea in the emergency room one time after he had an anaphylactic reaction to a bee sting and couldn't breathe cause his throat was swollen shut.

Took care of a kid once who got a black fly stuck in his ear canal. The fly couldn't get out. Filled it with Mazola oil (really - it was at a summer kids' camp and it was all I had) and the fly came swimming to the top: success.

Human bites of any significance always get infected - one of the few times you use antibiotics before infection is apparent.
 
I've been stung by bees and wasps several times, mostly as a kid. Back then I thought the world was going to come to end when it happened. As an adult (who BTW refuses to grow up) I now have allergic reactions to bee stings, so I'm a little more careful when they're around.

The worst bites I remember were spider bites! They'd get red and swollen, and itch like crazy. And if you bumped the bite, or rubbed against something, it hurt like the dickens. Then we'd take a pin and stick it in to drain the puss. OUCH!!!

Being an avid gardener, I have lots of bees, wasps, spiders, and other creepy-crawlers around, and I can sit in the midst of them all and watch them for hours on end.....and they never bother me!
 
Yellow jackets and red wasps....


OPPS.... forgot about that asp that bit me when I was about 9 or so... it felt like my arm weighed 10 times what it was... if someone said they could take away the pain if they cut it off.... I would have said cut away!!!
 
Rich_in_Tampa said:
... forced us to treat as a rabies exposure.
Click to expand...
Such an innocuous statement for what ensues!

Two weeks ago I was bitten by a centipede. In our bed. A midnight wakeup. In the very upper thigh. Things were pretty exciting and it took a couple hours to get back to sleep.

FWIW it's the first time in 18 years of living here.

"Rags to Retirement" has a story about a Lake Chapala expat who left his towel by the swimming pool overnight. When he picked it up next morning the sheltering scorpion nailed him in the back of the hand...
 
Not as exotic as some of the above, but I had a weird bee sting a few years back. I walked out of the house and put on my sandals that were outside and got stung on both my feet by a bee on each sandal! My right foot was ok, but over the next 2 days, my left foot swelled up to point were I couldn't fit into any shoe or sandal and it got REALLY glossy! It looked like I had dipped it in cooking oil! One cycle of ZMax (?) cleared it up. I don't know if he was exagerrating, but the doctor said that if I had ignored it, I could have lost my foot (!)
 
Rich_in_Tampa said:
Human bites of any significance always get infected - one of the few times you use antibiotics before infection is apparent.
Click to expand...

Rich, do you mean bites from other people?

Nords said:
Two weeks ago I was bitten by a centipede. In our bed. A midnight wakeup. In the very upper thigh. Things were pretty exciting and it took a couple hours to get back to sleep.
Click to expand...

I've seen a centipede or two in our basement bedroom. BF says they won't harm me. Now, he'll have to catch them before we sleep.
 
Khan said:
I think the shots are fewer and less painful than they used to be.
Click to expand...

You inject some rabies immune globulin all around the wound and in the muscle tissue. Then there are 5 shots of the vaccine spread over a month (these are routine shots in the arm, not in the abdomen as done years ago). Local reactions are common, it's not fun, but it is not the nightmare of yesteryear. And since if you get rabies you're dead, you just take the shots. They work.

Rabies usually occurs within a few days to weeks if untreated, but without the shots it can take years to emerge. So you're not off the hook even if a few weeks go by without symptoms.
 
Heh. About 10 years ago we had a big honkin' paperwasp nest in a filbert tree. As a kid I had blown the back out of some nests with a 410 Marble Gamegetter pistol and torched other nests in the evening - highly recommended as a check on one's mind control vs. desire to flee. Country pre-internet entertainment. Neither of these options are considered PC in town these days, so I decided that a water hose would tear apart the nest and fill the wasps with such a sense of depression that they would move to fairer climes. I picked my point of attack (through an opening in the branches) and hit 'em with the hose. Was doing really well, knocking down some flyers and starting to tear up the nest, when Luke Freaking Skywasper got his Force on. I remember looking up the stream of water at the nest and seeing a dot that grew rapidly - that sucker flew dead straight perfect spot on right to my nose and delivered his message. Wow. I salute you Luke (but I still blew up your home!).
 
flipstress said:
Rich, do you mean bites from other people?
Click to expand...

Yes, Flip. A deep wound from a human bite is a virtual guarantee of infection. And the bacteria we harbor in the mouth (especially with poor oral care, but even in those with good hygiene) are nasty. Many are the anaerobic kind that love to get into deep tissue and wreak havoc.

Don't get bit. Don't bite.
 
Rich_in_Tampa said:
Yes, Flip. A deep wound from a human bite is a virtual guarantee of infection. And the bacteria we harbor in the mouth (especially with poor oral care, but even in those with good hygiene) are nasty. Many are the anaerobic kind that love to get into deep tissue and wreak havoc.

Don't get bit. Don't bite.
Click to expand...

I guess Iron Mike Tyson never got the memo??:p
 
Man bites dog to rescue puppy - CNN.com

BEIJING, China (Reuters) -- A Chinese man bit to death a fierce dog that was savaging his beloved puppy.
Awakened by the puppy's yelps, a villager named Geng first tried to chase the dog away by hurling watermelons at it, a local newspaper reported on Wednesday.
The farmer then threw himself on the dog, clamping his teeth around its neck and eventually killing it.
"The two were rolling around on the ground and fighting for nearly 10 minutes," the Yanzhao Cosmopolitan News in the northern province of Hebei said.
Geng suffered deep cuts to his arms and was treated in hospital. The puppy survived.
 
Rich_in_Tampa said:
Rabies usually occurs within a few days to weeks if untreated, but without the shots it can take years to emerge. So you're not off the hook even if a few weeks go by without symptoms.
Click to expand...

Oh my. I didn't realize that.

My SIL's kids had a "bat event." She is a pediatrician and decided to go through the rabies injections, even though there was no evidence of bites. Anyway, the kids said it wasn't so bad.
 
While running high school cross country many years ago the runner in front of me stepped in a hornets nest as we were nearing the finish line. He got away clean but I was stung about 30 times. I had them inside my shirt and running shorts! Needless to say that hurt like a M-F'er and I passed several runners ahead of me like they were standing still. That was one of the highest finishes of my X-country career but I was too pissed to enjoy it. I was still picking dead hornets out of my clothes on the bus ride back to school. The stings swelled up and were painful for two days. :mad:

Grumpy
 
grumpy said:
While running high school cross country many years ago the runner in front of me stepped in a hornets nest as we were nearing the finish line. He got away clean but I was stung about 30 times. I had them inside my shirt and running shorts! Needless to say that hurt like a M-F'er and I passed several runners ahead of me like they were standing still. That was one of the highest finishes of my X-country career but I was too pissed to enjoy it. I was still picking dead hornets out of my clothes on the bus ride back to school. The stings swelled up and were painful for two days. :mad:

Grumpy
Click to expand...

Ooooh, that reminds me of when I was body surfing at about age 13 or 14, and got a huge Portuguese Man'O'War tentacle inside the bra part of my swimsuit. Owww!! Nothing I could do about it modestly until I got home, either. I couldn't bear clothing on those very sensitive parts of my anatomy for several days. So embarrassing!
 
We had an interesting case at the Ethics committee one time about a HIV positive patient who bit somebody. What can you tell the bitee while respecting the patient's confidentiality? Luckily it turned out that there was no transmission.
 
I've had quite a few 'events' with wasp nests and oddly have never been stung. Perhaps the heat slows them down and makes them feel a bit tired too.

Last summer I was trimming back some shrubs when I noticed a couple of wasps warily circling my head. After checking my 50yd dash speed, I reconnoitered the area and discovered that I'd cut off a 3' chunk of branch with a rather large wasp nest attached and had thrown it over my shoulder onto the walkway.

The next closest I ever got was being awoken in the middle of the night to feel a warm, wet weight on my bare thigh. Half awake, I brushed it away only to come fully awake as I realized I was pushing a half dead rat off my leg, which my 25lb attack cat decided I might want to sleep with.

I really, really wouldnt have wanted the rabies shots for THAT bite... :p
 
cute fuzzy bunny said:
...which my 25lb attack cat decided I might want to sleep with.
I really, really wouldnt have wanted the rabies shots for THAT bite... :p
Click to expand...
If you had bitten your cat I'm not sure that it would have survived long enough to make the trip to the vet's anyway!
 
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