Arachnophobia

Last week Chloe came to me with what looked like a zit on her butt cheek. I told her that was what it was and it would go away in a day. She kept complaining that it really hurt her and asked me to look at it a few days later. When I looked at it, it had a big black hole in the middle and was swollen huge and red in the center with concentric circles of various shades of red emanating out from the center. Brian and I researched online what it could possibly be, having never seen anything like it. The closest thing we could come up with was a brown recluse spider bite. We kept watching it for a few more days to see if there was necrosis of the tissue (indicitive of a brown recluse bite), but it was only dying in a very small radius in the center, which was good news. But when Brian lanced it slightly, pus oozed out in massive amounts. The area was very hot to the touch and spanned about a 7 inch diameter. The poor child could not sit or lie on her back. The next day we took her into the surgery clinic at the Army hospital and a doctor, who Brian worked with, made a surgical incision about an inch deep and an inch long and drained the remaining infection. He then stuck a cotton wick inside and left it to drain for two days. She is now slowly recovering from having a giant hole in her butt cheek. It was very disgusting. The doctor said it was a good thing we relieved the pressure of the building infection or she could have possibly gone septic. We feel lucky for that at least.

So, you would think that when Sophia came up to me and said, "Mom, I have this weird bump on my leg that is really bugging me," I would have immediately figured it out. But no, I never give credence to my children's whines and complaints at first, not until they are dying or oozing pus and blood. So after a few days, Sophia's bump turned into the same thing as Chloe's. This time we caught it sooner and the concentric circles of infected tissue only measured about 3 inches in diameter. Brian lanced it and disinfected it and drained the pus several times. I can't begin to tell you how gross these spider bites are. We are pretty sure the kids are getting them in our garage because the girls change their clothes out there to put on the dress up clothes. BTW, our garage is mostly a giant play room with dress up clothes, Little People town, and a play cafe. So they play out there all day and we think that the spider(s) are getting into the dress up clothes and nesting and when the girls put the clothes on, they get bitten. Needless to say, those clothes are moving indoors and we will be spraying for spiders on a large scale.

As a funny side note, having nothing to do with spiders, Florence seriously cracked us up the other night. Florence suffers from trench mouth. Her teeth are hardly formed and the enamel looks like pumice stone. She has a lot of cavities and her breath is enough to wilt an entire grove of trees. So, the other night Brian brushed her teeth and had her rinse with fluoride rinse. Then I heard her cry out in horror, "Oh, Daddy, what? You gonna sew my teeth?" I realized he had just broken out the floss to floss her teeth and I guess she had never seen floss before. We laughed pretty hard. She was relieved when she discovered that no needle or pain were involved in the process.