11:41 p.m. - 2008-04-25
sports and spiders
Occasionally my boss sends us emails that are in the category of "health alerts." Last week, there was one about how syphalis is on the rise. Syphalis! I responded to her that I thought that particular STD was in the category of "jokes." Like ummm, scurvy or the plague. Apparently not. Safe sex, people.
So today I get this email from her titled "annual reminder: brown recluse." Arghghghgh!! Spider! It immediately sent a chill down my spine and made me sick to my stomach. I scrolled down the message about how dangerous the spider is and how you can become very ill and in rare cases even die from a bite. Then it had all of these warnings about "Graphic images!" I couldn't imagine what graphic images there would be, so I scrolled out of curiosity. I wish I hadn't. THere was this picture (I simply WILL NOT post it here, but you can find it if you google "brown reclude" under "images") of a man's grossly swollen thumb in subsequent stages of necrosis. It is HORRRIBLE. I can't even describe it. The flesh was eaten down. to. the. BONE.
I was soooooo freaked out by it. And of course, have been imagining these nasty little things running all over me in my sleep and attacking me. So, my very sensible husband went on Snopes and other sites to research it and he concluded that the picture was of a man's thumb who had been bitten by a brown recluse but he had taken one round of antibiotics and it didn't work and he waited way too long to go back to the doctor and managed to develop MRSA infection in the process. Ugh. Blech.
Apparently the vast majority of such bites heal within months with no medical intervention, and faster with antibiotics. Still.
We went to the Pirates game tonight even though we also had tickets to the Penguins playoff game. So we sold them. We have made over twice what we paid for the last two games by selling them. The Pens won tonight and the Pirates lost. Oh well. It was fireworks night and that was nice.
Our Pirate seats are amazing - we went in on season tickets with a bunch of friends - our seats are 4 rows behind first base. The game is way better from that perspective. Our seats about 12 rows behind home plate last year were good - these are twice as good.
