Insect Bite Notes from June 2024

Notes before I forget EVERYTHING. 

I've been chewed on by ants for about two months but about 10 days or two weeks ago I got chewed on a LOT by especially vicious ants possibly while SLEEPING in the hotel my brother paid for. And for the next week or so, the ant bites I got were worse and more and I'm covered, especially my left arm.

The worst has mostly healed but it was bad for a while.

My Left arm has issues. My son says ant stings are antimicrobial. He said they may be biting more there in part because they smell mold and infection. 

At some point, I got bit like 3 to 5 times by a venomous spider. Two bites were not dry bites. One had substantial bruising around it, one had moderate bruising. Others had no evidence of hemotoxin.

Among other symptoms, this was followed by lung nausea. I began throwing up and also coughing crap up from my lungs and there's no clear bright line between the two. And my LUNGS feel nauseous which is miserable. 

Two days ago? I think two days ago 

I got stung by a bee very very slightly and the lung nausea went away temporarily. Today it returned. 

I've had a super bad day because I'm not eating much, it doesn't always stay down AND my heart and lungs are super distressed.

Most spider venom is hemotoxin. It kills blood, thus the bruising.

I have more than usual trypanosomas crud under my nails. This MAY be a potential treatment for it and other blood infections. 

Someone with MEDICAL expertise RESEARCH this. Dumbasses at home: Don't go get bit by spiders on purpose.

It MAY also be killing legionella in my lungs. Update: probably not directly though. I elaborate on this further down.

Today June 9th I no longer look like Jabba the hut. I look like a pot bellied old woman. My body is much less distorted than it's been in years.

Tea (in small amounts) and electrolyte drinks (in larger amounts) help reduce the lung nausea.

I made sure to get salt and potassium into me the last time we ate. I feel less awful since then though I'm pretty far off from feeling decent.

I have felt all day like I'm DYING. 

There is research into bee venom being anti-inflammatory. I asked on Metafilter years ago about bee stings. I got stung by a bee once the last time I was homeless. 

I felt so awful today I was tempted to try to get stung again. Bee stings are not a serious danger to me as far as I can tell.

I once read about a tribal person stirring up an ant nest, tossing a clean cloth on it so the mad ants would sting the crap out of it and then using it to dress a wound.

Some traditional medicines do use venom as medicine and get dismissed as Loco by western medicine 

Also we got caught in a BAD thunderstorm one night in a good campsite that minimized winds.

My son looked stuff up.

Rain water exposed to lightning is antimicrobial. 

Wow I felt TERRIBLE the next morning. Like a bad case of die off.

The search terms are plasma activated water and green rain. It's been known for some time it helps plants thrive and it was highly effective at killing the four things it was tested against.

June 13th:

I ate most of a bean and beef burrito plus apple juice and tea and maybe Gatorade. I projectile vomited up most of the fluids. The food stayed down.

The fluids I threw up tasted very bitter. I think I threw up hemotoxin.

Food stayed down the rest of the day, though I'm still eating less than usual. My nausea is slowly resolving and now I'm intermittently feverish. 

My sons are making stuff up about the last time we were homeless I was bit by a brown recluse -- also while in Alabama. I have zero memory of this.

Someone gave me three packets of something called Liquid IV. I've had all three. That plus Gatorade plus tea seems to be mitigating the worst of my symptoms.

I have cf and I'm walking a lot in the heat. So there are confounding factors here, but tentatively enough fluids, electrolytes and tea helps mitigate hemotoxin poisons.

I still have a lot more research to do, BUT:

Probably the hemotoxin is not killing legionella directly. Legionella hides in biofilm created by other infections and has multiple forms, so you get a lot of false negative tests from what I gather.

Most likely, hemotoxin is killing trypanosomas and PA, both of which are iron-loving bugs, and PA forms biofilm immediately if you get infected. So it's probably breaking up PA biofilm and that is indirectly killing legionella, which was already way, way down.

Our issues with PA have improved a lot in recent weeks after years and years of being a big problem. 

Things that help mitigate hemotoxin:

1. Adequate fluids generally 

2. A little bit of tea helps reduce nausea

3. Gatorade, powerade and other electrolyte drinks

4. I threw up carbs a lot, especially potatoes, the first two weeks. I tolerated corn and meat better. I usually tolerate carbs better than meat when I'm sick, so this is peculiar. 

5. Staying cool. Being out in the heat promoted vomiting. I mostly kept food down when I could keep cool.

6. Drinking water before breakfast one morning had me throwing up hemotoxin before breakfast and some of that meal stayed down.

7. Now that I'm mostly keeping food down and seeming to only or mostly throw up hemotoxin and phlegm, I'm trying to replenish my iron. I'm reasonably sure I'm anemic from the hemotoxin and blood draws at the ER.

8. With my appetite returning, which seems to be post some turning point with the hemotoxin beginning to come out, I'm sleeping hard and some nights I sleep between 10 and 13 hours.

My stamina is still off but is starting to return.

So according to my notes up above, the 13th was the day I began throwing up hemotoxin in earnest and I was likely in the ER the 15th because I remember being asked what day it was and saying Saturday. 

So from about the 13th or 14th through the 16th probably, I was certain I was in imminent danger of dying. I could hardly eat and for two days of that I was throwing up almost everything I drank while mostly not eating. 

I think I began being more able to eat and keep food down late on the 16th. I continue to eat and drink in a way that reminds me of stories my mother has told of relatives who had been in a concentration camp or something showing up and eating food intended for everyone as fast as it came out the pan, leaving no schnitzel for anyone else (which was okay because my mother always cooked like for an army and there was plenty of other food, so it was a funny story about how needy he was, not one where others actually went hungry, though no one else got pork that meal), or piling their plate as full as they could and having to be told "you don't have to do that. You can get seconds"

It's improving but I still feel famished and guzzle my first drink at every meal. And I still get the dry heaves if I'm too hot and thirsty 

Today is the 20th.