Float Like a Butterfly

In some cultures, I would be regarded as a shaman for having had not one, but two, near death experiences. I've already written in other contexts about my accident, but there was another equally fascinating (though far less rage-inducing) experience. I think we all have had, or know someone who has had, a similar experience and lived to tell about them.

I don't remember what year it was (other than sometime between 1988 and 1991), but I remember that it was October. I don't remember it being particularly warm or anything that day – I just remember that it was October. Dad was away and it was just my mom and myself at home. I was in the kitchen at the time and I slid the garbage can out from under the sink to throw something away. As my hand hovered for that brief moment over the garbage, I felt it: a sharp sting on my thumb – just between the knuckle and the nail on my left hand. I looked down and I can still see the little fellow etched in my mind's eye – a groggy wasp clinging to the edge of the garbage bag. My mother had thrown him away earlier, thinking that he was successfully squashed; however, wasps are quite resilient to squashing, as it turns out.

Now, we knew that once upon a time I was allergic to stinging insects from a company picnic years before in Dansville – all I remember from that day is being decidedly cold on a decidedly warm day and then being taken to the hospital. Many years had passed, and there's no real way to know if one's allergies grow more deadly or less so, and so we had no precautions on hand. It had been at least a decade since that earlier incident and while I still remembered my eyes being swelled closed as a youngster, I don't remember being particularly concerned on this day. I just knew that I was going to swell up. I had been stung in between these incidents without cause for alarm, after all.

On this fateful October day, however, all of that was to change. the first thing I became aware of right after the wasp found my thumb, was that the couple of mosquito bites on my legs were beginning to spread. I had a single hive on my shin, for instance, that spanned from ankle to knee within a relatively short space of time. And then the itching began. Mom suggested I take a bath in baking soda to keep the itching down, so I headed upstairs and drew a bath.

As I sat in the tub, the strangest feeling came over me. I could literally feel my throat begin to close. This, as you might imagine, was not a good feeling. I didn't have much time to think about it as I became aware of my lips and tongue and eyes beginning to swell a little. I got out of the tub, a little anxious at this point, and threw some clothes on. I opened the door and said to my mother, "I can feel my throat start to close." She, having more presence of mind, was already in the foyer by the time I had the door open, and could see my face. She told me to take my contacts out and put some shoes on. We were heading to the hospital.

The ride there was harrowing. I can't even imagine what my mother was going through, but I know that I was slowly suffocating. I remember looking at my wrists; blotchy, swollen hives that swallowed my wrist bones and looked like mutant mosquito bites. My fingers were beginning to turn blue and I was coughing. I couldn't get enough air. My throat was closing more as each mile slipped past and I was losing any sort of awareness of the world around me. When we got there, mom half carried, half dragged me into the Emergency Room and went up to the desk. They asked what happened and my mother said, "Wasp sting."

Now, I don't want to cast any disparaging remarks about the speed of ER staff, but it is no exaggeration to say that I've never seen anyone in one move as fast as they did at that moment. I was in an exam room with three needles in my arms before my mother saw a static paperwork. My blood pressure was 60/40. I was told later that I was about 10 minutes away from an anaphylactic coma. By the next morning, I had had 2800g of Benadryl and a shot of adrenaline. I was swollen everywhere I'd ever been stung before...and there was only the tiniest mark on my thumb. I was not admitted to the hospital, but sent home with more drugs to take and a prescription for an Epi-pen. I still carry one to this day.

You see, although it's been at least a decade since that incident and I've been stung by other things in the meantime, I remember the last time. Never again will I become complacent with stinging insects – since I'm not entirely sure which it is that can kill me, whether I've outgrown it by now, or if the allergy itself is worse. Since a bee put me on crutches for a few days and another put stretch marks on the top of my foot and essentially eliminated by ankle bone, I'm not going to assume it has faded. I know that there are ways to find out...but they involve needles and a series of shots and I think I'd rather not know. All my life I've been allergic to, or at least highly sensitive to, stinging insects, and all my life doctors and nurses have been telling me that shots of any type just feel like 'a bee sting'. My terror of the needles is to be understood in this context, I feel.

Yes, I know I have tattoos. But that's different.