Heads up this post is about spiders. I used a cutesy spider picture in an effort to make them less gross and to make sure you all kept reading.
So who is excited about summer! I know I am! I love that the kids are stress free from school and I love hearing all of the giggles as they spend hours in their imagination land. But what I don’t like are the influx of bugs. Especially around my kiddos. I live in Arizona, which I am positive is like a baby Australia when it comes to all of its deadly and worrisome insects. And this spring/summer season has been horrid with all of the creepy crawlies. Like most of the country we have experienced and unseasonable cold and wet winter. Which for my fellow Americans in the Midwest and East Coast has probably been super annoying, but for us in the dehydrated desert, it has been MARVELOUS! Apparently the month of May hasn’t been this cool in like 30 years. All the neighbors are smiling at each other, no one is making a mad dash to their cars to keep their skin from melting off. I’m telling you its been bliss.
But now that the summer has begun, our ecosystem has been thrown off and there is an extra amount of foliage and dampness that the bugs are thriving off of. Thus, we’re now paying for our extra unexpected months of basically no A/C bills. And unfortunately, my four year old son became collateral damage in a spiders quest to ruin lives. Just kidding, was that too much? Yeah probably. But in all seriousness, he did end up getting cellulitis from his spider bite.
It is so important to trust your mom instincts, even in the seemingly mundane things like bug bites. I really felt like this wasn’t a time to utilize my Thieves oil. Situations like this I would not recommend be handle by homeopathic remedies. I am ALL FOR all natural, homemade, homeopathic remedies. But because of the potential severity of things like cellulitis, I would say that having professional medical intervention is super important. Bug bites aren’t always serious but cellulitis should be taken seriously if it happens. The emergency room on a Thursday night at 8pm when your husband isn’t home yet, is not an ideal time to make that trek for a bug bite, but I knew in my gut he needed to be seen.
My son has allergic reactions to almost all bug bites, but what caught my attention with this particular bite was the fact that it basically was not healing. Most of his bites, become hard, hot to the touch and really really swollen. But within a day or two they go down. Not only was he not seeing any relief from those symptoms, but his wound was also seeping. Like basically leaking.
The symptoms of cellulitis caused by a bug bite include:
- pain and tenderness that radiates from the bug bite
- inflammation
- redness
- swelling
- red streaks or spots near the area of the bite
- skin that feels warm to the touch
- skin dimpling
If cellulitis isn’t treated, it can develop into a serious infection. Signs of a worsening infection include:
- fever
- chills
- swollen lymph nodes
- pus or drainage from the bite site
So because he had most of these symptoms we decided I should go ahead and take him to the ER. Once we were seen, the doctor confirmed our suspicions of cellulitis. He was put on a 15 day antibiotic and we got home at 1 am. While it was not the way I wanted to spend a Thursday night, I am obviously very glad we decided to go ahead and take him. Honestly, we were actually worried about his bite being a result of a brown recluse spider (I’m telling you it’s for real the wild wild west out here) and had no thoughts about cellulitis. I wanted to share our story because it is so super important to catch things like this early because infected bites can get worse very quickly. If you think your child needs to be seen by a professional take them as soon as you can.
And finally, if you think I am a mom who is like really great at keeping up to date on whats going on with my children’s body’s because I was watching a spider bite, calm down. Because while we were at the hospital I was informed that my kid was like super constipated……. You win some you loose some I guess.
❤
**https://www.healthline.com/health/cellulitis-from-bug-bite**
Code Name: Mama 