Or was it a spider? A couple of days ago, felt just a normal, minor scratch on my neck. But in the next hour or so, as I scratched the same spot three or four times, it started feeling raw, like I'd accidentally scratched the surface off my skin. Not burning, mind you, just raw. I look in the mirror and oh. A circular patch of redness with a mark in the middle. I'd been bitten or stung by something; most likely a spider.
The next morning, when I took a shower and the water streamed on my face, there was a weird sensation - my lip and chin on the side of the red mark. Hard to describe, it wasn't really numb, but as I moved my mouth around, I could tell the lower muscles on that side were something less than normal responsiveness - mind you, I had mostly forgotten about the bite until then. Uh oh. Time to look things up on the internet. The scary spiders of Australia?
A couple of articles calmed my nerves. It seems there are mostly two spiders that are serious business. The funnel-web and the redback. The funnel-web's venom causes an immediate reaction. The redback's bite is sharply painful. Nope. Nope. And unlike the brown recluse in the US, there are no Australian spiders with venom that causes delayed necrotizing. In spite of my unnerving symptoms, my mind was set at ease.
Day three - the red mark is still there, but the weird muscular symptoms have subsided. They never reached a point where there was an actual loss of control. I am convinced I have escaped the worst scenario.
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