May 16, 2006

Bug off

The day after Big I’s third birthday, we discovered something horrible. Apparently, Big I had taken home a souvenir from our little walk through nature on the previous day. She woke up in the morning looking sickly and pale. She was complaining that her shoulder hurt. I lifted up her pajama top and gasped. There was a tick embedded in her shoulder. I picked her up and ran her up the stairs to my husband, grabbing the phone on the way so I could call my Mom who happens to be a nurse.

After talking with my Mom and with the nurse from the pediatrician’s office, my husband had a go with the tweezers at her poor little shoulder. She screamed in pain and that tick held onto her so tightly. It made me sick. I wished it would be me instead. There was nothing I could do except hold her and tell her it would be over soon. If only I had known how long the ordeal was going to be.

My husband finally pulled the tick out of her, but its head remained behind. The pediatrician told me to cover it with neosporin and a band aid. They said the head would work its way out as Big I’s body rejected it and pushed it out.

They were wrong.

Three days later, the shoulder was not looking any better and I could still see the tick’s head, firmly embedded in her shoulder. I took her to the doctor. I saw a new pediatrician at the office who said it was no big deal. She said I should keep doing what I was doing. So I did, for another two days.

Two days later, Big I woke up with redness and swelling in her arm. I took her back to the pediatrician. This time, we saw a different doctor, who said that Big I had a staph infection in her arm and that he was going to try to get the head out. He had to lance and drain the wound. She screamed; I held her and felt like screaming myself. He didn’t get the head out. They gave me a prescription for some strong antibiotics. After all of that trauma, he handed me a sheet for blood work. Blood WORK on a 3 year old! I really wanted to scream.

We took her for the blood work and she was so brave. She was fine until the needle punctured the skin, and then she screamed. The blood work came back normal. About two weeks later, she was scratching her arm and the tick head came out. Nasty. She still has a scar.

Until this week, Big I has been terrified of every bug. Ants on the sidewalk? Let’s play inside instead. Bee buzzing around some flowers? Scream and head for cover! Fly got in the house? Must kill fly now or else child will have a nervous breakdown. It has gotten to the point that my husband and I have been worried about the possibility of a bug-related obsessive compulsive disorder. Or, maybe she’s suffering from PTTD (post-traumatic tick disorder)?

And then Aunt E came out of the blue with a bug catcher. Over the weekend, my sister decided that Big I must get over her fear of bugs. So, they spent the afternoon searching for bugs in the yard. Together, they caught two worms, a salamander, and a spider. She proudly carried around her little bug cage and showed everyone her latest catches. After about an hour or so, she’d tell everyone to "Say goodbye to the ‘lizard’" and we would. She would then release her new friends back to the wild.

So, you can understand my amazement with what happened yesterday. Big I declared that there was a scary black spider approaching her toys. I was busy feeding Lil C and told her it would have to wait a minute or two. Instead of waiting and whining, which would have been the norm pre-bug catcher, she grabbed a tissue, one tissue, (not 14 like I would have,) and approached the black spider with confidence. She knelt down, opened that tissue and squished it good. She then brought it to me to show me her conquest. I have to say, I was pretty impressed.

I think we’re over the bug fear.