Hubby and I spent most of our weekend over at the house working on various home remodeling projects and doing some landscaping projects. My arms, neck and back are super sore tonight from spending over 10 hours mudding walls and painting walls this weekend. Sigh, I am really looking forward to these projects getting done sometime in September as I am really worn out.
While over at the house this morning, I got bit by something on my upper arm. Within minutes my arm started swelling. Hubby thinks it might be a brown recluse spider bite as I had gotten one 3 years ago which swelled up badly and landed me into the hospital for a week. I didn’t see what bit me at all.
It has been about 10 hours now and the swelling is continuing. I have a hard lump the size of an orange now on my left upper arm and terrible pain running the entire length of my arm and into my shoulder. I can barely move my arm or bend my elbow tonight.
I have been slapping hydrocortisone cream all over the area but so far, it hasn’t done any good. I took some Benadryl by mouth just incase I am having an allergic reaction or something. Again, no good as I am still swelling!!! I hope you all can see how massive this swelling is with my photo.
So ladies, do you have any home remedies for me that you all can recommend for stings and severe bug bites? Have any of you ever swelled this badly from a bug bite or sting?
I know it’s NOT a bee sting as I am allergic to bees and would of quit breathing within 10 minutes of being stung…so it’s either a mosquito bite or a spider bite (at least that is what I think). Any suggestions ladies? Thanks!
I am really sorry that you were bitten. Now that almost a week has passed I hope the bite is almost gone. Skin So Soft by Avon is a natural repellant to bugs, but I am not sure if it works for spiders.
Thanks Carol for your advice! I ended up going into the doctor as my arm got severly bad. She had to aspirate fluid out of my upper arm and send it off for testing. She believes it was a spider bite. I am now on oral and topical antibiotics and oral steroids. Sigh, I sure in heck hope I never get bitten again! The pain is still bad 4 1/2 days later!
I surely hope if the swelling hasn’t gone down you’ll have it checked out. I can see in the picture how large it is.Better to be safe then sorry.Once I had gotten stung by a Queen Bee and woke in the middle of the night in the worst pain I had ever had and saw that my hand (where I got stung) was swollen to almost twice it’s size. e went to the emergency room because the pain was just too horrific to endure at the time.Anyway, the ER Dr. said it was a Queen Bee because only they sting more then once. My hand had become infected because the Bee had emptied the contents of her stomach up at the time of stinging. How he’d know this is beyond me ,I have never heard of this happening before in my life and I just wanted the pain to go away with the swelling. With antibiotics and pain meds I was fine within 24 hours.But I won’t forget it. 🙂
Mosquitoes are biting us so badly this year and my daughter read that putting Witch Hazel on the bites would ease it. I did and it worked but it really doesn’t last very long.
I hope you get your arm looked at and the swelling goes down.
Carol L.