If you’ve ever experienced a bee or wasp sting, you know that it can be painful and, in a few cases, lethal. There is a story of a man whose allergic grown son got stung. The father hurriedly lugged the son into the house to get a lifesaving EpiPen. Adrenaline must have fogged his brain because his efforts would have been faster if he’d grabbed the pen from the house instead.
Anyone who saw the Jennifer Lawrence movie Hunger Games cannot forget when she loosed a hive of Tracker Jackers (genetically engineered wasps) against her opponents. That was ugly.
I thought of these incidents when I recently got stung in my ankle. It was painful, and a week later, my calf got inflamed to the knee. I got three blisters that grew (from the one bite), and I could barely walk. The blisters were humongous! They freaked out everyone who saw them, including me.
After an overnight in the ER and several doctor visits being treated with antibiotics, the blisters were drained by a dermatologist. I am okay, but I sport three new scars.
Now, here’s the plus side. I’m always busy with daily activities but was forced to slow down. Since I tend to procrastinate, the homework for the writing class I’m taking was not getting done in a timely fashion. That sting-enforced physical inactivity paved the way for my productive mind work.
We Americans are sometimes busy to the extreme. We should stay active and healthy, but overactivity should not hinder our overall physical or mental health or the things we need to do.
Honestly, getting stung by a bee was not my first choice for a wake-up call, but it worked.
