Still haven’t gotten around to blogging about trip or replying to folks. After this post, I hope you’ll understand why.

One of the things we did in Virginia was go camping. I’m still not 100% certain why we travelled 300 miles to go car camping (actually, we were supposed to go canoing, but my lack of balance and a fascist lake guard kept us from doing that) but we did - two nights, three days. It was actually quite a bit of fun. We played poker, cooked outside - my brother-in-law Zack is a kick-ass camp cook - and generally had a good time.

We sprayed ourselves diligently with Off, which contains deet, and remained unbitten in all the areas we sprayed. The one area my wife and I didn’t spray was our feet, but we figured we were OK because we were wearing our swim shoes, which covered the whole foot.

Silly us.

On the last day, we discovered that our feet were covered in tiny red marks. Danielle had about half as many as I did. Bugs find me tasty for some reason. Over the next couple of days, the red marks became more pronounced and began to itch like a huckabuck. We slapped on as much Gold Bond, Benadryl and anything else we could find to curb the itching, but to no real relief.

After getting home, it continued. I have this nasty habit of scratching those itches, and I was trying as hard as I could to fight the urge. Though Dani’s bites began to heal, mine seemed to get worse. We called the advice nurse and learned that the bites were most likely chiggers. They told me to take some Benadryl, apply 1% cortizone cream to the bites and try to hang tight until they healed. They also told me I could take a batch in Epsom salts, which ought to help the itching.

On Saturday, I went to a four-hour class on brewing beer at the local Beer, Beer and More Beer in Concord. All the while my feet were itching like mad, worsened by the fact that I was standing on them all day. When I got home, I immediately started a bath and dissolved some epsom salts. I sank into the batch and tried to relax.

That’s when the blisters started to form. I could practically watch them pop up on the bites. Both feet were affected, but the right one was far worse than the left. They were only dime-sized, so I wasn’t too concerned. I assumed they were friction blisters from my socks rubbing on them all day.

Then my foot began to swell. It looked like a club foot. I could barely move my little toes. The swelling seemed to be turning blue. Worse, the blisters were getting bigger… and more were popping up.

We went to the ER that night. It’s not a good sign when the doctor - a man who had been looking at broken limbs, open gashes and other nasty things all evening - looks at your wound, does a double take and says, “Whoa! What the hell happened here?”

After explaining the history, they determined I had cellulitis - a bacterial infection of the skin. They gave me an IV drip of antibiotics (they stuck me in the top of my hand. UGH!) and sent me home, asking me to come by the next afternoon for a checkup.

My foot deflated a bit overnight, but not a lot. When we went back in the next day, the new doctor I saw had the same reaction. He gave me some oral antibiotics after I refused a second IV (I almost passed out during the first one - some blood had dripped out of the tube onto the floor. I said to the nurse, “You spilled my blood!” She smiled and said, “No, you did.”) and sent me home on strict order to stay on my back for two days.

Two long, boring-ass days. My poor wife, whose nurturing instinct has ramped up one thousand percent recently, has been dressing my wounds, cleaning them, and waiting on me hand and foot. I feel remarkably loved and well kept right now. God I love that woman.
We went back in last night for another checkup. There, he removed two of the blisters by cutting them off. After writhing in pain when he cut a bit too close to the edge, he decided to leave the other ones on. Most disconcerting was when he looked at what was beneath one of the blisters - a whitish pustule looking mass - and said, “Wow, I’ve never seen that before. I don’t even know what it is.” That doesn’t elicit much confidence.

The good news is that I’m off my back, but my foot is still healing and looks God awful. Bad, bad, nasty, nasty. I’ll be going back in tomorrow for yet another checkup. Wish me luck.

My brother-in-law, a big fan of all things gross, has been begging for pictures, and we’ve been diligently recording the whole experience. And now, lucky you, you get to see the pictures. But, and I’m really not kidding here, they are extremely disgusting and disturbing. If you really, really want to see them, click the link below. Otherwise, skip it. Nasty, unpleqasant things are happening on my right foot. I have to live it, but you don’t have to see it.

DISTURBING IMAGE WARNING. DON’T CLICK BELOW IF YOU ARE WEAK OF STOMACH.

Only for the Strong of Stomach