Almost healed!

It's going so well with Boeboe's spider bite. It's almost healed! This photo was taken last night. Approximately 10 days after being bitten, and 7 days of antibiotic treatment. Absolutely amazing, the whole healing process. Isn't the skin and body wonderful?

7 Days of 3 types of antibiotic (1 topical and 2 oral)

Boeboe was a real trooper. Sometimes, she's a little crybaby. If she has a papercut, she'd cry and complain like it's the worst thing ever. And then something like this happens where I can imagine how painful it must be. She couldn't sit on that leg, she had to keep the leg stiff at times when walking, because movement caused pain, bathing was painful, putting the ointment on burned, etc. But she never cried or fought me on anything. She allowed me to treat her, she drank her medicine without complaint and even helped to remind me when I almost forgot. I think she was still scared of the whole thing, and knew that she needed the treatments. Anyway, I'm just very very thankful that she's okay. Both me and her daddy has this huge fear of spiders. My biggest one is sac spiders, and of course, that's probably the one that bit her! When she was 2 years old, she once woke up from a nap. She was still sleeping in her cot. I went to her and bent over the railing to pick her up. As I bent, I saw movement in the corner of my eye. When I looked down, there was a yellow sacspider on the inside of the railing, about 3cm from my face. I yelled, jumped back, then darted forward again grabbing my daughter from an angle away from the spider. By which time her daddy came running in. We killed the spider, but I had this awful awful feeling that she's going to be bitten. So it's almost as if I've waited for this day. I'm so very very grateful that it only happened when she was 9, and could tell me, and fight the infection off.

You might think I felt she's going to be bitten because of the huge fright I had at that point. But I don't believe so. One day, I sat on my bed reading to Mr N. He was also something like 2 or 3 at the time. I picked up a pillow that I've thrown off the bed earlier the evening, and put it behind my back. The open end of the pillow case was at the bottom, pressing against the matress. Unbeknownst to me, a yellow sacspider must've climbed into the pillow case. My movements must've disturbed him, because next moment, he came running out right between my leg and Mr N's leg. I screamed my head off, grabbed Mr N and held him as high as I could, all the while trying to get away from the spider myself. Fortunately, he just ran in a straight line away from us. I was able to kill it, and from that day I always check pillows that laid on the floor when I pick them up. Especially on the inside. Anyway, this happened years before the cot-spider incident with Boeboe. But I never had this feeling that Mr N's going to be bitten. And even a month ago, when we found the yellow sac spider in the clean washing, and it dissapeared from my bed, with Peanut's bed pushed right against mine, I never felt like Peanut's going to be bitten. So it's not just a fear of spiders that caused me to feel like Boeboe's going to be bitten. I think somehow I'm really intuned with Boeboe. It started when she was still in my tummy, and I always knew she's not fairing well, but that she WILL live through her birth and whatever happens thereafter. Same with her backoperation. I had this conviction that it MUST be done.

Anyway, that aside. You'd think like we live in the bushveld with the amount of close encounters with spiders we've had! Especially yellow sac spiders. So you can understand why I hate them so much! Though, it really isn't as bad as it sounds. These incidents happened over a 10 year span. But ya, we do live in a country with some crazy bugs, insects, snakes and animals! Like they say, Africa isn't for "sissies"! (Sissies in my hometongue means timid, fearfull, scaredy-cats!). The school where Monkeyman goes to, is on a smallholding. And a few weeks ago, the teacher killed a rinkhals in her house!!!!! And it's NOT the first snake they've found on the smallholding. So yeah, this is Africa for you!