Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Extreme Mosquito Bites

I'm sure I've posted on here several times before, sharing pictures of the huge welts Emily Grace gets from mosquito bites, but I am continually amazed (and repulsed) at what happens to her poor body when she gets bit!

She was at her cousin's birthday party BBQ Sunday night and got all bit up (I hadn't thought to send her with bug spray, having dropped her off at 11am that day!).

This was Monday morning. Looks like a broken arm or something!
Photobucket

Photobucket

She has two less "severe" bites on her left shoulder, and one decently ugly one near her right arm pit (probably silver dollar sized around and 1/4 inch-ish high). They are bright red, very firm, and hot to the touch.

Not only is she extremely sensitive to the bites, but mosquitos also tend to just SWARM her. Where maybe the rest of us will get one bite (if any), she'll get 4+ in a matter of seconds. We usually spray her pretty diligently with bug spray, but sometimes the pesky bugs come out earlier than we expect, or we've lost track of time, OR they flat out just bite her anyway! She was recently on a round of antibiotics from a bite on her knee that wouldn't heal and got infected (despite Neosporin, frequent bandaid changes, and careful cleaning of the area of the bite). The infection cratered down so deep the doctor said he was worried it would get into her knee joint. And it all started out from a simple mosquito bite, which on a "normal" person would have faded within several hours. I feel so bad for her! She takes it all in stride, but I know that she's extremely uncomfortable (large, firm, hot red, itchy welts that last for weeks can't be fun). I wish there was something I could do for her! Benedryl takes away some of the itch, but we haven't had much luck with the redness and swelling so far, or in speeding up the healing process. sigh...

1 comment:

Kaci said...

Holy moly, ouchies!!