Maddening Red

bitten twice, itchy lumps all over.
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i got stung by a baby jellyfish while swimming in white beach. medyo delayed reaction. i thought a drifting seaweed had accidentally stroked my left arm then my middle finger, down to my left thigh then to my right thigh. it was prickly-- that kind of tingling you didn't just want to scratch but to totally strip off your skin.

somehow, i panicked. but since everyone had been having fun, i decided to return to the shore, and rubbed my feet and hands with a handful of sand. it didn't work; the burning itch was still there. so i went back to our unit, asked one of the tenants for a bowl of vinegar, and washed myself with it. yeah, yeah. but i would rather take the smell than prolong the agony. after an hour, the reaction subsided. but it had left some red lumps close to my left elbow, just below the scar that I got from falling off a barbed wire way back in grade school.

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i got insect bites.

i invited my parents and brother to our unit in bcda, and let them sleep on the airbed and my sofa bed over the weekend. i was booted out to our dark green leathery sofa. when i woke up the next day, my left foot and thigh were tickly. i didn't consider insects as prime suspects. instead, i blamed our laundromat because i had been using the blanket, towel, and pants that they delivered the other day.

i had these red bumps on the same area where i got stung by the jellyfish. i tried to ignore them because I had a more important thing to do that afternoon-- a PBA game date with my buddy. but when we got home, the marks worsened. nawala ako sa mood. for someone who doesn't have a really really really fine skin, the experience was somehow frustrating.

to prove if the reaction had been caused by our laundromat, we used other fabrics that were recently handed over to us. the next morning, nothing happened to him. and no additional marks or irritation on me as well.

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i went to humana for a checkup. the dermatologist told me it was not an allergy. the bumps, which had small holes in the middle, were insect bites. she prescribed two types of capsules and one ointment, and advised me to spray insecticide at home and return to her after a week.

she's good ha. on the second day of her prescriptions, the irriation as well as the bumps faded. whew.