Sunday Blog 190 – 22nd June 2025
Somewhere on the night of 10th June 2025, a spider found its way into my bed. Perhaps I turned over and squashed it as it sought out its prey–other spiders if it was a White Tail Spider–which I suspect it was. Whatever, it bit the back of my right thigh. The pain woke me up, and the area commenced itching immediately.
As I react to all insect bites with impressive welts and redness, I tried not to worry as the days passed and it grew and itched.
By Sunday morning, I visited an urgent care clinic, unwilling to clog up the emergency department with my walking wound. The GP there scolded me, advised me it was infected, gave me a script for oral antibiotics and this advice; “Draw a circle around it, if it keeps growing and if you feel sick, go into emergency.”
As Sunday night crawled towards midnight, a quick check in the mirror showed redness spreading beyond the circle I’d drawn. Pain was about an 8/10, and I decided to Uber into the local emergency department.
My bad.
What I should’ve done is stay home until morning. I mistakenly thought the ambulatory emergency clinic was open all night long. This clinic is for people like myself, able to walk or hobble or shuffle about. Instead, I sprawled out on the black plastic chairs in the emergency room, waiting like everyone else, drifted in and out of sleep, listening to the incessant vomiting of the poor woman two rows behind me. I counted the sunk costs of all those hours already waited. The TV screen showed roughly the same number of people who were waiting, while the wait time yo-yo-ed from four hours to eight and back again. I didn’t want to leave until I got some actual treatment, and eventually I stopped checking the screen.
For a health advocate like myself, a mishap like this could be viewed as professional development. Mystery shopping the health system. There’s so much that comes into stark relief when sitting in the Emergency Department hour after hour.
Despite being a non-clinical health nerd, I thought IV antibiotics was a one and done situation. When I finally made it into the ambulatory care clinic at about 8 o’clock in the morning, they put a cannula in the back of my hand and flushed through some antibiotics. I thought I was just about done. I didn’t understand the harsh reality that I was now at a fork in the road. Either be admitted to a hospital bed with a drip – for say five days or perhaps more, or transfer to the hospital in the home service where I could be hooked up to IV antibiotics and get to go home and recuperate. I opted for the latter, and have a jaunty little bum bag with the bottle of antibiotics which is slowly administered 24/7 (see image of me in a yoga class with bum bag). So I either go in to the hospital to get the bottle changed and my wound dressed, or they come to my house.
It just so happened that the next day, Tuesday, I absolutely had to go into work. So by 5pm Monday I was finally released from hospital and able to gather my energies for Tuesday. When I slid into my seat in the meeting room, I felt like I’d scaled Everest.
As they days are progressing my wound is definitely healing. The kerfuffle of the spider bite is fading slowly but surely. But burning bright is my immense gratitude that I have been able to access such expert care and stay out of hospital, all for no cost to myself. Universal health care. Surely the ninth wonder of the world?