un escorpion me pique!

rainy season has officially started here, though we'll have a few days of rain then it's bloody hot for a week before it rains again. we're still experiencing water shortages, and only have running water for about 2 days per week. anyways, all the rain has led to a massive influx of bugs (mainly beetles) and frogs (hopping around in puddles on the street) and other random critters.
last thursday i had a disturbing experience where i found the second tarantula within 24 hours in my bedroom- so i squished it with a shoe only to have the thing basically explode and about 50 baby spiders come streaming out of an egg sack i hadn't seen on its belly. i somehow maintained my composure enough to find a bottle of windex in our kitchen (of course i don't have bug spray or anything useful like that) and drowned the little buggers. now normally i'm all about saving little bugs lives but when they're gnarly spiders like that in my room that crosses the line.

the line was leaped across however that night as i was sleeping. i woke up at around 2 AM to something crawling up my pant leg and knew immediately it wasn't the normal beetle/moth/ant/mosquito experience. so, half-asleep still, i reached my hand down to brush it off and was stuck in my kneecap by a huge sting (OH GOD!) and looked down at my hand to see a HUGE black scorpion clutched on to my fingers (it was the size of my hand- probably about 6 inches long) so i shook it off and it ran under my bed (GREAT) then i sat down for a moment thinking "well, this really could be the end of it all" shaking something awful and trying to make myself breathe. i found my nicaragua guidebook (obviously i didn't have any bug identification books) because i wanted to know if i should go to a doctor, if i had to worry about dying or anything like that... thank goodness i had seen it and knew it was a big negrito scorpion which according to my MOON guidebook are "not normally deadly" to healthy humans. a bit of good news, but didn't make me feel any safer, that's for sure. i tiptoed into the kitchen (don't ask me why at this point i was not wanting to wake my roomates up) and reached into the freezer to get some ice (which was the only thing i could really think to do) since my kneecap felt like someone had stabbed a knitting needle through the middle of it (unlike what the guidebook said it would feel like "a bee sting" HA!). we didn't have any ice, so i grabbed the next best thing... a bag of frozen chicken drumsticks, and laid in bed for a couple of hours with my knee raised feeling the numbness slowly spread through my body. a very unnerving feeling, let me tell you. the wierdest part of it was that though the rest of my body was nearly numb, my knee was still throbbing like crazy.

somehow i fell back asleep for a few hours and when i woke up in the morning i felt much worse. i stood up and immediately had to sit back down, dizzy and unable to balance. i made my way to the kitchen to get a glass of water and to try to eat something (i knew that if i didn't, i'd feel even more faint) and told my roomate chico what had happened to which he replied:

"oh don't worry, i've been stung 5-6 times by scorpions and you'll feel awful for a while but you'll be fine. just drink some milk."

now i don't know anything about recovering from a scorpion sting but his advice seemed better than anything else i'd heard- so i drank the rest of the delicious boxed milk i had on hand and still felt terrible. luckily one of the drivers, jose, was at the house and drove all of us to school so i didn't have to worry about walking there. i told magda what had happened and she was much more concerned than chico, so she had me talk to the doctor at the school who took one look at me and said:

"oh, you'll feel better in 3-4 days so don't worry too much about it. you won't die, they aren't THAT dangerous."

3-4 days of numbness seemed like a pretty big deal to me, and with the way i was feeling at the time i decided to go with the rest of my roomates to somoto where i'd be closer to a doctor who could do something for me if things got worse. the ride down was pretty miserable, but by the time we arrived i was feeling a bit better and my arms and legs were less numb, which made walking a heck of a lot more manageable. the 3-4 days really only ended up being 24 hours, and after that amount of time only my mouth was numb (which i'd heard was the last place to re-gain feeling). so... i stayed in somoto for the night, bought a mosquito net... and now sleep a little bit lighter and am more wary about shaking out my sheets and blankets before going to bed.

ah... the lessons i've learned. at least now i'm not scared of tarantulas anymore, as long as i don't get any more scorpions crawiling up my pants in the middle of the night i think i'll be just fine.