Attack of the killer mosquitos

You know by now that I am not fond of bugs. Let me tell you how you can save $--- on them.

Tuesday night we went fishing in WY. I left out all the details about our car ride . . . I don't know that I will ever go back to fill in, there aren't so many to tell. It was long and the air conditioner did work the whole way.

Anyway, we went to a reservoir about 30 minutes from Cheyenne. It was great. It rained on and off, but other than that, it was beautiful. Nathan kept commenting about how pretty it was--I think he's gone through severe mountain withdrawal for the past 8 years. The fish weren't biting very much, Caitlin had the only significant bite. She was fishing with Nathan and had a fish on the line all the way in to shore, but didn't get to pull it out of the water. We enjoyed being outside anyway spending time with Grandma and Grandpa Parks.

Wednesday morning, Caitlin had 2 giant mosquito bites on her forehead that appeared to grow larger in size as the day went on. I took a nap and thought her face and eyes looked more swollen when I woke up than they did before I laid down.

Thursday morning, I was supposed to go to Ft. Collins with N, but by this time her eyes had swollen, too, and one of them was almost completely swollen shut. I quickly made plans to take her to the doctor and meet Nathan later during the day.

We went to the doctor and he said, "Yep, they are mosquito bites."
And a lot of other things, Caitlin said about him:
"He talked a lot."
Turns out that the skin close to eyes swells more dramatically because it is so thin. If the bites had been full of puss, or if she developed conjunctivitis, we should have called him back. Also, swelling in the face is more prominent in the morning because of laying down all night. This was true, because a lot of swelling went down in the first couple hours after she'd been awake. Because she was breathing normally and didn't have other symptoms (fever, nausea, etc.), he collected his cash, and sent us on our way.

So the next time your child has a severe reaction to mosquito bites on the face, keep your $ in your pocket and wait until the swelling goes down. Unless you have any of the other symptoms described above or want the medical judgement of a physician and not the advice of a mom who's seen it. The worst of the swelling for her was TH morning, and it was completely gone by Friday afternoon.