Spiderman

About a week ago, Danny noticed that he had a spot on his leg that looked like an angry bug bite. Since he generally reacts to bug bites, he didn't think much of it, but did decide just to watch it since it looked a little angrier than normal. He even drew a circle around it so he could tell if it was getting bigger, which may not seem to you like showing a great deal of concern, but this is the guy who tried to walk off a stroke-like incident and tough it out when he had a stricture. Any acknowledgment that an injury exists and that medical treatment might at some point be an option to consider is a sign of progress.
Well, it did get bigger and he acquiesced to seeing a doctor. We are SO thankful that we have a Doctors Now clinic nearby. It was Wednesday around suppertime when the irritation trespassed the boundary he had marked off (about the circumference of the top of a pop can) and so we decided to split our family along injury lines. Evie and I went in the healthy van to gather teens to take to the Sparks' house and Danny and Lily went to the clinic to get checked on. [Lily cut her forehead two weeks ago today and had it glued so I decided to kill two birds, er chickens - bad analogy. I decided to have them both go at once. :)]
When we met up at the Sparks', Danny said they thought he had cellulitis, [not cellulite, I am sure he has none of that] which is just a skin infection so they put him on a strong antibiotic. We continued to monitor the area and it didn't seem to spread but the nucleus seemed to get uglier. On Friday, I noticed that a little area at the very center that wasn't even the size of a dime was turning black under the surface. When I see black on a swollen, ugly looking area, I think something is dead. So, we agreed that if the black didn't go away in 24 hours Danny would go back to the doctor.
The black didn't go away but we weren't able to make it to the clinic Saturday before it closed so we decided to go back after the Sunday morning service. I think Danny was secretly just holding out because he wanted to (and did) use it as a visual aid during his Student Ministries lesson on Sunday morning and was afraid seeking medical treatment might interfere with his ability to use it in communicating of the Word of God. The man has his priorities. :) In case you are wondering, he used it when explaining what Jesus was saying in Matthew 9, "On hearing this, Jesus said, "It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice.' For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners."
Anyway, we went to the clinic right after church and Danny went in while we girls ran errands and ate lunch. He texted me updates while he was in the clinic and informed me that the doctor was also concerned about the black area and was going to lance the area and clean it out. The doctor indicated that he was only slightly suspicious of a brown recluse spider bite, but not with any certainty. He instructed Danny to keep his leg elevated and return on Monday.
Today, Danny was in more pain than he had been when he woke up this morning and so we went into the doctor as soon as we could get all of us ready and out the door. So, yes, it was several hours before we left the house. We all went in to the procedure room and the doctor (one who hadn't seen the wound yet) unpacked the gauze. She was not at all hesitant to diagnose a brown recluse spider bite and told us that the area was looking "really angry" and that she "didn't like it at all". Because we hadn't been treating it as a spider bite, a lot of tissue had been damaged already by the toxin the alleged spider left behind. She added a stronger antibiotic, a steroid and some pain killers :) to Danny's medical arsenal and packed the wound again. We girls were absent for this process.
It was very interesting to observe some of Evie's personality in response to the event. She was very aware (and she can be so flighty) that something was not quite right with Daddy and kept asking questions about what the doctor would do. She wanted to be near him to know that he was okay and offer comfort, but had to leave the room when the doctor started treating the wound. I think her sensitive little heart gets overwhelmed. She would stand by the door and "check on him" periodically. Lily just wanted to ram the doctor's stool into the wall.
We decided to extract ourselves from the situation and went to the lobby to wait, but both girls came on way too strong to a nice little boy in the lobby so we retreated further to the van. Lily does not understand yet that hitting someone on the head as hard as you can with a variety of objects while laughing is not generally considered a gesture of kindness, at least not by this 4 year old boy. Even Evie's offer to let him hold her 2 foot long stuffed dolphin didn't seem to win him over. Perhaps it was because she was standing an inch from his face and petting him with it.
So, we waited in the van until daddy emerged. The final report was that we would come back on Wednesday for another evaluation and had to stay off his feet and home from work for a week. If everything goes well and Danny's body naturally deals with the dead tissue, the doctor will just help us manage the process of healing the wound. We are praying for that to be the outcome. If not, the doctor advised us that we would have to look into another option, most likely having a surgeon clean out the dead tissue and manage the process of healing the area.
In the meantime, I am holding out hope that Danny will soon develop the ability to climb up and swing from buildings so that we can maybe find a way to generate some income as a result of the whole ordeal :)
The pictures below are before and now (we aren't really to after yet) and they are not as cute as the ones I normally post here. They also don't come close to capturing the full ugliness of this thing.