To Bee or Not To Bee

I have shared with you about my various past ailments.

For example, I once had a Sebaceous Cyst which according to The National Library of Medicine is "a closed sac under the skin filled with a cheese-like or oily material".  (If you were eating breakfast while reading this--sorry.) The treatment I had for my Sebaceous Cyst was called "Poke With a Needle and Then Have The Doctor and Her Assistant Take Turns Mashing It Out". This took hours.

I have also written about my Right Bundle Branch Block, which is an electrical defect of the heart. I wish I could say it gets me out of a lot of chores around the house, but it doesn't.

Then there was the time I went to my Colon-Rectal Specialist or as he enthusiastically calls himself, "The Butt Doctor". I'm not going to reveal what my issue was, however, if you ever go to "The Butt Doctor" and he says, "Whoa!", your life will have a couple of unpleasant weeks.

The biggest medical issue of my life (um, just for the record, being stupid is not a medical issue) is that I'm allergic to bee stings.

According to ancient lore told to me by my mother, the late great Inez, I was stung by a bee when I was "liddle". "Liddle" is the way Southerners describe young children. You may have heard it as the word "little".

Inez said that I went ape crazy after I was stung. I never figured out exactly what Inez did to calm me down and to help the sting. My impression is that she mainly watched while I went nuts. She claimed I was literally climbing the walls.

So after a couple of days (I said that just to be funny.. I don't know how long it was), Mom took me to our family doctor, Old Doc Johnson. Old Doc Johnson made the startling diagnosis that I was having an allergic reaction. I'm not sure if he gave me a shot of antibiotics or whiskey. He gave my mother this one piece of medical advice on how her "liddle" Alan is supposed to handle this malady. He said, "Mom, tell him to run like Hell if he sees a bee."  

Now my mother would never use the word "Hell" in front of a small child because every one of her children  would repeat that word in front of the Preacher when he would stop by to visit. ("Well, Hell, Rev McCook, everybody likes Bullwinkle..") So, she decided to tell me that I would die if I got stung by more than one bee at a time.

I remember one time when I wasn't "liddle" but about seven or eight, I got stung by a pretty big hornet and I thought that maybe the size of the hornet equaled  two bees. I walked home knowing I was going to die before the afternoon cartoons came on. 

Well, I grew up and I hid my fear respect for bees pretty well, I guess. I must have been somewhere in my late teens or early twenties when I stopped screaming like a little girl when I was near one. 

Then one day, after I had become a MAN (I was married) I was jogging and I got stung by a bee. I didn't die. I didn't even go into a coma. It just hurt. 

So me and this part of the insect world had a little understanding. If I didn't mess with them, they wouldn't mess with me. 

That agreement worked well until I bought a house and had to mow the yard. In the South, Yellow Jackets will have their hives burrowed in the ground. Somehow, during all my years of mowing yards, I had never heard of this. Until one day.

I was out mowing the yard and suddenly it was like a firecracker went off on my leg. I looked down and saw I had a swarm of yellow jackets around my legs. I had mowed over a hive. In my head I heard "If you get stung by more than one bee, you will die". So I did what any normal red blooded man would do:  I ran.

I was running away from the bees and swatting the ones near me at the same time. It was like they had declared "TORA TORA TORA" on me.  Two kamikazes flew up my pants legs ( I was wearing short pants). One on the left and one on the right and stung me on each individual cheek. (For the record, this is not what caused my Butt Doctor to say, "Whoa".)

I was moving like Jagger when I heard my neighbor say, "Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha, Ha. That's was a pretty good dance, Alan."  I stood there, knowing I had been stung at least five times, waiting to die. I didn't even get short of breath. It just hurt like rip. You never drop dead when you need to.

Well, Inez was still around at this time and I called her the next day. I told her that I had been stung at least five times. She said, "Alan, hang up this phone right now and go to the emergency room. You have a wife and baby to think about".  I spent the rest of the phone call trying to convince her that I was fine and was in fact, not dead. I'm not sure I ever convinced her.