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To bee, or not to bee

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Stop the Presses column by Chris Graham

I thought a snake was gnawing on my leg.

“Ai-i-i-i-i-i-i-eeeee!” I screamed, uncontrollably, before looking down and noticing that it wasn’t a snake that was gnawing on me, but an overly aggressive yellow jacket.

Not long after the little bugger got me for the fourth or fifth time, I found myself in a hospital bed hooked up to an IV.

“That’s one of the worst hives that I’ve seen,” the doc told me as he ordered up the treatment.

I was floored at what had taken place – given that I had never known myself to be allergic to bees.

Either way, I had a growth on my left thigh the size of a Volkswagen – the doctor described it to me as “the venom ran up your leg, and that’s where your white blood cells got their resources together to launch a counterattack.”

So my thigh was a battlefield – and Gettysburg, honestly, wasn’t any uglier than this scene.

Neither was it uglier than this one – “So go ahead and slip this gown on so the doctor can examine you,” the nurse said to me, handing me a tiny piece of cloth that was ostensibly designed to serve as a cover of some sort.

I’m just hoping that there weren’t any hidden cameras in there anywhere.

Honestly, the sight of my oversized derriere hanging out the back of a skimpy piece of hospital-issue negligee isn’t going to get many hits on your favorite celebrity-expose Web site.

And then I had to sit there and wait 20 minutes for the doctor to drop in and check me out.

The whole time thinking, “I’ve got to fart.”

Yes, I admit it – the only thing I could think of was that which we all worry about in these kinds of situations.

I’m at least fessing up to it.

Ahem.

I didn’t, for the record – nor did I wimper too much when the lady stuck the needle in my right hand to prepare for the IV.

“He is clenching his toes, though,” a second nurse in the room for the episode pointed out, for posterity.

The IV drip included, by doctor’s orders, a steroid – which I thought was fortuitous, given my appearance at a charity softball game scheduled for the weekend.

“Now I can hit home runs,” I told the missus, who was not at all amused at my attempts at making light at what was probably a much more serious health situation than I was ready to concede.

I didn’t find that out until the wife came back with the prescription that the doc had written for me – and informed me that it was for something that I was supposed to inject in my thigh while on my way to the hospital in the event of another one of these bee stings.

“This apparently buys you enough time to get to the hospital,” she said she was told.

So I have a choice between jabbing myself with a long needle and … death.

It’ll be interesting to see what I decide there – if this ever comes to pass, of course.

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Have a guest column, letter to the editor, story idea or a news tip? Email editor Chris Graham at [email protected]. Subscribe to AFP podcasts on Apple PodcastsSpotifyPandora and YouTube.