Don’t Let the Bed Bugs Bite

I grew up in Atlanta so when I was warned about the bugs in Africa, especially the mosquitoes, I felt like I had it covered. Anyone who has lived in the ATL knows about the flying roaches that carry off small children, the mosquitoes that suck you dry at night, the plentiful snakes and the fire ants that can turn a day of yard work into a quick trip to the emergency room. I thought with the move to Park City all that was dead and gone.

Reality soon crept in, see I’m not in Park City any more. I had to quickly come to the understanding I was in the bush and I had to expect the occasional creepy crawly. I thought I was doing real good and was proud of the girls as well. One of the nicer places gave us a mini safari every time we turned on the lights to the bathroom. There were six-inch millipedes, a five-foot green snake, bats, mosquitoes, a monkey and the spiny mouse that OD’d on my low dose aspirin. Even the girls were finally learning to live with the not-so-pleasant surprise visit with a little less drama. I thought I could deal until…

One night I woke up as usual at about 5:30 and all seemed well. But there were three really small dots on the heel of my hand. Not much to worry about, they looked like small fire ant bites. It itched like hell, but I was raised in Atlanta, the rain forest of the south, so I can deal. I showed the bites to our hosts and they said it looked like mosquito bites. I’m not one to argue with a Maasai warrior but I know a mosquito bite when I see one, and this was not the work of any mosquito.

We said goodbye to our friends and boarded Tim’s Cessna for the short 20-minute flight to Sirikoi. My hand continued to give me trouble and itched like hell but still not big deal. That night I popped a Benadryl and applied some cortizone cream to assure a good night’s sleep and hit the hay.

The next morning I awoke to a three huge, painful, red, pussy, gross, welts on my hand. The itch was replaced by intense pain. The consensus of the family was that somebody should take a look at my hand and soon; I thought it would be better to cut of my hand and be done with it. Our new Massai guide took one look and said he thought it was chiggers. Chiggers? Are chiggers for real? He went on to explain that they inject there little baby chiggers into you to grow and then pop out to go torment somebody else. He know just want to do and would take care of it after the game drive. Great, I on a game drive posing as a mobile maternity ward for gross parasitic African bugs that attack unsuspecting American tourists. I thought Kenyans liked us now that we had a half-Kenyan president but I guess nobody told the chiggers.

So we get back and start to show my hand to anyone who would look at it. And EVERYONE wanted to look at it. Our new host said that it could not be chiggers because I was missing the characteristic yellow banding. As if it could not get grosser, chigger carriers also have yellow banding. But now everyone agreed. They had never seen anything like this before. GREAT!

It was quickly decided that we needed to have a doctor look at it. A quick call was made and an appointment was setup for 1:30. The plan was to have lunch then our host William Roberts would fly me to Nanyuki to see the Doctor. That sounded good to me, it would take a lot more than a quickly growing mass on hand to keep this Greek from enjoying lunch.

Willy and I took the short drive to the airport and hopped in his Cessna 206. On the way over Willy gave me the run down on the doctor. Apparently there is only one hospital in the area and the doctor is a miracle worker. Dr. Butt – I know but that is really his name – is a legend in this area. No room for specialists here so Dr. Butt is the Swiss army knife of doctors and can do it all. Willy relayed several tales that sounded like four M*A*S*H episodes worth of work except all of the work was done by Dr. Butt just last week. On top of that, he is an expert on dealing with snakebites. SNAKES?

After landing at Nanyuki we met Willy’s brother Jamie. He took a good long look at my hand and said he had never seen anything like that before. I’m feeling great now because Willy and Jamie grew up and raised families in the African bush. Then Jamie added that I was lucky that the byte was on my hand not somewhere else. Great now the American’s hand is late night joke material. I reminded him that we have a half-Kenyan for a president so he loaned us his car for the short drive to the Hospital.

At this point you need to know I get woozy just thinking about hospitals, doctors, nurses, needles, shots, and people who dress in white. I can’t even watch hospital shows on TV without covering my face when the doctor enters the room. But this place was great for several reasons. First off it was small and quaint, how could a place so cute be the source of any pain. Next the parking was about 15 yards from the front door and parking was FREE. Once inside I was told to fill out form so I could get a card. Great a hospital form, this was going to take all day. What a surprisingly short form. Name, address, phone number, emergency contact and I was done. Hold on, there has to be more. “Here is your card Mr. Ioannides” and the nice lady gave me the card in case I need to come back. Why is it that only folks that don’t live in the US can properly pronounce Ioannides? (If you’re American it is i-oh-NEE-deez). The super-pronouncer then followed with a quick, “you will be the next person to see the Doctor.” At that point I decided that Kenya had better health care than the US and wasted no time shooting off a quick Blackberry note to my senator suggesting he arrange a congressional visit the hospital in Nanyuki.

Willy and I went into the Doctors office and met Dr. Butt. He must be good because his small office was stacked high with papers, books, and some of that scary stuff I see on the hospital TV shows. He was very glad to see us, well glad to see Willy because somebody had brought the Doctor a snake to identify. The person was sure it was the very deadly Mamba thought not to exist in this area. If it was a Mamba it could be trouble for Americans because snakes also do not know that we have a half-Kenyan president. Dr. Butt and Willy shared a mutual interest in snakes and Willy quickly agreed to take the container with the dead snake outside to the free parking lot/snake identification lab to see what kind of snake we had.

With the snake out of the way, Dr. Butt introduced himself and I parked my smart-ass remark because of some good advice my mother gave me. Don’t upset your waiter because they will spit in your food and don’t upset the doctor because, regardless of the Hippocratic oath, they can inflect extreme pain. At that point I also remembered there was some advice about doctors and clean underwear but it was to late to address that now.

Dr. Butt took one look and to date was the only person that did not instantly say, “I’ve never seen that before.” He said it was a spider bite. That cannot be. My brother Paul gave me a pet tarantula back in the 80’s and I took excellent care of her. Well I did name her Vanessa after an ex-girlfriend that dumped me but she never answered to her name anyway. I did know that spiders inject venom into victims that does several things, it kills the prey, liquefies the insides and preserves liquefied insides because spiders may take a couple of weeks to suck out the guts and spiders to not have refrigerators.

I told Dr. Butt that the spider must be from the north. He agreed and asked me how I knew the origin of the American hating spider. I told him that I liked arachnids, even had one as a pet and that Kenyan spiders would not hurt an American now that we have a half-Kenyan president. The spider that bit me must be from Somalia and was looking to exact revenge on an American in retaliation of the pirate that Obama had killed.

Dr Butt told me he wanted to lance my puss filled hand to make sure that is was a spider, regardless of origin. He must of studied in the states because before he poked me with the 12-inch needle, he informed me I would feel no pain. Here is where my experience was just like being home because that is exactly when I felt the extreme pain. I was very upset because I held back a perfectly good joke about a person’s backside when he introduced himself.

He confirmed that my body was producing the requisite antitoxin to fight off the venom that nasty spider injected into me. He prescribed antibiotics and gave me this cream that did not yet have FDA approval to make sure I did not get a serious infection as my hand turned to goo.

My hand continues to look bad and most agree it will get worse before it gets better. To date, every African who sees it says they have not seen anything like it. But I suspect a conspiracy, because they quickly add I should not blog about my experience. But freedom rings in Kenya and I’m going to continue to tell my story as long as I’m alive or at least until the inside of my hand liquefies.

I have learned a couple of things. Somalia has nasty pirates that use minion spiders to carry out revenge. We should elect a 100% pure blood Kenyan as president next time to further protect Americans traveling to Africa. No Kenyan, except Dr. Butt will admit that a spider has ever bitten a human. And most of all, if anyone warns me about the creepy-crawlies in Africa, I won’t tell them about my Atlantan roots, I’ll just say, “tell it to the hand.”