new records

i'm now forty-nine hours past the sting.  for a little while i'm just letting the reaction go without the ice while the swelling isn't too big and the heat isn't too much. my line of reasoning (and please correct me if i'm wrong) is that the ice slows down the reaction, whatever it is. it's important to slow that reaction to keep the swelling reasonable and the heat down, but two days into it it's not worse without the ice than it was with the ice yesterday so i'd just as well let the thing play out and be done with it.

i spent most of the afternoon sleeping.

there will be some ice a little later.

according to awesome internet diagnosis, apparently this is what they call a "large local reaction".  i think i'm just going to go ahead and call myself allergic to bee sting, though. some of the fun internet sites advise immediate medical attention  for a reaction that takes up your whole arm and some tell you it's not that big a deal. some of them say you should run, not walk to a doctor even if you only have one symptom on the list for full allergic reaction, but i'm still two days out and at this point there's nothing to do but wait it out anyway.

it's hard to describe the "i'm having a reaction" feeling. when it happens to me i just can't get comfortable. all of my joints feel itchy and i keep getting up and lying down, as if i just need a little air, or as if stretching will shake it out, or as if having a drink or eating some pretzels will make the full-body feeling of "nothing in particular but everything in general is wrong" go away.

i never really put the pieces together until afterward.

in other news, since the olympics started my television has been firmly tuned in to only channels that are carrying the olympics. the only exception to this is that i watched an MLS game that came on an olympic channel and the revs were playing, so i wanted to see it.

but at this point it feels like some kind of event in itself, watching hours of olympic coverage and nothing else every single day, both on tv and streamed live online.

it's not all i do; of course i get out and ride my bike. but today there's the stupid bee sting and the hurty foot and my bike is in the shop for some work on the rear shock, which apparently wasn't well-sealed from the factory but it's all better now and tomorrow i'll need to ride else i will go out of my head.