I was surprised to wake up this morning and see a lot of messages on my blog, on Facebook, in my inbox urging me to get to a doctor or hospital right away to have my nasty spider bite looked and treated. There were nearly 40 messages on FB, another score in e-mails. Everyone single one of them (but one or two) urged me in the strongest possible terms to get to a doctor or hospital emergency room right away.

“You should have seen a doctor immediately!,” wrote Ene,” I hope you have! This has the potential to be life threatening. A friend of ours was bitten at a friend’s camp. He spent several days in the hospital. His bites were on his temple. Had he not sought medical help he may have died.”

A nurse practitioner agreed, she reported she had seen numerous spider bites and there were often secondary infections or other side effects. “You should get to a doctor,” she said. People wrote about friends who had died of spider bites.

Almost all of the messages I got agreed that I should have sought medical attention right away and still should. I know that there are times when this barrage of advice would have annoyed me, but that did not happen this time. I saw nothing but genuine concern and affection for me, and I was touched by it.

I did ask a farmer friend about it and he says he gets a spider bite two or three times a month, he rubs oil on his legs to keep them away. Put some ice on it, he said. What a about a doctor?, I asked. “Oh, please,” he said.

I was not angry or upset about the advice.

Would I really rather that nobody cared that my leg was red and swollen, the bite the size of an egg and  red and angry?

The messages were sent in good  faith, were civil and compassionate.

Yet I didn’t go to a doctor or emergency room, even though I concede readily that I probably should have. And I wanted to explain why.

These choices are a bit complex for me.

For one thing, I live in the country, and there are very few doctors around here. It takes months to get an appointment with a general practitioner, and I would have to go to an emergency room or urgent care center and wait hours to see an aide, a PA or nurse.  They would give me antibiotics and tell me buy some Benadryl.

That seemed extreme for what I thought was just another, unusually nasty  bug bite.

For another, when you live in the country, something is biting you all the time from May to October, even beyond – ticks, mosquitoes, giant horseflies, no see’ ums, bees, wasps, ants, and sometimes, spiders.

We all do the same thing up here, we suck it up, because nobody wants to go to a doctor or emergency room every time they get a bug bite.

And many of those bites itch, swell, or cause rashes that last for days. I am extremely sensitive to insect bites of any kind, possibly because of allergies, or maybe because I have diabetes and  heart disease. I take medications for both, and because of some combination of these things, even a mosquito bite will swell and itch and take days to heal.

So it isn’t that big a deal to me when something is swollen, red, itches awfully, spawns rashes or even burns.

Looking online, the bite seemed to come from a brown recluse spider. I read that the wounds usually heal in a few days. These bites can be dangerous, but are usually not. I am a former gambler, those are good odds for me.

I will add one more thing: when you have had open heart surgery, and a doctor or nurse sees that on your chart, and then they see the diabetes medications, they almost invariably look up and say, “maybe you should go to the emergency room.” Our medical people here are generalists, they use second hand and clunky diagnostic equipment in health centers now familiar to Americans.

They are taught not to take risks legally or medically. I have learned to politely decline those suggestions and just ask for their best treatment. I will tell you that I will absolutely not be rushing to a hospital every time I get sick or something bites me.

That’s why I don’t rush to get medical treatment,

But I will be honest and say that looking back, the people messaging me were probably correct. The symptoms here were extreme, I’ve never had a reaction to an insect bite as severe as the one this week, never been in greater discomfort, never had so much trouble bringing it under control. If someone called me with those symptoms, I would tell them to get to a doctor.

But honestly, because I probably should do something is not always a reason that I must.

I don’t agree with the abundance of caution ethos that rules our fearful world. And I know my body well now, It will tell me when I need to get to a doctor, and when it does, I will move quickly.

This morning, under a steady counterattack with Benadryl, Cortisone, antibiotic creams, and ice packs, I brought the bite under control. My whole leg is not beet red any longer, the bit is drying up, the rash is subsiding, the itching and stinging pain receding. It looks a lot better. I get that spider bites are serious, and should be taken seriously.

It was a battle, in an already tough week.

Yet…we all chose our own path, we are all individuals with our own ways of dealing. As of today, I don’t see the need. Lots of people up here have spider bites as bad or worse than mine, they all heal after a few days.

I strongly believe in giving the body a chance to heal itself before heading for long lines, big bills,  prescriptions and pills.

Beyond that, I believe we live in a culture overwhelmed by dire warnings, and a deep belief that there is treatment for anything that might afflict us. I like the farmer’s rule: if it isn’t turning purple or falling off, try to take care of it yourself.

I know there’s always a risk, but most of the time, it’s a risk I am okay taking.  I don’t wish to live forever, we all have to die of something.  But listen, I do thank you for caring. It is a lovely thing for me to see.

I have been thinking and re-thinking my sometimes strident resistance to advice.

i like to solve my own problems, but there are different kinds of advice. This advice seemed especially heartfelt and genuine.  I thank you for it. Yet it was not really something I really felt like following, as sincere and uniform as the messages were.

I think we just need to get used to each other. I am grateful that people care about me, I am working hard to trust my own instincts and decisions and learn from them. I will make many mistakes, they teach me more than anything.

So let’s keep dancing with one another.