the bee sting

Back when I was a littleun I was out walking with no shoes on when I stepped on a bee. I can still picture the day.
My foot swelled up like a balloon. Bees, I learnt, were not my friend.

A few years later I was sitting under a tree in my first year at primary school. I noticed a little triangle shaped thingy on my school dress and a sharp pain on my right hand. The bees had got me again. Hand swollen I got a few days home from school. (Yes!) It appeared I was allergic.

So you can imagine my concern about twenty years later when I stepped barefoot (will I ever learn?) onto a little dying bee?
The realisation set in. I picked up Lucy ran upstairs and called my mum the expert on all things medical.*
Images flashed through my head of the swollen footed lady found with screaming toddler passed out on the bathroom floor.
Who knows what an allergy can do to an unborn baby?

Mum gave me some tips and told me to go to the hospital if my foot started to swell. As luck would have it, Myl is away this week so the trip would have involved a 32week pregnant swollen lady pushing a pram in the midday heat but hey you do what you do.

But all was well. It was naptime and I wouldn't have missed the chance to snooze for the world and when I awoke from my golden slumber my foot was normal size even considering the 40 degree day and my third trimester status.

It's such a relief. 20 years in the making but I am no longer allergic! Hooray.


Also, about those bees. The reason I stood on one is because there are about twenty of the little fellas on our balcony looking dead or nearly there. Does anyone know why? I don't remember it happening last year but they are just everywhere. Is it the end of the world?


*She's a midwife. They know EVERYTHING.