Bee sting

Today, apropros of nothing, I am going to tell you the story about the time I was stung by a bee on my tongue. Just because I feel like it.

Halfway through my college/university education, for reasons now lost in the midst of time, I decided to transfer to another school. In flailing around trying to find a place which suited me, I somehow inadvertently landed in quite the wrong spot. A college overpopulated by rich, gorgeous, talented and insanely glamorous students. It was like Friends meets Vogue meets The Secret History (only without the murder). Even the ugly girls had style, stalking around in fishnet tights, pierced noses, and fierce dredlocked hair.

I, on the other hand, was a country mouse- more Gap than Gucci- with limp hair of non-descript colouring, untamed eyebrows and the stubborn vestiges of puppy fat. I'd grown up in a backwater town, surrounded by miles of cornfields, the type of place where acid washed jeans and big permed hair are probably still the height of fashion to this day.

I realised the enormity of my error during the first week. All the new students, including the transferees, spent an extra few days before the formal start of the semester "settling in". Attending campus tours. Meeting the faculty. Throwing loud, overheated parties, posing and drinking warm beer out of plastic cups.

It was one of the blindingly hot spells of early autumn, and everywhere I looked, I saw stylish, sweat-free goddesses, shimmering in tiny sundresses and lacy camisoles, long brown colt-like limbs and pretty pretty hair. Young bucks in polo shirts and ripped up khakis, a knotted leather tribal bracelet tied just so at one golden-haired wrist. The talk was of trips to Europe, modelling contracts, stints on Daddy's yacht, parties at the beach, and did you hear about so-and-so's poem getting published in the New Yorker, the bitch.

For me, the week was one long inward groan of dismay.

To celebrate the kick-off of the academic year, there was a barbecue picnic hosted on the main campus quad. I slouched along, collecting my half-cooked burger and wilted pickle, the grease seeping into the paper plate. I loitered about trying to figure out where to sit, or who to talk to. I finally selected a seat on the periphery of a group of fellow-transferees, one of whom I recognised from my old college.

"Oh, it's you," she said when she noticed me. She was tall and stern-looking, sporting pared-down, screamingly intellectual attire. She looked over the rim of her spectacles at me. "I thought I was the only one transferring here."

She said it as if I had deliberately set out to spoil her plan.

"Er, evidently not," I replied, and to cover my confusion, took a bite of my hamburger. My first thought was that my tongue had come into contact with a sharp bit of foil in the meat. Removing the food from my mouth, I looked down to see a yellow-jacket bee, writhing fitfully on edge of the bun.

"Oh, shit," I said to nobody in particular. "I've just been stung by a bee. On my tongue. And I'm allergic to bees!"

The Fellow Transferee looked up, with a vague expression of interest, as if this sudden turn of events might somehow result in my untimely death, and the desirable outcome of her being the lone transfer student after all.

"I'll take you to the nurse," she announced, standing up and ruthlessly shaking the crumbs off her designer skirt. I followed her like a puppy, pleased to have company, particularly since I had absolutely no idea where the campus infirmary might be. Turns out she didn't either, but this made for an excellent excuse for her to stop to ask directions from a cluster of cute boys, all of whom looked at me askance, repulsed, when my affliction was revealed.

By the time we arrived at the infirmary, my tongue was swelling up badly. I could no longer speak or make myself understood. Fellow Transferee explained the situation in a lazy, long-winded monologue, complete with a detailed description of the picnic menu. The nurse, nodded patiently through all this, but once she finally grasped what had happened, reached for the phone.

"You need to go to the hospital immediately!" she said.

My reaction to beestings is not as severe as, say, anaphylactic shock, so I was a little surprised, despite my tongue now starting to feel like a heavy additional limb. The nurse seemed pretty excited by it, though.

However, instead of summoning an ambulance, an elderly security guard hobbled in about ten minutes later. His name was something like Horatio, and he was almost completely deaf. The nurse managed to convey to him via much shouting and sign language that he was to drive me down to the local hospital, stat. The Fellow Transferee, who had been observing this with wide eyed horror, decided this was her moment to escape back to the picnic.

Horatio and I climbed into a creaky old Buick, and headed for the emergency room in complete silence. He didn't even look at me once. I had no idea where we were going, having never ventured into that part of town before. Once we arrived, Horatio dropped me at the door, and drove away- presumably to park the car, or so I thought.

"Can I help you?" said the emergency room receptionist.

"Yar. Ar bee ththhun on mah toahn," I garbled.

"Excuse me?"

I looked around for Horatio, who was nowhere in sight.

"Ah bee! Thhhhun me! Ohn mah toahhn! Ah um ahhlaughack " I repeated, sticking my tongue out her, and pointing. She shook her head, perplexed.

Finally, I had to get a pen and write it down, whereupon the penny dropped. I was hastily dispatched to a small curtained waiting room. A brisk young doctor appeared a few minutes later, holding a gigantic syringe.

"Right," he said, "You'll need a shot of adrenalin, and I'll have to inject it into a large muscle. Either buttock would do."

"Um, noooooo. Ar hag noodlulth," I gargled, shaking my head empathically, gazing at the huge needle like a panicked rabbit.

"If I don't give you this shot," the doctor said, "your tongue may continue swelling, and eventually, you'll asphyxiate."

Ah. I decided that perhaps a large needle in the ass was, in fact, preferable to choking to death on my own tongue.

I exposed the necessary slab of flesh, looked away and tried not to yelp when he jammed the needle in my rear. Afterwards I had to sit for half an hour, heart pounding from the adrenalin, tongue like a balloon. When I began to feel a little better, I ventured back to the waiting room to look for Horatio to give me a lift back to the campus.

Unfortunately for me, Horatio was nowhere to be found. Turns out he had headed for home after dropping me, with no intention of providing a taxi service back to spoiled young student-land for silly girls with beestung tongues.

I honestly cannot remember now how I got back- I may have walked, in the searing heat, clutching a prescription for supplementary Benadryl in my sweaty palm. I do recall wondering later, why couldn't damn bee have landed its jab on my top lip? At least then I might have fit in, temporarily, with my fellow students.

Epilogue:

The Fellow Transferee and I actually became good friends, a relationship which lasted exactly the duration of our remaining college years. She was something of a narcissistic kleptomaniac, but then, nobody is perfect.

The nurse and I remained on nodding terms- she was very helpful another time when I came down with flu and a fever of 104 degrees.

Happily, I never saw the brisk young doctor again.

Horatio retired soon after the incident. Not long after that, he drove the old Buick into a tree, killing himself instantly. There was a rumour that the accident may have been caused by the distraction of swatting a bee inside the car.

My tongue eventually made a full recovery. I've haven't been stung since. Since graduation, I have not returned to my alma mater, and have no immediate plans to do so any time, ever.

Comments

[Reprogirl]

This is getting kinda freaky. I was once stung by a bee on my tongue. I'm not allergic so it wasn't that dramatic. It was when I was a kid. At that time my family lived in a rather idyllic village in Bedfordshire, with lots of hedgerows etc. We used to go out into said hedgerows and pick blackberries when they were in season. Some went home to go in pies; many were eaten. I ate one that had a bee sitting on it. The bee reacted as any bee would if you put it in your mouth and tried to chomp on it. I was in no danger of dying, but believe me, I made a hell of a lot more fuss than you did.

And I bet some of the people I work with went to your college...

[Soper]

Ha ha, you ate a bee!

[ovagirl]

Youch. Nasty. Great story though... image of you, unable to speak, rattling around in the Buick with stoic Horatio...
I had a bit of swelling up anaphylactic face action once in Paris. Red wine +cheese +snails+asthma attack seemed to do it for me. No Horatio though.

[Kate]

I was stung on the arm (am allergic also) at my son's football game. My arm immediately started to swell up, so I went to the concession stand for some ice to place on it before going to the ER. The bastards made me PAY FOR THE ICE! Good thing I was bleeding to death or they probably would have charged me for the napkins too!

[ManhattanAnne]

You tell a good story lady. Can't beleive I'm late for work to read about the time you stung your tongue.

[Laura]

Good God, what a nightmare! I'm glad you didn't die.

Eeeew (shivers). I'm going to bed now. Hope I don't dream about that!!!

[Kristin]

What a nightmarish event. I think it would have had me running for the hills. Glad you survived.

[Susan/holdingpattern]

You are a great storyteller. Had me on the edge of my seat...

[Dianne Neely]

My 16 year old daughter was stung on the tongue by a bee today. It flew into her mouth while she was driving on her moped. SHe was telling a story to her passenger, Jill. (obviously not a good idea). Her tongue swelled up like an orange, and the emergency room doctor gave her IV Solumedrol, Benagryl, & Pepcid. She had neck swelling, and the lower mouth(attached to the tongue) swelled like a big piece of meat. However, about an hour and 1/2 after the adminstering of the IV meds, the swelling subsided.