Scorpion Struck, Again

So this chilly Chimoio morning, I woke up early to do yoga, which normally I just do in boxer shorts, but because it was cold, I picked up a relatively clean shirt from the laundry hamper to put on.  Hey, I was gonna sweat profusely, so why not save the really clean shirt for after the post-yoga shower.  Anyway, the shirt was over my head and halfway down my torso when pure pain injected into the left side of my chest where the heart lies beneath. .  . Allow me some romanticism here.  I did get scorpioned.  But if you want to get all medically accurate, the shiny little shit got me right above the left nipple.

 

I pulled the shirt off, saw the little bugger in the folds, threw it down on the floor.  The creeper skittered away and my first foot stomp didn’t phase it at all, but my second, with the right heel, and a wrenching twist, stopped him flat before my yoga mat.  

I texted our medical officer in Maputo, and resumed yoga.  I figured, if I was to die today, there’s no reason to demorrar (delay).  All the stretching and the pose-holding should speed up the circulation of the scorpion venom.  Honestly though, since this was the second time I’ve been stung, I was fairly certain the venom wasn’t lethal.  Last year in Cuamba I got stung by a bigger little bugger, of a grayish color that looked like a spider.  That one got me on the left pinky toe as I was brushing my teeth in the bathroom.  It was excruciating.  The pain was so much more piercing than the one today that the thought of lopping off my toe crossed my mind.  The sting also gave me a slight fever and the pain endured till the next day.  That first time I didn’t contact our PCMO because the north had, I guess, made me very cynical.  How the hell could PC med-evac me from Cuamba, the bunghole of Niassa?  Sorry, this was the Cuamba I knew last year.  It’s probably more developed now.

So this time around I texted our PCMO also because I heard from PCV Judy that Moz does have some deadly varieties of scorpions, and like I said the one that got me today looked narrower, shinier, darker.  I got a call back from PCMO Carlos about half-an-hour later, in the middle of plank pose.  FYI, downward-dog actually reduces the pain.  But back to the medical call, I very much appreciated the medical attention and concern.  He told me to use cold compresses and assured me that household scorpions aren't usually deadly.  He also asked me to email him pictures of this little pest, so they could identify it and ascertain its venom is not lethal.  Luckily, it wasn’t, because all I could think about during the call was the laundry I still gotta go wash, the papers I still gotta read and grade, and the exams I need to give this afternoon.  It didn’t even occur to me during the call that sending the email later may be impossible, as I may already be dead by then. 

Well, clearly I’m not.  I’ve sent the email and am now posting this blog.