Just Carry the Danged First Aid Kit!

I always carry our huge medical kit when we’re leaving town, especially for events like camping trips.  But for everyday trips into town?  Never.  What am I going to need that I can’t buy?  I shop at the grocery store and can purchase basic supplies.  I stop at the pharmacy, which is right along the way, to pick up my husband’s prescriptions.  And besides, being only 30 minutes from home, or less, there’s nothing I won’t be able to wait for.  Really, I’ve left this house over a thousand times probably, and never needed the first aid kit. 

I don’t stop to help with accidents, because I never see any.  (For the record, if I were the first on the scene, I would stop—assuming everything looked safe to do so.)  We travel very low traffic country roads.  There’s never been a need, and besides, as Aaron always points out, it’s too hot for the pills. 

You know where this is going. 

So on our way to church one Sunday, we stopped at KOTPE’s house while he and his family were out of town to take care of the animals, just as we had the previous two days.  Dog fed and watered, check.  Chickens still have food and water, check.  Collect the brown eggs, check.  (These chickens are racist.  The brown egg layers lay in the Big Coop.  The green egg layer, an Ameraucana, lays in a bucket in the Tiny Coop.)  I see a green egg in the bucket (she didn’t lay on Saturday), so I lift the lid to that coop.  Out fly a few dozen wasps.  On the attack.  Sadness and woe.  One got my finger; another stung through my shirt.  Naturally, I start screaming, but I’m a little paralyzed.  Besides, I was still fixated on getting the egg.  (Yes, my thought processes were a little scrambled.)  Anyway, Aaron finally yells at me to leave, and I finally wake up.  I had dropped the house key.  I also dropped the brown eggs.   

So I was highly annoyed, but not in extreme pain.  I couldn’t get into the house, because the key was in with the wasps.  If we went home to treat the stings, we’d be late for church.  We do not go to church late, period.  Now, I have a friend who lives right by the church, so I called her.  She was out of town, and her husband wasn’t home, but she offered that the doors were unlocked and told me where to get the baking soda.  She also lamented that she didn’t know off the top of her head which essential oils to use.  I couldn’t remember either.  But I was going to be happy with ice and baking soda.  And as I was mixing the baking soda paste, I spied her essential oils right above the sink.  Lavender.  I then recalled that it would work on wasp stings.  I applied the oil to both stings, made a baking soda paste for the finger sting, and wrapped it in a paper towel strip.  I put some ice in a baggy and left.  For all of Sunday, I couldn’t even tell I had been stung. 

And yes, plantain would have worked, but I couldn’t remember that at the moment.  Even if I had, I wouldn’t have known where to find it at KOTPE’s house.  So there were a few lessons learned through this experience.

1.  Just carry the danged medical kit in the car.  It’s not there for everyday use.  It’s there for the one time in 10,000 trips where something goes awry. 

2.  For places you visit frequently, study the yard to know where medicinal herbs are and learn where they keep their medical supplies in the house/workplace/etc. 

3.  Remember, in a crisis, clear thinking flies out the window at warp speed.  Why didn’t I have the presence of mind to flee from the wasps?  Why couldn’t I remember lavender oil or plantain for bites and stings? 

4.  Apparently, you can’t just apply the baking soda and lavender oil once and think you are done.  The bite sites started swelling on Monday, and by Tuesday my finger was really huge and my arm would have given Popeye a run for his money. 

5.  And finally, carrying the kit wouldn’t have spared me from the stings, and I don’t think I would have had baking soda in there (but I will now).  However, I would have had Benadryl and ibuprofen.  I could have gotten to work on relieving that sting a whole lot sooner.