Fire Ant Bite
Stepped on some sort of nasty insect last night, and it bit/stung me. My toe has swelled up and turned red, and last night when I was half-asleep I was concerned that it was spreading so I marked the edges of the red area with a Sharpie, just like the ER doctor did for my wife when she had a nasty spreading infection.
I called the Alberta Health consultation line, and they agreed that as long as it’s not spreading I should be fine. If it spreads more than 1 cm/hour they said I should go in for IV antibiotics. They also said that they’ve been seeing a lot of infected insect bites recently.
From the characteristics of the wound, I’m guessing that it was a red ant sting. I put some hydrocortisone on it which seems to have reduced the itching.
It’s so nice that because of antibiotics, something like this (which used to be a potentially life-threating situation) is now only an annoyance. All hail penicillin.