Glad to see it’s healing. That last nurse who suggested the sloughing dressing (?), did I get that right? How is it different from other dressings, would be useful to know about as sometimes I get areas of skin infections and it might be something to try. I react badly to mosquitos and spider bites as well and it’s an absolute pain (literally and figuratively!). My body also seems to go into overdrive, like my immune system just goes mad, if I get too many of the above, especially mosquito bites. I once got around 50 bites all over both legs, and a few on other parts of me. I had been out speaking to a neighbour by the gate and there was a lamppost next to us, swarming with the fuckers. We were there maybe 20 minutes max, and I think it’s going to be fine as I’m all covered up - was wearing I black leggings. Anyway I woke in the night with totally swollen and burning legs covered in all these bites and wondered how on earth that had happened! Especially as my legs wee totally covered. Had a nose around online and found out that far from keeping mozzies away black clothing attracts them the most! Something to do with how the see/feel heat or something, and is worse with darker clothes. I just thought being covered was enough! Now I know why people in more tropical/humid places where light clothing - it’s not just to keep them cooler!
so, lesson learnt! A bit very nice lesson (and this is very outing for anyone who knows me!) as I spent the next 6 months with my entire body on fire, hives everywhere, swollen, burning legs, even once the bites eventually started healing. Turns out it’s possible that my reaction to the mosquitos caused some weird histamine reaction in my body and that literally, everytime you’d absentmindedly just scratch an itch somewhere, or have tight waistbands etc it would create a horrible chain reaction where the histamines go completely feral and the burning and itching and hives would just pop up everywhere! I had 6 months of this, having to try and sleep with wet towels over my swollen legs. We also discovered that there’s some kind of immune response called graphica-something or other…probably wrong word, but if anyone else has ever had it you’d recognise it immediately - basically it meant that if you touched your skin, anywhere, as well as the hives and itching everywhere it would leave a mark on the skin for at least half an hour plus - so basically means that you can draw in your skin, with just a light movement of the finger, which would often mean my daughter found it most amusing to literally draw things like penises etc! So I’d have raised, red, phallic shaped hives all over my legs at times! We did use to draw pictures, write words etc.
anyway, yeah that’s all irrelevant, hellish as the time - and I still get periods of it now, but far less frequently and for shorter periods. I was always aware of my reaction to mozzie bites anyway - they’d grow huge, often like massive strawberry type texture (anyone who has the same will recognise what I mean) and cause temperatures etc and at times have made me quite unwell - but l am so paranoid about them now, can’t stand to have windows open, esp in the evening bc as soon as there’s a light those fuckers will be right in. But I think it shows your body can do the strangest things, from often the smallest thing. I react differently to spider bites, and also differently depending on the spider, as I found out when I think I was bitten a couple of times by a false widow. I can usually tell immediately if it was a normal spider or a false widow and they present so differently on me.
the risk of any of these things, like yours, can get infected so easily and came make you quite unwell sometimes, but I am so pleased for you that finally you’re past the worst and it’ll soon be gone, after all this time. One thing I would suggest is to never ignore any kind of skin irritation, bite etc, as you now know what might happen, so hopefully a defence by you early on may stop it happening again. Good luck, and good luck with your weight loss. Maybe do a little sharpie dot next to where you inject from now on, so you know for sure where recent ones were (I don’t know anything about frequency so not sure if it’ll last long enough) and can know for sure to do it elsewhere. Sorry for all the random waffle but anyone else that’s had this derma-graphica-something or other will definitely relate to the above and the (slightly, and temp) distraction of being able to have works of art on your body! 😄