Summer is considered by many the most exciting 93 days of our 365-day rotation around the sun. Beach trips are abundant, the days are longer, it feels like there are less responsibilities and very rarely does a day go completely to waste. However, like most things, there’s always a negative side. Let’s not forget hot and humid weather becomes a war zone for insects, once the weather climbs over 90 degrees it’s more dangerous than enjoyable and sunburn and dehydration are much more common.

I decided that on a hot summer day, I would join my boyfriend and his friends in looking for a place to build a tree house. Only about an hour into our adventure I had to turn to my boyfriend and tell him that I was being bitten more than I could count at that point and needed to get out of the woods. Thankfully his friends agreed and we left. Once my insect bites had a couple of hours to inflame to the full extent, I was finally able to count sixteen mosquito bites just on my legs. Although, I’ve had my experience with these things, and I knew that they would go away in no time as long as I didn’t itch them and applied some Neosporin regularly.

Days later, the bug bites got no better. If anything they became much more inflamed and I began to notice different ones popping up in places, especially on my ankle. The way they were clustered made me nervous, so I called my doctor and made an appointment for the next day. When I woke up for my appointment, my mosquito bites were now leaking yellow puss and that truly freaked me out. My doctor barely had to look at me, she knew the diagnosis immediately. I had impetigo. Impetigo is a staph infection that is caused by bacteria that attacks your skin. It’s very common but also very gross looking and not commonly found on adults such as myself. What they had told me was that, yes, initially I did have mosquito bites, but after being exposed to the bacteria, my open wounds then became infected. I couldn’t even be bothered about how I got it or how gross it was, I was just so happy that I had caught it before it got bad. They prescribed me an oral medication and a topical cream to apply and told me it would look better in just a couple of days.

After three days of religiously cleaning and sticking strictly to my medication, my condition didn’t get any better. If anything, it had gotten worse and the more I took the medication, the more my body started to reject it. New bubbles would show up on different parts of my legs and now I was becoming extremely worried. I had called the doctor once again to see if this was how impetigo was supposed to heal. It took more than nine hours for the doctors to call me back to let me know that I might have been misdiagnosed but they did not want me to stop taking my medication or stop applying the cream until the days were up. So I did just that, but the condition proceeded to get worse and worse.

Finally, I had enough of the lack of progress. I couldn’t wear flip flops, I couldn’t sleep with my feet on the bed, my antibiotics were making me sick, and the worst part was that I had no idea why. So for the fourth time in the same month, I went back to the doctors, almost in tears. All they told me was what I assumed in the first place; I had poison ivy. I wasn’t plagued with an extremely contagious infection that would ooze pus. I had an allergic reaction to oil of a plant. That was it. They prescribed me a low dose steroid, and in just two days my rash and blisters began to heal.

The most advice I have for anyone who has any kind of anxiety when it comes to health, is to just go to your doctor, not WebMD, which I think is an important difference. No one can heal you more effectively than your doctor. Go to your primary care doctor instead of a last minute doctor looking to get you in and out of their office. Misdiagnosis is hard enough as it is, especially for those who have problems with anxiety including myself. I was pretty much convinced that I was going to die. I would dream that when I went back to the doctor, they told me whatever it was had traveled to my bloodstream and that my foot had to be amputated. So, I wasn’t feeling too great. It’s the not as bad as you’re thinking and it will soon be figured out.