And then BANG!

I lay in bed for the morning with Buddy and Milo. Sam bought me my breakfast, isn’t he sweet? I kissed Sam good-bye from bed, I didn't get up. I snuggled up under the doona, Buddy next to me (snoring, of course) and Milo over my feet, as cats do. It was lovely and warm, he he. Such is life. What can I say?

I got up at 11am, thinking, as nice as this is, I can't live my life like this, you know, just because people tell me that I can't, and I went for a bike ride.  An hour around the bike track along the Yarra. I am trying to do it every day.

I was coming around the last of the floating-on-the-river bike track where it heads back onto the dry land, where it does a bit of an S bend and heads under the freeway for a bit. I was going a little too fast. It was a momentary lapse, singing along to Anastasia’s Don’t Stop, my judgement was not what it should have been. I hit the second part of the S bend and my bike did that bounce, bounce, bounce, sideways skip and I nearly lost it, for a split second I was heading straight for a concrete freeway pylon. 

"Fuck me dead, Universe!" 

I managed to hang on, correct, correct, correct, with small twitches of the handle bars and not an over reacting jerk correction, and I held on and rode out the curve and kept myself up right and on the track. I wasn’t really sure how. It had been right on the edge of going over altogether. I was a little shaken, adrenaline was pumping, my nerves were all a buzz, my goodness what did I just do? 

And then BANG! A bee, or a wasp, flew into my face at high speed and stung me just below the right eye. It felt like being shot in the face, or how I imagine it might feel to get shot in the face. The pain was instant and the sting was really fucken painful. It hurt so much, it felt like the critter was still on my face still stinging me. The bullet was lodged in my skin. Talk about going from one emotion to another, from big fright, to huge relief, to excruciating pain, all with in seconds. 

I had to stop really fast to get the thing off my face. I jammed on the brakes. I skidded to a stop. I hoped there wasn’t anyone behind me. It wasn’t on my face, but the sting just kept getting more, and more, and more, and more intense. I groaned out loud in pain so strongly that two girls walking a dog nearby both gazed over at me and kept their eyes on me until they were out of sight. Their faces questioning if I was friend, or foe, I could see that. Is he a nutter? their faces clearly said.

So what to do? Should I keep exercising with the sting poison in my system. Aren't you supposed to keep relatively still after a bee sting? I was halfway around the bike track from home, so what could I do but keep riding. I’ve been stung by bees before and have never been allergic, so I guessed I would be okay. And I rode home with my face throbbing constantly. What did I have to look out for? Breathing difficulty? I was riding a bike, I thought, how could I tell?

Four hours later, my face was still stinging.

This morning, I can still feel the slight pain lingering under my right eye.