I'm seeing red.
This is my arm, one day after I was stung by a yellow jacket while weeding my garden. Those little guys really hurt!
Image courtesy of Judy Stone
I was lucky that was the extent of the reaction. We summer in Maine, a seemingly idyllic place when we purchased a home. The small town even had a critical-access hospital, impressively accessible by boat and air as well as by a windy road. Such things matter more as you grow older. Lincoln County had the oldest population by county in the oldest state.
Shortly thereafter, it was déjà vu as the more than 100-year-old St. Andrews Hospital was "merged" with another and closed. This seemed needless and a matter of greed, as had the takeover and loss of Memorial Hospital in my Maryland community. I spoke out about both hospital losses and wrote a warning for other rural hospitals in a series in Scientific American.
But I digress. The upshot is that now you have to drive off the peninsula on a serpentine and often dangerous road to get any medical care after 8 PM, and there is only urgent care available otherwise.
I was grateful that I only had the one sting and worried about what might happen the next time.
