Gibuyagan tingali ko

It happened last Thursday, Oct 23. I just returned to the farm from a trip to the market. We were in the kitchen at the farm's training house, preparing our supper when I noticed my right ear getting heavier and heavier. Morag ninglaylay, said our farm help for he noticed it too. I must have been bitten by a bokot, a local name for a wasp that carries a powerful toxin. In a few minutes, the swelling had spread to my thyroid gland and the back of my neck.

My, this bokot really carried some sting, I was telling myself in my head while finishing the chores in the kitchen. I wanted to hurry up and go to be bed. The swelling was getting uncomfortable, and the swollen parts were getting warmer, feverish. What was strange, there was little pain. It was just something one felt under one's skin, swelling like an infection. Oftentimes, the farm help was explaining, the sting of the bokot could cause one to be feverish - something which I was feeling then.

The discomfort was spreading to the back of my head to the top of my skull, like my skin was being pulled apart. I wanted to hurry up eating but couldn't leave the kitchen chores to the farm help and his family. We were hosting a meeting at the training house. Everything had to be in order before closing the evening. Thankfully we had some paracetamol and anti-swelling capsules which I gulped down with a glass full of water.

Colon cleanser

r
I felt a little relief after an hour and thought I had solved the problem. We had a few rounds of our favorite punch that night, a mixture of calamansi, rhum, sugar and water which made me a bit tipsy enough to fall asleep. Well, I did for an hour or so. The alcohol took its measure on my gall bladder, driving me to the men's room every hour or so, with the swelling in my right ears and at the back of my head getting no better. To make it worse, I was shivering with cold. Literally.

My fever would subside accompanied with the usual perspiration but the swelling continued its cephalic path around my head. From the top to the left side, going to the front. In the next few days I felt like my head was being pulled on its skin or stretched apart. My forehead was swelling in three patches, small, meaningless and shining mounds of flesh that protruded forward, reddish in parts, feeling tight but almost painless.

In the meantime, I had shifted from from anti-swelling to anti-allergy tablets. The pharmacist at the Mercury Drug where I bought the tablets at first had doubts about my condition since the swelling was not itchy. On the third day, the swelling tour around my head had almost completed a 360-degree turn and, except for the fever which had thankfully gone without the paracetamol, the discomfort and the swollen patches were still all over, despite the anti-allergy tablets. (To be continued: My visit to the tambalan)