What was I thinking?－ ELISA ENGLISH's Blog 英語園地

What was I thinking?

Apparently, I wasn’t thinking at all when sending my son to a summer camp infested with mosquitoes this week. Since his regular summer program ends last week, we have to find an alternative program for him before the school starts. Enrolling him in YMCA’s Camp Christmas Tree sounds like a good idea as this summer camp is loaded with fun packed activities such as lake swimming, canoeing, archery, fishing, cookouts, horseback riding, arts and crafts, and so on.

A day before the camp started, we got a phone call from the camp counselor, reminding us the items to send along with our son to the camp, one of them being a bug spray. It suddenly dawned on me that the campsite is near the lake, a perfect breeding ground for mosquitoes.

Anyway, we took the precaution and sprayed him with bug spray before he headed to the campground and asked the counselor to spray him and watch out for him as my son is extremely allergic to mosquito bites and had been hospitalized for that. We later found out that this type of allergic reaction is called “Skeeter Syndrome”. I am learning all these medical terms related to allergy because of my son. Eczema, asthma, tree nut allergy, etc. He has all of the aforementioned allergy. So, what exactly is “Sketter Syndrome”? A person is said to have "Skeeter Syndrome” when he experiences extremely large areas of urticaria (hives) or angioedema (swelling) after a mosquito bite, such as swelling of the majority of an arm or a leg.

Can you imagine the scene when we picked up our son? A kid covered with mosquito bites. Did I say “covered”? I wasn’t joking. He truly was covered with mosquito bites. He has at least 80 mosquito bites all over his body. We tried to count them but gave up when we counted to eighty. They are just too many to count. He told us that the counselor had sprayed him three times at the campground. My son must look strikingly delicious in the eyes of those female mosquitoes that they would only feed on him despite that he was covered with bug spray.

We were debating whether to send him to the camp again today, especially that the severe allergic reaction would have worsened his asthma symptoms. We were contemplating if we should take the remaining week off to stay home with him. Anyway, we decided to give it another try. The bug spray is said to last eight hours. If we rub it evenly on his skin, he might not get so many bites. We brought him to YMCA again this morning and raised the mosquito issue to the counselor. She indicated that there were kids bitten by mosquitoes too. However, she did mention that we could switch our son to the indoor summer program instead. We were greatly relieved that there was an alternative. We asked our son if he would like to go to the indoor summer program today. He told us that he wanted to go to the camp again.

Oh well, we will just have to sit tight and wait to see how it goes today. Hopefully, he won’t get more mosquito bites again or develop any severe allergic reaction. We are keeping our figures crossed.

On 8/31/10 in Minneapolis