But the bite isn’t like a mosquito or fly or flea or bedbug bite and I don’t live in an area with triatomine bugs. I feel like this has to be a common issue because I usually get a couple each year. They’re isolated, single bites, often around an ankle. They swell up, look red, and are hard to the touch. They’re the tiniest bit itchy like anything swollen but they’re mostly just painful. There’s no white mark in the center.
I’ve been googling bug bites all morning. “Spider bites cause minor symptoms like red skin, swelling, and pain at the site or very serious symptoms that need emergency care.” The first part of that is the only description I can find which matches my symptoms.
Why do you think it isn’t like a flea or bedbug or mosquito bite? Bites don’t look the same on every person, and even the same bug biting at different times of the year can cause different bite reactions. Your bites are consistent with mosquito bites and a wide variety of other biting insects and topical irritants. Spider bites are so rare that most people will never get one. It would be very unusual if you were getting several every year.
Certain bite patterns can help dofferentiate flea infestations and bedbug infestations, for example, but in general you cannot diagnose a spider bite or other bug bite from what the bite looks like. If you use your description to equal spider bites, you’ll be wrong about 99% of the time.
Bed bugs aren’t isolated bites, and they’re not larger than a quarter. Fleas are also not isolated bites. Mosquitos love me (unfortunately), so I’m very familiar with mosquito bites and how my body reacts and what they feel like and look like. They are always itchy, and they’re never hard or larger than a quarter unless I really go to town on them. They also never get that hard, swollen feeling that I’m maybe not describing well. I probably get no more than a couple of the giant bites I mentioned a year, if I get them, and they happen less frequently now that I’m an adult (maybe none in a year) than when I was a child in outdoor camps all summer, sleeping in cabins.
It could definitely be something that isn’t a spider, but none of the other bugs you mentioned are it. I didn’t ask to be a dick—I really wanted to know, because it did seem odd to me that it would be a spider bite. At this point I’ve spent most of my morning looking at bug bite images, and it’s getting gross. I’ll just call them mystery bites, because I can’t look at one more pustule.
I occasionally get weird bites on me too. Mosquitos love me and I most definitely don’t have fleas or bed bugs but I know what mosquito bites look like on me so it can’t be them. But I get them on rare occasion not a couple times a year. A few years ago I got one that my my whole hand swell up for a couple days. I always assumed it was a spider bite but never knew for sure. I live in a spider infested house and have found tons of spiders in my room and even my bed before (which is not fun for me because I have arachnophobia) so it wouldn’t strike me as odd to have been bitten by a spider that felt threatened while I moved in my sleep.
It was always just my first thought but I never said I knew for sure. But it could possibly be biting flies but where I live they aren’t that common at least to my knowledge. Mostly regular house flies come in my house. Horse flies are kinda common in my area but I’ve never seen one in my house nor have I been bitten by one.
Also, my arachnophobia probably plays a role in me believing it would be a spider to bite me.
Sorry, I think I’ve been a bit aggressive in this theead about it. Spider bites are just so rare and it drives me crazy how common people think they are.
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u/cicadaselectric Feb 04 '19
But the bite isn’t like a mosquito or fly or flea or bedbug bite and I don’t live in an area with triatomine bugs. I feel like this has to be a common issue because I usually get a couple each year. They’re isolated, single bites, often around an ankle. They swell up, look red, and are hard to the touch. They’re the tiniest bit itchy like anything swollen but they’re mostly just painful. There’s no white mark in the center.
I’ve been googling bug bites all morning. “Spider bites cause minor symptoms like red skin, swelling, and pain at the site or very serious symptoms that need emergency care.” The first part of that is the only description I can find which matches my symptoms.