On Thursday as I was walking out the front door of my house I was stung by a wasp. I had just closed the door behind me. I turned and took two steps forward and BAM! I had a yellow jacket wasp on the top of my foot stinging me. This was VERY PAINFUL. I didn't want to smash down on it because I was worried about that putting more venom into me. I did a frantic dance shaking my foot and eventually got it off. Wow those yellow jackets can really hit hard!

I iced my foot with an ice pack and kept it raised. I took a benadryl as a preventative. Those make me sleepy and so I ended up taking a nap and sleeping for several hours that afternoon. The next day my foot was swollen quite large as you can see in the pictures. It was more than the venom and had become infected. After being coerced into seeing the doctor I came away with a diagnosis of "hymenoptra sting dorsum rt foot, secondary cellulitis" and a prescription for a small dose of prednisone and round of cefalexin.

With that I put a compression wrap on it, more ice, and took the medications. On the third day, 48 hours later, it is much better. It is still swollen. But it isn't anything like it was on the second day. I think the compression wrap with an elastic bandage along with an ice pack did the most good.

I subsequently learned that they had built a nest at the edge of the porch under the concrete in a void that had recently become exposed. I watched them with binoculars from a safe distance and saw them coming and going. Probably my walking on the concrete over their heads caused them to become agressive and pounce on me.

	My foot was stung but my whole foot and ankle was huge.	Red and swollen.	This is where I was stung.	Look at the extended stinger on that one!	I used a 6x magnifier for this picture.

	Looks like a Prarie Yellow Jacket

Even though the prarie yellow jacket is a useful species I still cleaned out the nest next to my front door. It just didn't seem friendly to visitors and delivery people to have that trap waiting for them.

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