Black ants. Sometimes known as carpenter ants. Ants that like to eat wood.
Back in September, we stayed a couple of weeks at Duckett Mill COE park on Lake Lanier in Gainesville, GA. I've written about how much we enjoy staying at COE parks not only for their beautiful lakeside views, but their inexpensive cost to stay on those properties. Usually about $17 per night for a maximum of a two-week stay.
Camping in these wilderness settings can come with some negatives as well, usually in the form of insects of some kind. Bee and hornet nests can be a nasty surprise, mosquitoes of course due to the lake location, and occasionally ants. Mainly because in COE parks, deadwood isn't removed; it is sometimes buried during construction, and is always left in place where it falls (unless directly on a campsite) to decay naturally. This attracts carpenter ants.
I always spray around the RV to form a barrier from the ground to the paved pad on which we sit, but sometimes there's not enough insecticide to make a deep barrier, especially when ants are really prevalent. So in September we got invaded, but we didn't know by how much at the time. After a quick trip to Red Bay, AL for a gray and black tank cleaning, we began the 3-day drive heading down to our winter stay in Florida.
We noticed a few ants inside when we stopped our first night, but it was on our second night boondocking at a Bass Pro Shop where we realized how badly we had been infested. I had started our generator (which is right underneath and to the rear of our bedroom slide) to provide us power and air conditioning for the night, and all of a sudden we were swarmed in our bedroom. Apparently the ants had decided to take up residency in or around the generator area, and running it definitely made them mad. The good news was it also made them easier to kill.
But you never get them all, especially on the first try.
So we arrived at our winter digs in Florida expecting to spend the next three months doing the usual sightseeing, and maybe hitting some golf balls, and definitely spending time at the heated pool and hot tub.
But we were still getting ants; on the order of 3-5 per day making their way across our living room floor. So I set out some Terro Liquid Ant Baits around the RV where Grover couldn't get to them. And while it diminished their appearances, it didn't end them. Next step was to hit all the areas from the outside-in, such as basement bays and underneath slide seals with Terro Ant Spray Foam, hoping it would be a more direct and final ending to this infestation.
That's when our winter plans got derailed.
I was spraying underneath our main slide and had turned around to redirect the spray backwards when my feet got tangled with each other and I fell down hard. Like 3 feet down without any hand or arm to break my fall. Half my butt hit grass and sand, while the other half hit hard pavement. As I laid on my side for about a minute on the offending pavement, I began to realize just how much I had potentially hurt myself. I managed to roll out from under the slide and used our power pole to work my way to my feet and get inside to inform Barbara. Despite icing it down, within an hour I had what was going to be described by VA doctors as half a Kardashian, or half a Brazilian butt-lift.
With the help of Barbara and a cane, we managed to get me into the Jeep, and she drove the 40 minutes to the VA Medical Center in Gainesville, Florida, whereupon I was whisked into the ER for evaluation. After some morphine to help reduce the pain from a 10 to an 8, I had both a CT scan and X-Rays to make sure I hadn't broken anything in my pelvic area, I was eventually sent home with painkillers and instructions to lay low, ice it down, and everything would be fine. It was determined that I had suffered a lemon-sized hematoma, and that the best thing for me was a lot of bed rest.
Two weeks go by, and except for the occasional short walk to the hot tub for some hydro-therapy, I have followed my doctor's orders pretty well. The hematoma is about 90% reduced in size, and I'm ready to get back to being active again.
But then my left leg began swelling. Back to the Emergency Room, where I'm diagnosed with a blood clot and given an initial dose of the blood-thinner Eliquis, and a supply of Eliquis tablets to take over the next 30 days to reduce the swelling and allow the clot to begin breaking up.
A day and a half later, the Eliquis is working all-too-well, as it has allowed the formerly controlled bleeder in the initial hematoma to open up in spectacular fashion, and my half-Kardashian comes roaring back. Plus, my left leg had swollen to twice the size it had just a couple of days earlier. I get yet another ER experience at the VA, where they decide to admit me due to the internal bleeding. Now I'm off the Eliquis, just in case surgery is in my future, and put on a Heparin drip to thin out the blood. Good call as it turns out, because not two days later I'm rushed into surgery to embolize (cauterize) the bleeder and wrap a coil around it to keep it sealed. Apparently in about 50% of these hematoma cases, the bleeder erupts with even more spectacular results so it was fortuitous that I was already in the hospital at the time.
After a six-night stay on a Heparin drip, I'm released to go home again and I'm back on the Eliquis.
Ten days go by, and the left leg decides to swell up all over again. Thank God the hematoma is behaving. But another trip to the ER and an overnight stay at the VA ensues. They put me back on the Heparin drip yet again, and surmise that the Eliquis isn't being properly absorbed by my intestinal tract, because the blood clot is even bigger had as moved a bit. So the only solution at this point was to keep me on a liquid blood thinner, which unfortunately for me meant I was going on an injectable for the next 90 days!
Oh, joy . . .
And these aren't the nice little injectable pens where you hit the button, hear a click, and the drug is injected quickly into the fatty areas around your stomach via a short needle. Noooooo, these are real syringes with a good inch-long needle you gotta put in at a 45-degree angle and SLOWLY empty the contents into your fatty area. Most times it doesn't hurt much. Sometimes it hurts a LOT.
And this has to be done twice a day, every 12 hours. Not 12 ½ hours one day and 11 ½ hours the next day. Every 12 hours on the dot. No skipping doses, either. For 90 days. Maybe more depending on the results after 90 days. Or maybe there will be surgery in my future to remove the clot if this doesn't work. The good news is that the hematoma has finally healed completely.
But thank God for the VA. The people could not be better, from the nurses who took care of me all day and night or attended to me in the ER, to the doctors and surgeons who have no problem keeping me informed every step of the way. I know that some veterans have had their problems with the VA in some areas of the country, but I have had nothing but great service from them as we've traveled across the country, and certainly here in Gainesville, Florida. It's been a rough 2 months for both me and for Barbara. Even for Grover, who wondered why Mom would leave with me but come home without me for days on end.
So we've canceled out travel plans west for the time being, and have extended our stay in Florida for three more months, just in case things don't get completely right during the initial 90 days.
And all this because of some stupid ants. We still see one occasionally, but their sightings are fewer and far between, and they don't move nearly as quickly as they once did; hopefully due to the bait they're ingesting.
Damned ants . . .
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