Allergic reaction to sting

[DZ]

On a recent visit to the South of France our daughter experienced a rather spectacular-looking skin reaction to an insect bite.  What started as a 5cm red and painful patch (a graze, I thought at first), turned to a swallen and very tender area covered with bubbles.  The doctor we saw was convinced it was a reaction to a sting, but none of the possible insects he mentioned were familiar to me.  Five days later, she is getting better, but the discoloured area on her skin has doubled in size.  One of our neighbours thought that the culprit might have been some sort of centipede, another one mentioned "abeille de terre".  Has anyone experienced anything similar or can advise me what little beast it might have been, so that we could try to avoid in the future?

[Tresco]

Something similar hapened to me last Autumn. The same bubbling/blistering of the skin; it started as a minor irritation but then it spread  as you describe, and became very painful.

My neighbour assured me it was a certain type of butterfly which 'skates' its legs (?) across the skin, so you hardly feel it, if at all. 

I never had any impression of being 'bitten' at the time at all, but over the next two or three days I did.  It started to 'go down' after about a week. Does that sound similar to you?

[YCCMB]

Are you absolutely sure she was stung by an insect? Apart from your description of tenderness and pain, the skin reaction sounds just like what I experienced from a plant in our French garden, which I later found out  was Rue. Look it up on google and see if anything looking like it was growing around where you were. Descriptions of the results of exposure to rue are also on the net. I knew nothing about this plant or possible problems with it until I experienced a reaction to it. I've now removed all traces of it from our garden.

[chris pp]

Sounds to me like a paper wasp sting, I've seen and had myself the reaction you describe on several occasions, after a day or so a large area of skin becomes discoloured and sensitive, also can be itchy. With some people it goes away fairly rapidly and with others it can last weeks, exposure to sunlight makes it worse.

Chris

[DZ]

Thanks, everyone, for your very helpful suggestions.  The culprit could have been any of the plants or insects you mention, so I will do a google on all of them.

[Ron Avery]

Last spring I had a hand like a balloon after getting a small "sting" on a finger from something in a pair of garden gloves, I thought that it was bramble thorn that had pierced the glove or an insect, perhaps a spider, but despite cutting the finger of the gloves apart nothing was found.  I went to the chemist when the finger started to swell and the chemist gave me anti- histamine pills and a cream, but then the skin started peeling away from round the original small entry wound and the hand got bigger, looking like a rubber glove blown up, I went to the doctor and he thought it was the sap from a broom plant that had caused the problem and not a bite or sting at all.  How it got into the glove and bit me he never explained. [:D]

[YCCMB]

As I have been extremely well-behaved and not stated the obvious till after posting some (hopefully) vaguely useful advice in answer to the post, can I please now be allowed to say that he usually makes me feel quite sick, but if I get to the radio and turn it off fast enough, the feeling passes?[;-)] 

[vervialle]

Looked Rue up on  Google and it said it was planted round a house to keep out snakes, interesting.

[YCCMB]

Oh, yes, vervialle - it's a very useful plant and has a number of medicinal properties. Unfortunately, it can cause something called phytophotodermatitis. If you touch it and then expose your skin to any sun, the skin goes red, then blisters, ans becomes deeply pigmented as if scarred or burned. In my case the pigmentation lasted about 3 months. No wonder the snakes are frightened!!!!!!!!!

[Lautrec]

This subject I found very interesting as I have had this complaint last Summer and now again in the past two weeks!

The contributing factor to the both, is that it seemed to appear soon after I cut my grass with my motor tractor. The first time I wore shorts and my right leg came out in the described blisters but this time I wore long trousers, but was bare-armed and the blistering is on my right arm. As the tractor throws out the mulched grass to the right, it would appear that their was something in the cuttings which caused my problem!

So the next time, I will cut the grass completely covered except for my face. It wouldn't matter if I got it there, as my wife says, that any change would be an improvement!

Lautrec