This is exactly right.

My name is Samantha. I am 42 and I've never really paid much attention to allergies.

I am allergic to mosquitoes, but my allergy has lessened in severity as I've gotten older and I really don't even take many precautions anymore.

And I have an acquired allergy to penicillin that I've had since I was a child.

I moved to Florida five years ago and had my first interaction with a fire ant.

I was leaving work and one fell down my shirt and stung my chest.

It hurt and was itchy, but I didn't give it a second thought and it really was just a funny story to tell my coworkers. I don't even think

I had a welt to the next day. About two months ago, I was mowing my lawn in flip-flops,

and I know you're not supposed to do that, but it is Florida and it's

August, and I really don't like wearing shoes and socks. I felt something itchy on my foot.

It didn't hurt, and when I looked down, I only saw grass, so I brushed my foot off and just went about

my business. That evening, the top of my foot started to turn red and swell. It was itchy. It just looked like maybe a bug bite or I'd brushed up against some plant that I shouldn't have. The next day, though, I had two little white pustules form and the red area had doubled in size. I still wasn't really worried, but by the afternoon, my foot was much more swollen

and still very itchy, and several more white postules had formed. I went to a clinic, and they gave me a

10-day round of antibiotics and told me to go to the ER if it got worse. By the time I got home that evening,

part of my foot had kind of a yellowish tent and I wasn't sure if that was from the bite

or whatever I had interacted with or because I had been driving or because I had been standing that

day. So I just went back to the ER to be sure. There, they said it looked like

ant stings. And a few days later, I was out mowing my lawn again. Yes, still in flip-flops.

I had not yet learned my lesson. And I mowed over a fire ant hill that was hidden in the grass.

And then I stepped on it. I immediately felt pain and itchy.

When I looked down, my foot was covered with hundreds of ants all over my left foot and ankle.

They were on my right foot.

...