Immunity!

I thought I'd lighten it up a bit tonight and tell you all (2 of you) something interesting about me...

I served a Mormon mission to Recife, Brazil from August 1993-August 1995. Recife is located at the "northeast" of Brazil, and is pretty tropical - more like dry tropical - not so much a jungle. Savannah is more like it, I guess. Anyway, one thing I was not prepared for when I got there was mosquitoes. I'm sure somewhere in my mission instructions was something about having a mosquito net, but I don't remember it. Either way, when I got to Brazil, I had nothing to guard against them.

The first nights in Brazil, I slept in a bed, like I would have in the US - without any netting, repellent, or a fan. That was a mistake.

After a few days of being devoured by mosquitoes at night, I began to look deathly ill - with bites all over my body (HOW do they get into some of those places?!). Not only was I this pale, tall, blond American, but I was covered in red bites like I had chicken pox, but worse. Honestly, I looked terrible.

It got so bad, in fact, that I got sick with a fever, etc. for several days.

Finally, we had a P-day (Preparation day, which is essentially a 2/3 day off) and we went into the city and got me a fan, which I used every night for the rest of my mission (it was a great fan!) - I called the fan my "Skeeter Grinder" - as it did a great job of not only blowing them off me, but chopping them up when they flew into the fan. That was a dirty fan....sorry, kind of gross.

Anyway...the point of this story is this...

Ever since that time, I have never gotten another mosquito bite. I have been bitten many, many times since ( I guess they still like me), but I haven't seen another bite. I have even tried to purposely get one as an experiment, but no luck. I am apparently now immune to Mosquitoes - which I have found out, is quite rare. Not just rare because I am immune, but more so because I actually became immune after not being so. I have researched this some and haven't found anyone who fits that description. In fact, there is this one scientist that has been volunteering to be bit for many years (gets purposely bit more than 15,000 times a year (he's nuts) and he still isn't immune like I am.

So, not sure this is all that interesting, but for some reason I thought I would share this.