ArcaMax

"What do you think this is?" my husband, pointing to his elbow, asked me.

"That's your elbow," I stated matter-of-factly.

"No, these red spots," he responded.

"Those are red spots," I replied.

He sighed. "I know they're red spots. What do you think they're from?"

I took a closer look at the constellation of red bumps on his forearm just below his elbow.

"I'm certainly no expert," I drawled, "but based on my firsthand experience of having lived in the suburbs for 30 years, and having experienced the same exact phenomenon that you are now suffering from, I can say with 99% confidence that those ... are mosquito bites."

I went back to prepping dinner, another thing that I was certainly no expert at after 30 years but was willing to keep trying so as not to let my family down with anything less than the perfectly marinated steak that my husband would overcook on the grill.

My husband scratched at his red spots and insisted I take another look.

"I think it's something other than mosquito bites," he declared. I only had a few yesterday, and now I have more today. They're multiplying!"

"Well, you grilled last night, and you grilled the night before that. The mosquitos had two opportunities to bite you." I waved him away but knew what was coming next.

"I disagree," he said. "I think I might have come into contact with a poisonous plant or gotten bit by something worse, or maybe I'm having an allergic reaction to something, and it's starting as hives but is going to become systemic and make me really sick."

He paused. I knew he wasn't done.

"I'm going to go look it up on WebMD."

Boom.

Now, I'd been down this WebMD road before. Every time my husband got a "man cold," he would insist that he'd actually come down with some exotic plague or disease, based on the diagnosis by WebMD. In every instance, it would turn out that my husband did not in fact have Arctic seal poisoning or Rocky Mountain spotted fever but did just have a cold, although a "man cold" was certainly severe enough to kill him -- or at least me for having to put up with him.

This being the case, I was pretty sure that when he compared his red spots with those on WebMD, he would discover he had not been bitten by some aggressive suburban mosquitos but rather had somehow come into contact with the poison of an Amazon poison dart frog or was showing the first signs of leprosy.

Of course, we had neither been to the Amazon nor fraternized with anyone with leprosy, so it was highly unlikely that he was suffering from either of those and more likely that he'd just been dinner for a couple of hungry mosquitos.

Still, I thought as his wife that I should validate his concerns and not be too quick to dismiss a medical system based on an algorithm designed by computer nerds rather than real doctors.

"Hey honey, before you check WebMD, would you light the grill? The steaks are almost ready to go on."

"Sure," he replied.

"And also, put some of this on before you go outside," I said, handing him the bug spray. "It protects against mosquitos and poison dart frogs."

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Tracy Beckerman is the author of the Amazon Bestseller, "Barking at the Moon: A Story of Life, Love, and Kibble," available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble online! You can visit her at www.tracybeckerman.com.

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