I sure can understand your post today! This summer I awoke with a stabbing pain in my right knee. (this is the knee I had trouble with many years ago). It was exactly like the pain generated by the Orthopedic doctor by stimulating the meniscal trigger point---mega ouch!

I've learned that these types of stabs usually only last a few seconds. This one continued on ...so I reached down in the dark to massage it and felt moisture on my skin. I flicked on the light and it was BLOOD! eeeek eeek. I jumped up and thought SPIDER BITE... and threw the covers back and found a large black winged insect (almost a full inch long) slowly walking around and squished it with a Kleenex. Then it took me an hour online to identify it. (this was at home--not in the woods upNorth) It was a DEER fly. How it got in a mystery, and why it was in my bed in the dark, another mystery. These are nasty bites, and it took a good two weeks for the purple color to fade and its itching to stop. These flies have sharp thick mouth parts to pierce the hides of deer and cows, so when they bite a human the bite is nasty. It was lots of antibiotic ointment alternating with hydrocortisone cream for me! But it did feel like a severe PN nerve firing... only it was not fleeting like those are typically for me.