A deluge greeted the last half of an away football game one Friday night during my high school years.

It poured. The field flooded. The parking lot flooded, and the path to our car required crossing a ditch filled with water.

My youngest brother was still in early elementary school at the time — or at least I think he was.

He had tried crossing the ditch to our car to escape the water and went straight through an ant colony that was floating on the surface.

He was covered with them. He started screaming. And I started running.

I got all of them off of him before I think either the ants or my brother realized what had happened.

But I had forgotten that I was allergic to ants. Minor details. Minor details.

They were all over me and I was bitten enough times that my feet were so swollen they wouldn’t fit in my shoes the next week at school. I had to wear Crocs to school. It was a dark few days.

It was the first and only time I had been bitten enough that breathing became difficult.

My family and I made the trek home trying to figure out where the closest hospital was just in case I needed it, but I managed to never need to make a visit.

I can only imagine what it’s like for people with severe allergic reactions based on my experience that night. I can only imagine what it would be like to need medicine in order to breathe after eating something or being bitten by something.

By this point, the outrage over the price increase of the EpiPen has made its rounds.

Congress has even gotten involved. If you want to see a harsh interview, Google members interviewing the president of Mylan NV, which makes the life saving drug that mitigates the effects of allergic reactions.

I’m glad that wasn’t me sitting in her chair.

I’m glad because those price increases have no other basis besides greed as far as I can tell.

The company hasn’t seemed to be able to offer a reasonable excuse so far, such as production increases, so I’m glad to see people stepping in and speaking up.

We can argue all day on whether Congress is effective at its job. But this is the perfect example of where there is no pure democracy in our world.

Someone or something has to be able to step in and protect the masses, protect the little people at certain points

I know long-standing debates exist about the extent to which that protection should be ensured and what lengths are acceptable to ensure it.

That debate will likely never end.

But this seems like a pretty cut and dry case. Someone needed to step in, and probably still does. I’m not sure coupons are going to fix this mess.

Sarah Mahan is a staff writer at The Vicksburg Post. You may reach her at sarah.mahan@vicksburgpost.com.