Monday, June 18, 2007

Ouch...

After getting only a walk on the beach on Saturday due to bad weather, on Sunday we spent about three hours at Nukoli'i. It was low tide most of that time so we couldn't really swim but finally decided to go in at the channel where the water comes in and goes back out. I was using my son's mask to look at some Manini swimming near us when he started yelling and I turned around and a Portugese man-o-war had wrapped itself around his right arm just below the elbow. I immediately grabbed a stick from the beach and got it off him and got him out of the water. Some of the tail was still stuck to his arm so I scrapped that off. I took him over to the showers and he rinsed his arm off for awhile. We went back to the beach and I gave him a cold can of juice from the cooler to hold on his arm. He was such a trooper saying that it didn't hurt. (Yeah, right). We left the beach a little while later and went to McDonald's. He ate some of his cheeseburger but didn't finish it and ate only a few french fries (the chickens scored the rest of his lunch). We headed home and he threw up in the car, fortunately mostly on the beach towel he was sitting on. I hosed him & the towel off when we got him. He took a shower while I scoured the web looking for how to treat a man-o-war sting. Apparently I had done everything right. However, he contined to throw up and was running a fever. I almost thought I should take him to the emergency room but he stopped throwing up around 11 pm. He didn't want to sleep in his room so commandered the futon sofa in the living room. He was still feverish this morning so I stayed home with him all day. b.o.r.i.n.g. He still has red marks on his arm from the sting but the fever is gone and his appetite is back. Last night he even apologized for what happened. I told him that it wasn't his fault at all and that he had nothing to be sorry for.

This was a kinda scary experience. Although I was born and raised in Hawaii I have never been stung by a man-o-war or jellyfish. Jeez, I hope I never do get stung.

Here's a picture of what stung my son. This isn't the exact one, I just ripped this photo off the internet. I even read that you can still get stung by the tentacles even though they are separated from the body for up to two weeks.


1 Comments:

At 9:29 AM , Anonymous Anonymous said...

What a trooper!

Glad he's ok.

 

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