On Wednesday we decided to take a trip to the beach since our kids had this week off of school. We went with another family who have been a real blessing to us. The husband works with Kris in the computer department. We left the house at 5am because traffic here is so bad. No sooner had we gotten to the bottom of the hill from our house when we realized we had a flat tire. It is a new tire too, just over a month old! The guys were able to replace the tire with another one, and we got back on the road. We spent the day at the beach, which is about three hours away. It was fun watching the kids play in the sand, chase sand crabs, and swim in the beautiful clear water. It was pretty warm too for ocean water. I was thinking about getting a shower and cleaning up for the day, but decided to take one more swim. As I was coming back into the shore, I touched my toes toward the sandy bottom. My toes brushed something that sent pain shooting up my body. Immediately I pulled them back up to look at them. I hobbled out of the water. In my big toe there were two puncture marks. They bled if I pushed on them, and they had blue around them. I was in pain but joked to our friends it wasn’t as bad as child birth. I decided to hobble to the shower. As I was getting in I noticed the toe was already red and starting to swell. At this point, I was groaning from the pain. It was a fast and cold shower. The only point of humor was that the shower walls were low enough that I could see the head of the wife. She was dealing with a shower that insisted on pelting her with water like bb’s out of a gun! She asked me if I was going to faint. It might have been nice but the pain was keeping me conscious. I got dressed. My toe was quite swollen and hard. The pain was even more intense. I hobbled to a table just outside the shower room and asked one of the locals to help me. She got a lifeguard to come look at my toe. By this time, I was crying it hurt so bad. The lifeguard said, “Stonefish.” He told the woman to get hot water. I wondered how hot water was going to help or if it would cause the poison in my foot to spread more rapidly. Our friends looked online, rounded up all our kids, and started making phone calls to find out what kind of help we should get. They thought we should get to the hospital because stone fish stings can be deadly, but as we were leaving the parking lot, we got a call from one of our coworkers who was just around the corner from a dive shop. She was able to ask about stonefish, and they told her what symptoms I should look for that would tell me if I should head for a hospital. She reinforced that we should soak the foot in as hot of water as I could stand. We parked and got some hot water. Truly the hotter it was, the better my foot felt. I soaked the foot for two hours. By that point it was not hurting so badly, and we were able to go get some supper (Indian food) before heading for home. The toe felt bruised for the next couple of days, but I felt very fortunate when I read some stats on stonefish. I have included them for you. A little scary. I will add the worse part of all this was the scare it gave our friends and my kids. TaLisa was crying, and ShaeLynn was wondering if I was going to die like their dog, Chaos. I told them I didn’t intend to die in the Philippines and definitely not that day.
• Stonefish are the most venomous fish in the world.
• The stonefish hangs out in coral or lies dormant in the mud or sand.
• Stonefish have 13 dorsal fins, each filled with extremely toxic venom.
• It is considered the deadliest fish in the world.
• The sting causes excruciating pain and the swelling rapidly develops causing death in the tissues. The severity of the symptoms depends on the depth of penetration and the number of spines that penetrate. Symptoms include muscle weakness, temporary paralysis and shock and death if untreated.
• The venom of a stonefish can kill a human in 2 hours. Additionally, 60% of affected persons die within the first 8 hours.
Source: australianfauna.com
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