Killer Jellyfish

The beautiful white sandy beach offered more than fun in the surf and sun.  All four boys (Alex & Brenden & the two Lady Carolina boys) were playing on or near shore with their surfboards, when Tim and I hear Brenden start yelling, “Mom!  Alex needs help!”  They are close to the boat at this point and Brenden is paddling Alex back on one of the surf boards, and Alex is in obvious distress.  Once he was on board, we could see that he had pink welts all over his chest, stomach, and one of his arms.  He was crying, and saying, “it hurts, it hurts, it hurts,” and Alex doesn’t cry.  I obviously gasped or made a face or something when I saw the welts, because Tim yelled at me, “You’re not helping!” 

We went about putting vinegar all over his welts, but this didn’t seem to be helping, so we tried baking soda and ice.  This really seemed to help the pain, so we kept this up for a while.  He was in pretty much agonizing pain for about 30-40 min, and then it seemed to lighten up for good.  He rallied and even went over to Lady Carolina with us that evening for a potluck.  He got to show off his welts.

Reading up a bit more after the fact, the first aid book said to initially put a paste of baking soda and sea water on the welts in order to scrape off any loose tentacles that are still attached and possibly still releasing venom.  However, it says, absolutely do not use fresh water since this activates the venom already there, so we blew it by using the ice, I guess.  Then it said to use vinegar to continue neutralizing the stings.  The ice seemed to help since it numbed the stings, but maybe it would have passed more quickly overall if we hadn’t used fresh water.  Of course, there were lots of jokes all around about who would pee on it next time it happens.  I guess we can thank the sitcom Friends for the fact that it is now common knowledge that if you don’t have vinegar, you can use pee instead.