My daughter (5) and I were at the beach and had been in and out of the water for about an hour we were about to go when she asked if we could have one more splash in the water. I was standing maybe knee deep in the water and my daughter was crawling around on her hands and knees at the waters edge when suddenly she started screaming like I’ve never heard before. I picked her up and a box jellyfish had wrapped around her thighs and arm.
As I was running to my car with her in my arms I started to feel this unbelievable pain shoot down my arms and on my stomach I looked down and when I had picked up my daughter I had transferred some of the tentacles on me. I knew in my car was a bottle of vinegar and that it was the best thing to put on her stings before getting her to hospital , I dumped the entire bottle on her wrapped her in a towel and rushed her to the hospital where they saw her straight away.
I can’t begin to tell you how horrified I was to see the red thick welts that covered my daughters thighs, arms and stomach at that stage I was convinced she would be in hospital for weeks and she would end up being horribly scarred. The doctor came over and said that pouring the vinegar on her as soon as I did was what would help her heal quickly and by the morning I would be surprised at how well she had recovered. So in disbelief that this doctor was going to send us home and convinced I would be back because there was no way she was going to heal.
She didn’t have the best night sleeps because she was in a bit of pain but the doctor said the best thing to do is treat the stings like a burn so keep her cool with ice packs and cooling sprays and give a pain killer like pain stop which I did. I was completely shocked by how she looked in the morning; the swelling had gone the thick red welts had disappeared into small thin red lines and she said they didn’t sting anymore and were just a little bit itchy. Two weeks later she is healing nicely and in another week or 2 the marks will all be gone. So to anyone living in the tropics PLEASE make sure you have a bottle of vinegar with you when you go to the beach it really can make a huge difference when stung by a box Jellyfish.
