This warning was posted over the weekend on Facebook. And a family experienced the misery of a sting from an unwanted visitor.
“***ATTENTION***
Lawrencetown Beach People!
At the beach all morning(as per usual) with the family.. until this guy stung my niece.. she’s on her way to emergency.. extremely painful. We were playing in the water by the Lawrencetown Point.
man o’ war?”
7 year old Maria was in shallow water near shore when she spotted what she believed to be pink sunglasses drifting in the shallow water, but when she picked them up, things changed quickly.
Realizing the slimy discovery were not sunglasses, she threw the item to shore, and that’s when the exceptional pain began.
Knowing something was wrong, her family all rushed to dry land. Mom began to tend to her injured daughter and the odd looking jellyfish was recovered. The family rushed to the IWK as Maria began showing extreme signs of nausea, dizziness and a change in her level of consciousness. With help from on site lifeguards, she was taken to the family vehicle and rushed to the IWK with mom, a former lifeguard, monitored and comforted the scared child.
Upon arriving at the IWK, they were rushed into the ER. The IWK were quick to research the culprit and believing it to be a Portuguese man of war, they began to try to treat the injury to Maria’s hand.
The sting left deep, discolored marks along with the frightening effects. Including monitoring her heart rate, hospital staff had to keep Maria conscious.
A few things that were discovered from this species sting includes warm water eases pain while cold water enhanced it. The hospital performed a series of vinegar dips which helped ease the pain and slow the swelling as well.
Maria still has weakness in her hands as well as low energy and fatigue. The discolored marks from the sting are stretched out from the swelling still in her hand. But monitored by her family, she will recover from this unique and scary incident
