A sting at the end of a summer swim
Brendon Mitchell was enjoying an evening swim at Fitzroy Beach in New Plymouth when, after 25 minutes in the water, he felt tentacles wrap around his leg.
‘‘I didn’t get a good look at it but the tentacles were at least a foot,’’ he said.
‘‘My arm and hand got stung as well as I had to pull the tentacles off my leg.’’
Mitchell was swimming with his seven-year-old son, Kaden, who got a few small stings on his feet.
‘‘Kaden pretty much walked on water to get out of there once he’d seen the jellyfish.
‘‘I’m pretty staunch, though, so held it together,’’ Mitchell joked.
Mitchell was at Fitzroy last week around 5pm and lifeguards were off duty, which meant there was no one for them to consult.
Unfortunately Mitchell wasn’t aware of the correct way to treat a jellyfish sting and it got infected and spread.
‘‘We did the wrong thing and put cold water on it.’’
The Ministry of Health states that the correct way to deal with a jellyfish sting is to use warm sea water.
Although most people might think to use cold water to alleviate the pain, this actually activates the stingers, which caused Mitchell’s infection.
Christina Gillmore also swam with jellyfish at Fitzroy recently but at first thought it was sea lice.
She went swimming with her son and a friend and her daughter and they all got stung.
‘‘We got stings all over our bodies. My friend’s daughter was crying and screaming in the water,’’ she said.
‘‘Two of us had worse reactions to the stings, but symptoms only lasted 24 hours.’’
Gillmore talked to a lifeguard on duty who said the vicious stingers had arrived from a north west wind.
However Fitzroy Surf Lifesaving Club secretary Anna Beavis said they hadn’t had any reports of jellyfish stings or noticed an influx of the creatures in the waters.
Catherine Keenan, owner of Vivian Pharmacy in New Plymouth, said she treated stings case by case.
‘‘It depends what they have walked in with before diagnosis.’’
Two products that she swore by for stings and burns were Mebo and Soov.
The old wives tale that comes to mind when dealing with a jellyfish sting is urine, but Keenan wasn’t too keen on that.
‘‘Some people swear by it but it’s not something I would recommend.’’