It's A Shame About The Ray

I feel like I’ve told these vacation stories a million times already, so the task of retelling them here feels tedious. I might as well jump into the tale of how I got stung by a sting ray.

As everyone probably knows, splashing around in the water is one of my favorite recreational activities, especially in the ocean where the waves knock you about. On Monday evening I noticed a red brushburn or rash under my right forearm and figured it must have been a jellyfish sting. It was more severe than any jellyfish sting I had ever had, but being so far south I thought that maybe the wildlife was a little more fierce. While I tried to sleep that night, the burn seemed to sting worse and worse every time it brushed against the mattress or was touched by the sheet. When I woke up I found a blister that was about ¼ the size of a dollar bill, dimpled where my arm hairs were poking through. Dennise called a pharmacy to get some advice on how to treat what we thought was a jellyfish sting, and learned from the pharmacist that the predator had actually been a stingray. I found out later that typically a ray will scoot away when it knows you are coming, but when you surprise it, the ray will sting you with its tail. The fact that I got stung on the arm must have meant that I put my hand down near where one was. I noticed later two small spots on my stomach and two small spots above my knee where it must have grazed me as well. Anyway, half of the blister really started to bubble up pretty grotesquely during the day and caused me to worry that it would break or that I would keep bumping it into things. It actually didn’t hurt at all unless I bumped it into something or one of my kids kicked it. I had to drain it and dress it for three nights until it actually started to heal sufficiently.

It didn’t keep me out of the water or really affect my vacation too much. Other people were still enjoying the ocean, so for me to stay out just because I had gotten stung didn’t make too much sense to me. It’s not like if I had learned that someone else had gotten stung, it would have affected me. I love the water too much, although I understand that people who don’t feel the same way might have had a different reaction. Dee obsessively kept asking about it. I didn’t think about it nearly as much. She also kept trying to place herself at the scene of the crime, thinking that I was stung while we were in the water together and checking herself for burns. I guess I can’t blame her, because a ray sting is a lot cooler than a dumb jellyfish burn.

The sting actually kept me out of the pool, not the ocean. With all those little kids in the pool peeing and doing who-knows-what, I would have been just asking for an infection and amputation at the elbow.