"I feel your pain"
"Mr. Clinton, take your hand off my leg"
Posted on 09/27/2006 10:38:14 PM PDT by neverdem
Op-Ed Contributor
LATE on a summer afternoon not long ago, the water at Lucy Vincent Beach on Martha’s Vineyard was warm, and the toxic jellyfish that had plagued bathers weeks earlier had floated out to sea. Body-surfing in on my last wave, I suddenly felt as if someone had whacked my leg with a lead pipe studded with nails. On the 1-to-10 pain scale we use with patients, I would have called it a 14. When I rubbed the area with my hand, my whole palm stung. Apparently those toxic jellyfish hadn’t all left.
A crowd of passers-by gathered to offer tips from the tainted well of conventional wisdom. “Use ammonia.” “Rub in some meat tenderizer.” “Apply vinegar.”
Soon a small army of bronzed youths in official-looking tank tops arrived carrying enormous medical kits. One poured sterile water on the sting area; another rubbed it with an ice pack. A third worked an alcohol-based anesthetic into the wound. Each treatment made the pain worse.
Eventually our group attracted the attention of a nurse strolling down the beach. A year-round Vineyard resident, she had seen her share of vacation-related medical emergencies. “You’ve removed the tentacle, haven’t you?” she asked matter-of-factly. No one, including the medical-professor patient, had thought of this. She took a piece of gauze and pulled off a slimy, transparent string laced with neurotoxins. It had continued to send those toxins into my leg for the first 20 minutes of my care. They are particularly activated, I would later learn, by distilled water, by mechanical pressure (as from an ice pack), and by alcohol-based topical medicines — all the treatments I had so earnestly been given.
Now the pain began to abate. I drove home and reached for three of the most useful medicines I know: aspirin, acetaminophen (Tylenol)...
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Hey, at least it was a lib that felt the pain.
Hot water, eh? Perhaps that's the reason the old treatment-urinating on the sting-worked so well.
Why did you call him a lib? Are you familiar with him?
well, statistically speaking, i'd say he has a fair chance of being right, even if he guessed.. you did see the source, right?
A professor at Harvard? I'd say the odds are astronomical.
Anyways, this was an interesting, well-written article by the man. Thanks for posting it.
If I recall correctly ( and you'd better check, just in case ) Adolph's meat tenderizer neutralizes the poison.
Amputation of the leg generally provides some relief.
"I feel your pain"
"Mr. Clinton, take your hand off my leg"
You're about right-- we have Portugese Man O' Wars here, and one of the worser days in my life as a kid was diving into one with my eyes open...
yikes
Days like that ( even 45+ years ago ) you don't forget... I still remember the drag of those tentacles over my face before the burn began...
Yeah, sometimes I look up at the lifeguards lolling in the stands at our local beach and wonder . . . would they really know what they're doing in an emergency?
Oh, man!
(like watching a train wreck) More, please?
Well then, why don't we all just belly up to the bar and get that wireless data access point implanted so we can all just access the information instantly?
Typical Liberal mindset asks the question as Jerry Avorn does above..."Why didn't those first responders know about the Aussie study?"
Rather than asking the question..."Why didn't I do some basic research for myself before taking a dip in recently jelly-fish infested waters?"...he wants to know why everyone else hasn't. Of course, it's always someone else's fault.
They get the whimsical name because they have a gas-inflated sail, and vaguely resemble a square-rigger under sail.
I just didn't see the damned thing behind the waves, dove with my eyes open- straight into its "arms."
Blinded for about a day, it convinced me to look about more carefully, and not open my eyes until I was submerged- and not feeling the feathery brush that proceeds fire...
I can't help but notice that, other than a sidelong mention, this lib "professor @ Harvard Medical School" has no gratitude for the NURSE who knew what to do for him.
Instead, he is quick to suggest a solution that not only costs taxpayer money, but just so happens to be of professional benefit to him. A "solution" used in the socialist paradise of Canada, guaranteed to add one more bureaucratic layer to the healthcare system.
Mrs.AV
Oh, rats. I was hoping this was about a discovery that made being stupid painful in general.
I believe its the amonia in urine that makes that a viable treatment.
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