Jellyfish Infestation

We got home from the beach last night. The children reached a saturation point with the ocean. The much-reported jellyfish plaque was a little too much for them.

Deanna would come in when I drug her, kicking and screaming, off her boogey-board. Then she'd proceed to show us the dozens of jellyfish stings she had suffered silently. After all, if she had complained, I may have made her come out of the water.

Daelyn got quite a few stings, as well, and decided he didn't like the ocean after 5 days of swimming and getting stung.

But the worst, by far, was Dane. He got a Sea Wasp (a member of the Portuguese Man-of-War family) sting on the top of his foot, tons of stings all over his body, then a very large jelly attached itself to his leg. It left huge welts and red slash marks all down his leg and on his foot. The final insult was when a detached tentacle attached to his face above his top lip. He grabbed it off but it left a line of stings across his face and sting marks on his hand from pulling it off.

I gave him a dose of Benadryl when we came in that afternoon and propped him up on the couch to watch a movie. Then, yesterday, on the way home from Hilton Head, he began complaining of itching. I checked him over when we stopped and he had broken out into hives. Unbeknownst to us, he's allergic to jellyfish stings.

We stopped at a drugstore along the way, picked up more Benadryl and hydrocortisone cream, and gave him another dose. We repeated it again once we got home but, by then, his face, hand, leg and foot were fire-engine red and burning hot to the touch. The hives spread rapidly and things continued to get worse.

This morning we met one of the doctors in his pediatrician's practice in the lobby of one of the hospitals in town. She listened to his lungs, examined him quickly, and sent us home with a prescription for steroids, along with a warning that it wouldn't kick in until this evening.

Before bed tonight, the redness had dissipated considerably and the hives were going down. Although he's still very itchy, he seems to be on the mend.

The kids haven't asked if we're going back to the beach again next year. Maybe once the scars are gone, they'll forget the bad, remember the good, and want to go to the beach again.

But I'm checking the water thoroughly before letting Dane go in. He has always attracted animals, but jellyfish is pushing it just a little too far.