Stingray
Sting Rays © Mike Johnston | CC.
Has anyone heard about Stingray? I certainly had not.
Two days ago, it was a new word in my vocabulary. Well, the story goes like this (an incident from my trip to Cherating): Our hotel had a relatively unused stretch of the beach, coupled with some large boulders. The stretch had some spotty marine growth. My friends and I decided to race and reach those boulders. We, four of us, almost did before I started feeling unpleasant surface below water. So, I began to move away back to shore since my feet were hurting.
The other three guys continued.
Before long, one of them felt a sting with a gash of wound and started bleeding profusely. He came limping back. The gash was like a big sting, almost like a hack cut across his foot. Blood was oozing out, because apparently the sting was on his foot vein. The salty water made the pain worse. A couple of bystanders offered some clean water and paper tissue before asking “Stingray?”
After a while, the bleeding slowed-down. But, my friend was in enormous pain. One of us rushed to check medical facilities in the hotel, while the two of us helped my friend to lean on to us as we took him towards the hotel. Halfway through, he began to feel numbness in his wounded foot. The numbness continued all the way up to his knee. We checked the area around the gash again. There appeared to be no coloring (blue or black) of the skin, that would otherwise indicate poison.
The hotel had no medical officer but, the counter staff informed us that there was a clinic nearby and that would be open on that day too (it was a holiday: Eid-ul-fitr, 4th November 2005). My friend sat in the lobby, while I rushed to the room to pickup my car keys and wallet pouch; change from my beach wear and some dry clothes for my wounded friend. The three of us jumped in and went out frantically looking for that clinic. When we finally found it after driving back and forth in the area, it was closed. The cause for worry for all of us was the numbing feeling and the intense pain that my friend kept telling us about. We kept telling ourselves that it was not poisonous, because of lack of any change in the color of the skin.
Our hotel was located between Cherating and Kuantan, approximately about 20-25 km each way. We decided to go to Kuantan, since it is a relatively larger town. The road to Kuantan was full of traffic and the single lane road made our journey frustratingly slow at times. Overtaking across double lines and using warning lights to oncoming vehicles continued. It’s also during these times when you feel like you’d hurl a stone at the traffic lights. Waiting for that bloody green seemed like an eternity.
None of us had been to Kuantan before. So, after a couple of stopovers and missing a couple of turns, we reached a 24-hour hospital. The doctor on call gave my friend a couple of shots: tetanus, antibiotics and a shot for allergy in addition to painkiller pills. She refused to give any antidote since we were not sure what bit him. I learned that some venom from sea creatures can have a late effect, and may cause allergies, hence the allergy injection. Looking back now and reading extensively about Stingray on the internet, my friend seemed to have all the symptoms of a typical stingray bite.
After reaching Kuala Lumpur, the wound healed but my friend was down with fever and infection. He’s now being treated in a hospital and is under observation for 48 hours.
I never thought isolated beaches would need a certain amount of caution before venturing into, but now I’d beg to differ.