We had a great Sunday yesterday. We were able to listen to our friends speak in church who returned from being mission leaders for three years and they did a beautiful job. Steve’s meetings were minimal compared to what they usually are on Sundays so he was home in the afternoon and the kids were loving the extra time with dad. A large storm moved in after dinner and the kids were soaking wet jumping on the trampoline in the rain. We had a batch of brownies in the oven and were getting ready to watch some old home videos (a favorite family activity!). And then the evening took a turn…
Hunter and Briggs had gone outside to locate a football and shortly after, Briggs ran into the house screaming (which is very unusual because he has a significantly higher pain tolerance than most of our children). He had been stung on the foot. He thought it was a lizard, but we guessed it was probably a scorpion. Both Steve and Hallie have been stung with minimal side effects and we expected Briggs to be the same. For almost an hour, he was just fine. Hanging out with us watching home videos with an ice pack. And then the pain intensified.
In Arizona, part of our hospital’s poison control hotline, also deals with scorpion stings. We called the number and they walked us through what we needed to do. Similar to bee stings, there’s not a whole lot you can do, you’re just trying to make them as comfortable as possible. However, the symptoms can be very painful and don’t peak until about 6 hours after the sting. Not only did he experience shooting pain in his foot and leg, his eyes, ears and throat were effected. The nurse described the pain in his head similar to the tingling sensation when limbs fall asleep.
The hospital made a phone call to us every hour monitoring symptoms. (Evidently, the one symptom that is grounds for bringing them to the emergency room is excessive drooling – which he didn’t have).
It was a very long night. He cried and cried and couldn’t get comfortable. He was hot. He was cold. His head was tingling and he kept trying to scratch it. His vision was effected which means he couldn’t even watch a movie to distract himself. By 12:15am, I put him in the car and drove around for almost 45 minutes (I was having flashbacks from when Hallie was a baby and we’d do the same thing). He was lulled to sleep fairly quickly but by the time the car stopped and I brought him back in the house he was uncomfortable again. By 2am he recognized that his vision was back to normal which was almost 6 hours after his sting, just as the nurse had predicted. Luckily, most of the symptoms subsided and by 2:45am we were both on our way to bed.
I slept in, Briggs did not. But he was completely back to normal today, minus his heavy eyes that he had a hard time keeping open all day. He crashed early tonight – but only after running around all day.
On a somewhat related note – it’s time to spray for scorpions again.
