Anatomy of a lionfish sting

[Wookie]

So, I killed this lionfish. Killed a number of them, actually, but it was this one that got me. I shot it as soon as I got to the mooring. Something is eating the dead lionfish, or at least packing them off, but when I came back to the mooring to see if it had been carried off, it was still there. Odd, I thought, the rest of them aren't lasting more than about 2 minutes before something packs them off. I watched a grunt get up close and personal with the carcass, only to discover that I hadn't killed the lionfish at all. It still was using it's spines to chase off the other fish. Now, this wasn't a big lionfish, it was a trophy lionfish. This is a problem because it's spines are longer than my knife, so for me to cut it's neck would mean getting up close and personal with it's spines. No biggie I say, I've killed bigger ones.


Let's just say it's like being hit with a rock hammer. The pain is right now, and it's an 8.5. I looked at my finger and it was all bloody. I looked at my air and I had about 1500 PSI. I looked at my finger again, and it was about twice the size as I remembered it. I figured it was time to go to the boat. I scurried out across the sand under the boat, and found that I was having a hard time breathing. Not hard to breath like anaphylactic shock, but hard to remember to breath. So I'd take a nice long breath. On my safety stop I glanced at my SPG to find that I had about 200 lbs left. So I'd been breathing, but I didn't remember breathing. Finished my Safety Stop on my pony and got on the boat. Only to discover that I'd lost a fin. 6,000 dives and I'd never lost a fin, but I didn't even see this one go.


Got out of my dive gear and went into the head. Put water as hot as I could stand on the wound. By this time, my hand is twice the size it should be, and I'm very light headed. Melanie insisted on Benadryl, and my friend the nurse, Kim Inge, insisted on cortisone. I was in no mood to argue, so I tried them both. By now, the 7 dwarfs with their little pickaxes were all doing a number on my hand. The pain seemed to follow the joints with the most arthritis, and each one was pulsing and pounding. I told Mel that I was out of my mind, and couldn't be trusted to make a proper decision. I know myself well enough to know when I'm not right in the head, and I wasn't. I've never heard of this with a lionfish sting, but I couldn't sit still, couldn't concentrate for more than a second, and just couldn't think.


I'm convinced that lionfish venom is a neurotoxin, not just a venom. My sting was a single sting, the spine went in about 1/4 inch, and I was out of my mind for about 45 minutes. The pain lasted 2 hours or so before starting to ease up. my hand is still swollen the next day, but the only residual pain is from the swelling, I don't think it was from the sting. Lionfish stings are not for the faint of heart. I'll be using a new set of tools for my next lionfish killing outing. I don't need to repeat that sting.

 

[doctormike]

Wow!

Glad you made it to the boat, and are on the mend... thanks for posting this!

 

[TSandM]

Severe pain does things to the mind. I am reminded of a dive Peter and I did in Carwash cave in Mexico. Peter had been having some problems with sciatica, and unbeknownst to me, on this particular morning he had done something that markedly worsened the pain. He said that, about halfway through the dive, all he could think about was how much it hurt with each kick. He was the leader going in, which meant he was cleanup crew coming out . . . he swam right over the jump spool we had put in, and it never even occurred to him to pick it up.

We only have so much bandwidth, and when you use up the majority of it controlling pain, you don't have much processing power left.

 

[ElGaucho]

Wookie, I feel for you. Last year I was diving in Cuba with some friends and one of them was hunting lion fish. He missed with the spear, and the lion fish decided I was sort of a cave and swam right below me. I never knew. My friend started to signal to me, in a "quiet and calm manner". I suddenly felt a burn in my chest. My initial thought was: Damn fire coral! Then I realized I had a wetsuit on and fire coral had nothing to do with it. By the time I started to feel a bit nauseous my friend explained in underwater language I had a lion fish below me (hey, I really dive horizontal in cave trim!). I realized I had been stung by the lion fish. By the time we got out of the water (10 minutes later, we were on the end of the dive), I was feeling weak and dumb. This is not a debilitating weakness as in I can't do anything. It's a bit like being heavily narced. I was sluggish, slow, tired. By the time we returned to the boat (it was a live aboard trip), I could see I had 5 stings around the area were my ribs ended on my right side. It was swollen, and you could see 3 really distinctive punctures, plus two very small ones. I was tired. REALLY tired. It felt almost as a huge subclinical DCS hit. I took paracetamol, drank some rum, went to bed. I just slept it off. I felt like ****, dizzy, tired, nauseous. But by the time I dropped in bed, I was asleep. The next day, I felt a little bit hit (like after a small passing cold), and that was it. By the second day I was fine.

Funny venom the lion fish one. Dunno, but I think the rum helped. Or it becomes a good excuse haha.