2023-08-31 12:37:00
This family’s last day of vacation didn’t end as planned, to say the least. On the beaches of Barcarès, on the shores of the Mediterranean in the south of France, a seven-year-old boy was bathing when he came close to his father, crying: “Dad, I’m going to die”. “I have never heard a child scream so much”, testified the father to the Flemish newspaper The last news. Terrified, he might only see that his son was badly burned.
“We didn’t see anything right away, but little by little a pattern appeared on his skin”, describes the father of the injured youngster. Faced with his son’s cries of pain, he had no choice but to go to the hospital urgently. A toxicologist quickly diagnosed the source of the toddler’s pain: he was stung by a sea anemone.
The doctor then prescribed an ointment that was supposed to heal this burn without leaving scars. But a week following this incident, the parents of the young boy made an appointment at the burns center of Neder-over-Hembeek. The baby is not healing well.
A dangerous animal
Sea anemones, very famous for being Nemo’s cozy home, are actually real nettles. Asked by The last news, toxicologist Jan Tytgat (KU Leuven) explains that “it is rare for swimmers to come into contact with them, but when they do, they feel a tingling sensation – the result of contact with a cell that plants needles into the skin like a harpoon and secretes toxins. Conventional pain medications, such as paracetamol, are then of no use”.
The only solution to relieve such ailment is to apply warm water and slightly acidic solutions, such as lemon. Normally, two days can be enough to be pain free. This is the time required for the elimination of toxins. The seven-year-old boy did not have many chances.
1693499021
#Dad #die #young #Belgian #years #violently #burned #sea #anemone
