Baby's first wasp sting

[ailbhe]

Linnea was sitting on a bench in the community garden when she started to scream. I got to her, and she was screaming "A BEE STUNG MY EYE! MY EYE! MY EYE!" and panicking and hitting out at me. I talked to her and held her hands and let her hit me for a bit, and she calmed down enough to answer questions - "Did a bee sting our eye?" "No, my eyelid," which was helpful.

I carried her across the garden and sat her on a picnic table and tried to look. Someone handed me some antihistamine cream. I found the sting area - it looked like she'd been stung on her cheekbone, near her eye, and clawed a lump of skin off in scratching the sting out. There was a rough swelling area around it. When I persuaded her that the cream was not going in her eye, or on her eye, she allowed me to put it on her cheek.

Turns out a lot of what was wrong was fear of pain like she had when she got pepper in her eyes last week. Pain and not being able to see - not Linnea's favourite things.

I carried her home, most of the way, using the mei tai in a hip carry. She kept acting like she was falling asleep. I was a bit worried in case sudden falling asleep was a bad sign but she recovered, so I think it was the short-term exhaustion from pain and fear, not so much a physical reaction to the sting.

Much later, she found Little House in the Big Woods and spent a long time looking at the pages around where Charley gets into a yellow jacket's nest. Then she tried to explain to me that a bee sting is worse than a wasp sting because with a wasp sting you get better quickly but with a bee sting it takes a long time and you are very sick.

That was easier than the conversation we had earlier about absolute nothingness and the extent of the universe.

Comments

[rosefox]

I was stung by a wasp when I was about her age. I don't remember it well, mostly because that's the trip where I also nearly drowned, but I remember screaming from the pain and then screaming more when my mother put ice on it to bring the swelling down. I'm very glad Linnea recovered quickly and found a book that helped her deal with it.

[ailbhe]

I was stung by a bee when she was in utero and it was really, really painful. I took oral antihistamine immediately. I don't remember any other stings from bees or wasps, though lots of horseflies and things.

Emer has been burned - well, probably not, but at risk of it - a few times, and the part she hates most is the cold water from the kitchen tap.

I think Linnea may have recovered quickly because of clawing the stung part out of her face. It's a nasty chunk she's missing.

[rosefox]

Poor kid. I hope she heals up quickly.

[supermouse.livejournal.com]

Cool, non-hurty water works just as well. Better, in fact, because you can hold your burn under it for longer. As long as it's cool to the touch, it will work.

[supermouse.livejournal.com]

(For the incident where I poured a kettle full of freshly boiled water down my whole arm, I used the shower as my source of coolth, for a full fifteen minutes (which I could not have done with ice cold water). It worked amazingly well and the arm was reddish and slightly sore for one night.)

[haggis.livejournal.com]

That's useful to know, thank you!

[supermouse.livejournal.com]

I hope you never need the information, or at least not as badly as I did. :0) Even though I turned out fine, I still remember the absolute shock and dread as I realised what I'd just done.

I was wearing a shirt and took the time to take it off to bare my arm, something my spouse was trying to prevent me doing, but it was the right thing to do, I think. I don't know what official advice is, but it made sense to remove the 'sponge full of hot water' encasing my arm before I cooled it. If it had been stuck to my skin, I wouldn't have done.

[ailbhe]

The usual advice is to do that after you've got the cold water on it - but if you have someone else available to help turn on the tap, then taking the time while that's happening would be the right thing, I think.

[taimatsu]

When I scalded myself very badly all over my torso, a couple of years ago, I had to get friends to come over to talk to me so I could manage to stay in the bath full of cold water, otherwise I would have totally failed to cope with being that freezing (it was February and the middle of the night). Thank goodness I had very nearby friends who had also already seen me naked :)

The scald was really very bad and I was in bandages for at least two weeks. :/