Wednesday, August 4, 2010

THE SCORPION STING

Have you ever been stung by a scorpion? May I suggest you don't! lol

I was clearing away some leaves that were over a brick I had laid next to a Moringa tree for protection. I have moved leaves and dirt with my hand many times before...but this time....there was a huge sting...and as I pulled my hand away....the sting got worse and worse! As I was shaking my hand and doing a dance....I was saying out loud.... "This can't be good" over and over again.
At the time I didn't know what kind of sting it was..except it was different and worse then any I had experienced before.

I shared the story with the worker on the compound..and he said...oh, that is a scorpion sting. Okay...so I was a "little" panicked and cleaned up a bit, went inside to do some research with the books I had. Not to much talk about this kind of event unfortunately! I tried to use my suction devices, but they can't get into the area that was stung...right next to my nail bed on the side of the finger. BAD SPOT!

So I took some Aspirin to thin the blood and made sure a couple people knew in case I had bigger issues.

The pain went up my arm and by mid day I had a very deep ache in my shoulder. As I am explaining this to a local gardener I knew, he said...oh, that is because you did not kill the scorpion...so you must go back and find it and kill it...or you will have this pain. Hmmmm.....I though, interesting that they believe this.

Then I was talking to a lady about the event a couple days later and she said I had the pain and problems because I didn't kill the scorpion. I just shook my head and asked her if she really though this was possible and she really did. It's interesting what they are taught as Malawian's and take it as word. Educated or not....the same seems to apply. Stories passed down from generation to generation.

Well...I survived...and found out it is really hard to die as an adult from a scorpion bite. For babies and children it is a different story!