San Diego and the Stingray

Just last week, my mom and I went to San Diego. San Diego is basically an oasis. All around San Diego, it is mostly a desert. If you go deeper into the desert, you see an oasis.

San Diego is a really hot place. The only thing that you can wear are flip flops and a tank tops. It’s not that humid though. It’s very dry and comfortable.

On my first day in San Diego, my family and I went to the beach. The first thing I did when I got there was go into the water. I jumped in right away. The water was very refreshing. Though there were a ton of people at the beach, I had plenty of space. I had brought a skimboard. A skimboard is a piece of wood like a boogie board. You throw it in front of you into the shallow surf and then jump onto it. Then you can slide across the beach. It requires a lot of skill, but once you get the hang of it, you never forget how to do it.

One of my very close friends just moved to San Diego. His name is Owen. His parents had just bought him a surfboard. He showed me a bit how to surf. After that, I boogie boarded with his boogie board and him on the surfboard. We went out pretty far.

When we had just gotten past the waves, I got stung by something. I quickly tried to get out of the water. While I was boogie boarding down, my mom was just going into the water for the first time. I said that I had either gotten stung by a jellyfish or gotten bit by a crab. It kind of felt like both. I got out of the water and noticed that I was bleeding a lot. Owen’s dad saw me and said that it was actually a stingray’s sting. By the time my mom came out of the water, I was bleeding everywhere.

I was writhing in pain. My mom washed my wound, and let it bleed so the stinger would come out in case there was one. It didn’t really help the pain. It hurt so much that I think that it was the most painful experience in my life. That pain lasted for more than an hour.

My mom and I quickly drove home to soak my feet in a bathtub because hot water denatures the poison. The venom is a neurotoxin which means it acts on the nervous system. That is why it hurts so much. On the drive home, I downed two Gatorades. Once we got to the Airbnb, I ran to the bathtub and turned on the hot water. After about 5 minutes of having my foot soak in the water, my pain level went from 10/10 which is “I think that we should go to the emergency room right away!” to a 4/10 which is “It hurts a bit, but I think that I just will need a bandaid.”

My foot was totally numb. My mom put Neo-Sporin on my foot, and quickly covered it up with a bandaid. I went to sleep. The next day I was just limping. There was swelling and redness for a few days.

I think that overall the stingray sting would not stop me from going into the water there again. San Diego is a really beautiful place. The ranch land around the town is beautiful and diverse.