11-25-2015, 01:55 PM
I've waited several days to post this because I wanted the experience to play out before sharing it.
Four days ago I was doing some chores and as a result, some little fire ants rained down on me. I don't know how many but I got one sting on the face, a few on my arm, and about 9 down my shirt. And one in my eye. I don't mean the outside of my eye like on the face. I mean inside the eye. Not sure exactly where, keep reading. I've been stung too many times to count, but feeling the sting in my eye nearly sent me into a panic. We have a dog and chickens that have been stung in or around the eye and they get milky, though they seem to still have good vision, but I have read enough data about LFA stings that repeated stings do lead to partial or complete blindness. I was worried.
My first reaction was to run inside the house and remove my contact lenses. My eye was already beet red in the seconds or minutes it took to get inside. By this time the pain was significant, and my upper and lower eyelids were already swelling up. I looked for but could not find the ant in my eye and asked the wife for help. She irrigated my eye with contact lens solution, and then later used a Q-tip to move my swelling eyelids to try and find a sting, she couldn't find a sting because everything was very red and swollen.
My next thought was, I need to minimize the damage. I took Benadryl. I had never taken this for LFA stings before because it has a SIGNIFICANT drowsiness effect on me. All of my stings (face, eye, arm, chest, etc) had huge red swelling and burning. If you've ever had a lot of LFA stings at once, you already know that the stings seem to feed off each other. The more you have, the worse each sting feels. As soon as the drowsiness of the Benadryl hit me, the stings started feeling much better. The redness of all the stings became more pale and the swelling subsided. My eye was still killing me but the Benadryl was definitely helping.
You are probably wondering, WHY DIDN'T YOU GO TO THE ER? Originally, that is what my first instinct was. But because of our livestock research with LFA stings to the eyes, there isn't any published treatment or first aid, and frankly, I was worried emergency medical care on this island might make the problem worse.
The next day, my upper and lower eye lids were still swollen and my eye hurt. My other LFA stings were pretty big and red as well. The redness of the actual eye ball had greatly decreased and if I was using pain as a guide- my educated guess is that I got stung on the inside of my lower eye lid- not the actual eyeball itself. But honestly, I will never know.
The third day- the eye itched a lot, still swollen, but not much. I felt kind of like my eye got punched by a relatively weak person. It throbbed and it felt like I might get a black eye, but the color never changed. Today the swelling is almost completely gone and the eye itches from time to time, but I am definitely well on my way to the finish line of this bad experience.
This is a non-medical study of 1 with no control group and a lot of uncertainty. I know I was stung somewhere in the orb that is either the actual eye or tissues that touch it. I do think that the Benadryl helped substantially. As long as there are LFA around, I will keep it nearby.
Four days ago I was doing some chores and as a result, some little fire ants rained down on me. I don't know how many but I got one sting on the face, a few on my arm, and about 9 down my shirt. And one in my eye. I don't mean the outside of my eye like on the face. I mean inside the eye. Not sure exactly where, keep reading. I've been stung too many times to count, but feeling the sting in my eye nearly sent me into a panic. We have a dog and chickens that have been stung in or around the eye and they get milky, though they seem to still have good vision, but I have read enough data about LFA stings that repeated stings do lead to partial or complete blindness. I was worried.
My first reaction was to run inside the house and remove my contact lenses. My eye was already beet red in the seconds or minutes it took to get inside. By this time the pain was significant, and my upper and lower eyelids were already swelling up. I looked for but could not find the ant in my eye and asked the wife for help. She irrigated my eye with contact lens solution, and then later used a Q-tip to move my swelling eyelids to try and find a sting, she couldn't find a sting because everything was very red and swollen.
My next thought was, I need to minimize the damage. I took Benadryl. I had never taken this for LFA stings before because it has a SIGNIFICANT drowsiness effect on me. All of my stings (face, eye, arm, chest, etc) had huge red swelling and burning. If you've ever had a lot of LFA stings at once, you already know that the stings seem to feed off each other. The more you have, the worse each sting feels. As soon as the drowsiness of the Benadryl hit me, the stings started feeling much better. The redness of all the stings became more pale and the swelling subsided. My eye was still killing me but the Benadryl was definitely helping.
You are probably wondering, WHY DIDN'T YOU GO TO THE ER? Originally, that is what my first instinct was. But because of our livestock research with LFA stings to the eyes, there isn't any published treatment or first aid, and frankly, I was worried emergency medical care on this island might make the problem worse.
The next day, my upper and lower eye lids were still swollen and my eye hurt. My other LFA stings were pretty big and red as well. The redness of the actual eye ball had greatly decreased and if I was using pain as a guide- my educated guess is that I got stung on the inside of my lower eye lid- not the actual eyeball itself. But honestly, I will never know.
The third day- the eye itched a lot, still swollen, but not much. I felt kind of like my eye got punched by a relatively weak person. It throbbed and it felt like I might get a black eye, but the color never changed. Today the swelling is almost completely gone and the eye itches from time to time, but I am definitely well on my way to the finish line of this bad experience.
This is a non-medical study of 1 with no control group and a lot of uncertainty. I know I was stung somewhere in the orb that is either the actual eye or tissues that touch it. I do think that the Benadryl helped substantially. As long as there are LFA around, I will keep it nearby.