As some of you may recall, I was severely wounded by a Sea urchin while snorkeling with my kids two weeks ago. I was in 2 feet of water not wearing any fins and while moving my arms to swim like breast stroke, a "Diadema antillana" urchin was touched by my left hand letting 42 spines into it. Some of them just passed through my hand one side to the other and the pain was really bad.
Here is wat I did and had worked well so far:
1. Remove inmediately and very carefully every spine you can being very carefull not to break them while pulling out. You can use your fingers or some pliers. This has to be done as fast as you can, since the skin hardens once dried.
2. Submerge the affected area with the hottest water you can withstand for 10 or more minutes. Most marine venoms are temperature sensitive. This works also with jellyfish and other marine creatures venoms.
3. With a hypodermic needdle (the ones used for injections), carefully try to remove any spine that is located under your skin. Other kind of needdle don't work as well because they don't have cutting edges like hypodermic. This procedue will be bloody, so if you are easily impressed, ask someone else to do it for you.
Doing this, I could manage to take out most of the spines. Just 6 of them were still into my hand, so I started asking for "Grandma's remedies". Someone came out with placing a piece of aspirine over the affected area and cover it with some adhesive tape. The theory is that the acid wil disolve the skin around the spine allowing me to reach it later on. It didn't work as well as I wanted to, so using the same theory, I went to Walgreens and bought DuoFilm® Salicylic Acid wart remover. It comes with "cover-up" dics to cever the affected area.
After 4 applications (one week) 4 of the spines just went out. They are not there any more! I still have 2 of them, one should be touching a nerve, since I feel like electricity in one finger, but the pain is way less.
I will keep my "treatment" for one more week. If the "electricity" persist, I will see a doctor.
Just wanted to share my experience with you guys, in case same thing happens to you (hopefully not...) :rolleyes1: