Let me start off by saying that I am not a doctor, but my son got bit by a scorpion last week, and this is what we learned from experience.
We live in Southern Utah and scorpions are common in our area. We get our home sprayed at least every six weeks to prevent them from getting into our home. But two weeks ago, me and the kids were home alone and around 11 pm, I heard a blood-curdling scream from upstairs. I honestly thought someone had broken their arm or something.
My ten year old son came running down the stairs screaming, yelling, and 100% freaking out. I usually react calmly in situations like this, but as soon as he said he got bit by a scorpion, I honestly went from 0-100 in .2 seconds, and I freaked out myself.
It was my worst nightmare. I hate scorpions. I have bad dreams about them. He got stung on his big toe. The scorpion was on the carpet in his room, and since our carpet is the perfect caramel-tan color, the damn thing blended right in.
My first thought…”WHERE IS THE BLACK LIGHT!?!” Because the thought of someone else getting stung by this demon was on the forefront of my mind.
I grabbed Connelly and ran him outside to put mud on the sting. I guess I thought it was similar to a bee sting. The mud did nothing. I was frantically yelling to the other kids to find the black light and YELL-texting my husband to please come home NOW! I googled it, and found that putting ice on the sting was the most common treatment, so I laid him on the couch and quickly got a bag of ice.
He described the pain as shooting up his leg and quickly complained that his face hurt, and that he could feel his heartbeat in his face. I couldn’t believe the pain spread that fast through his body. His muscles jerked a little and he was clearly miserable. His toe was numb also.
Since our neighborhood has had several kid scorpion stings, we knew that we probably didn’t need to go to the ER. He is a big kid and weighs over 100 lbs. But, we knew that going to the ER was a possibility.
By this time it’s 11:30pm, thirty minutes since the sting, and we haven’t done anything for Connelly’s sting that has helped at all. Dan got home and found the satan-sent scorpion quickly in their room with the black light that one of the other kids finally found. In case you weren’t aware, they glow in black lights, it’s pretty creepy.
I text my neighbor Sheri and asked if they had any chewing tobacco. Someone had mentioned that helped scorpion stings. She dropped everything and brought some right over. She mixed a little pinch of tobacco with water and put it directly on the sting.
Almost immediately, he said that it helped lesson the pain. It was the only thing that helped so far. We wrapped the toe with bandaids to hold the tobacco on, and put ice over the bandaids. We gave him a dose of Benadryl and laid him in our room for the night for close observation.
The situation was traumatic. I now know that I need to keep chewing tobacco on hand, have a black light nearby at all times, and keep benedryl handy too. In fact, I’m going to put together a scorpion kit so that in the event this happens again, it will be easy to find.
I hope our experience will help someone out there that could go through a frightening scorpion sting. I’m grateful everything was ok.
The next day he was completely fine. I know that the littler the scorpion, the bigger the sting, so be aware of that.
Also, in a neighborhood nearby a small child got stung by a bark scorpion and since he was so young, an ER visit saved his life. If you go to the ER, take the scorpion with you {if you can find it} that way they will know what kind it was.
Hope you had a good weekend.
xoxo,
Brooke
Hope your son is doing better, what a frightening thing to happen even if you know it might someday. Thank you for alerting people for the need of having an emergency kit nearby. I live near copperheads, a very nasty snake. I haven’t thought what we would do if we got bit, but I think I better start. We just bought this cabin on the river and I have been told by many people to not walk through the woods on the high mountain behind our house because of the snakes. Then a neighbor told us that a copperhead came down into his shed last week and it was the first he had seen in 6 years of living at his cabin. Today I will research what we need to do if we get bit. Thanks and I hope your son is so much better now.
I hope your son is okay!
Thank you! I don’t have little ones around, but my grandchildren visit. Yes we have some scary scorpions around here. I can’t go to the bathroom at night any more without turning on the light. I was watching someones house and found a scorpion hanging from the air vent directly over the toilet. Husband came to the rescue.
we live in Arizona and they are common here too. Fortunately we don’t have them in our neighborhood but you never know! Thanks for the tips. I had never heard the chewing tobacco thing before! Hope he’s feeling better. Once my husband was stung while he was hiking havasupai and it was pretty scary. Wish we didn’t have them out here in the desert!!
And this is on the top 5 reasons why I am scared to move to Arizona (it’s high on our list once the hubby finishes school). Glad you found something to help and GREAT idea to make a kit.
I am so sorry that you guys had to go through that! It sounds like the most terrible day ever! I have two little babies and the thought of seeing them in that much pain just breaks my heart! I will definitely remember these tips in case we ever have one of these encounters while visiting our families in St George!
Paige
http://thehappyflammily.com
Oh I remember those from when we lived in Vegas. Those yellow ones are far more harmful than the big black ones – then of course those nasty wind scorpions. Yowza. Glad he’s okay, that is now fun at all – we had several make their way into our house before we moved – definitely a danger when living in that area of the Southwest.
Oh I hate those little demons as well. We lived out in the country for awhile (waiting to close on our home we bought) and they were just everywhere! I couldn’t understand it. They were never in this area like this, never! I live in Texas and we just didn’t have them that bad. Well, I learned why they were present…very present. Oil was big in our area at the time (slowed down now) and they were drilling and fracking everywhere, well, that disturbed the scorpion nests underground (sounds like it’s from a movie…ha) and so they were coming up…mad, I suppose! Lots of neighbors, even businesses in our small town said they had a problem with them. Yuck! Some even had major infestations of them. Oh the horror of that! Thankfully, they have gone back underground…I hope or at least think cause no one has seen them around as much anymore and we are in our new home and I haven’t seen one either.
But, when we were in the country home. We had 2 stings. One was my son and he pretty much reacted the way yours did. Screamed bloody murder! The other was my daughter and she was sitting on the carpet doing her makeup and the damn thing crawled right by her and stung her butt. She didn’t scream bloody murder, but felt what she said was a sting and looked down and there it was. She immediately killed it and then came to me saying, “this little sucker bit my butt!” For both kids, we did the ice too. Doesn’t help too much with the pain, but it is supposed to slow the venom’s spread. We also gave them motrin as well as benadryl and did the tobacco thing too. That helps alot. If you don’t have tobacco on hand, a paste of baking soda works good too, but tobacco is better. My son’s was worse, scorpion was smaller than what stung my daughter. So the saying is true, the smaller the creature, the worse the bite. That goes for snakes too I hear.
Now, in our new home…we deal with the big flying roaches. But not too bad and I will definitely take them over the demon scorpions anyday! Glad your son is doing better! Poor thing. Those things hurt bad…like fire!
I used to spend the summer with my grandmother in north Louisiana and there were lots of scorpions there then. We would sit on the couch in evenings watching television while shelling peas or shucking corn and there would always be at least one ( sometimes more) that would run across the floor. We could hear them skittering on the linoleum. Scorpions would fall into the pots in the cabinet or into the bathtub and not be able to get out. I remember she told me that once a scorpion fell or climbed into bed with her and she rolled over onto her back right on to the scorpion! It stung her. You can bet after that I always ripped all the covers off the bed before climbing in to make sure one wasn’t lurking underneath the covers and when I did crawl into bed, I pulled the covers over my head and tucked them in around me so nothing could get in …..not even air it seemed. It was very uncomfortable in the summer since she didn’t have air conditioning. I don’t see them in that area of north Louisiana like I did when I was a child. Someone told me later in life scorpions like to burrow in dirt but especially in old wood. I don’t know about scorpion stings but I have always used tobacco for bee, wasp, or hornet stings. I try to keep a pack of menthol cigarettes in my freezer. For some reason I think the menthol works best. I didn’t know scorpions glowed under a black light.
I live in Mesa, AZ. Was walking through the back yard at night in sandals, A big no-no, so I got stung Sl on my foot. After the first panic and screaming in pain I was able to get on my phone to look through pinterest to look up what to do. Thanks for the info. I saw my dad do the tobacco thing for my little sister on a bee sting when we were kids but never scorpions, for our climate growing up was in the mountains of az. I don’t think they are as common in the cold areas of Arizona. I have made a compact of smoking tobacco and water, seems to be helping a little. But above they suggest chewing tobacco. I wonder if it works better. Because it’s working a little just not as much as I wish.
Thank you for the info. In Texas, have scorpions some, but not like you all. It’s been raining hard, so feel they are hiding from the water outdoors. I’ll keep this info for future use. Thanks a bunch!