The day after grandpa and daddy’s funeral my Auntie Boo and Uncle John took us to Princess Margaret beach to get out of the house. This was before Jack’s Bar, the beach was quiet and no one would bother us there. It was nice to be out and not have to deal with people. Our dog Bear was going through a roaming phase and, chasing the car, managed to find us down at the beach. Rather than take him home we let him join us in the sea.
It was surging. We were playing in the surf when suddenly I felt a sting across my neck. The waves spit me on to the beach and I couldn’t breathe. A Portuguese man o’war had stung me, and my air pipe was closing. I had experienced ‘sea ants’ before, but Portuguese man o’war are a different kettle of fish. They can and do kill humans. I had heard stories of legs getting stung and people drowning. They are venomous even after death, and the few times they washed ashore at Hope we were warned not to touch the purple-blue sac-like creatures. I sat gasping on the beach until I was piled into the car to be taken the clinic. I thought I was going to die, I could not get any air. I was thinking I would be reunited with daddy and grandpa, but felt bad for my mom and sister. Poor Rachie was left on the beach with my aunt, not knowing if I was dying or getting help! And mummy had returned to work to face Mac’s Pizzeria without Mac.
The dog chased our car and must have lost our scent because he was running around the harbour, sandy and wet. My poor mother, to hear her daughter was at the clinic and her dog terrorizing people the day after burying her husband and father!
The clinic would not admit me, I was wet and sandy and in a bathing suit. I think they wanted me to go home, clean up and come back. I don’t know what was said by my Uncle, but a bed was stripped and I was laid on it. I remember being cold, but they did not want to mess up their sheets! The nurse tried asking me questions, name, age etc, and I wanted to shout at her to open a damn newspaper, my family was plastered all over it, and of course she knew full well who I was, who in SVG didn’t at this point? Even before our family’s tragedy Bequia people knew who we were. It was probably just a cognitive test of some sort, but I was angry. She was wasting time as far as I was concerned, because how the hell she wanted me to answer? I could not breathe much less talk! I was going to die in the clinic waiting for them to do something. I was trying to remember my life saving classes from summer camp, and put myself in the recovery position, and the nurse kept trying to get me on my back. She would not give me a pillow to prop my feet up, and I couldn’t ask for one. I was eventually given oxygen and I fought with her, certain it hadn’t been cleaned, and it was forcefully put up my nose. I kept trying to ask if they had cleaned the apparatus. I was getting air in, but getting it out felt like I was pushing it out through a blocked straw. Eventually they brought a needle to give me an injection to stop the reaction to the venom, and I fought with them again, knowing that they re-used needles all the time. I really am the worst patient (this has not changed). It’s strange what you think of when you feel you are dying! Apparently death was better than a used needle.
During all this my mother heard that I was at the clinic and the dog was running amok in the Harbour, and when she arrived and heard the doctor was out having lunch she tracked him down. She was hysterical, it was all really too much, and she insisted he drop his food and run to the hospital. He calmly informed her that he would see to me when he had eaten his lunch! I was released that same afternoon after the doctor looked me over, the injection had done the job and my breathing had returned to normal. It was a terrifying ordeal, but I had two guardian angels looking out for me. For about a week I had a scar across my neck and on my ear. It looked like I had suffered an act of violence, and it was all I talked about for a few days. I proudly showed it off to everyone. It was something to focus on other than our family tragedy, and I hung on to it as long as I could.