When I went on vacation last year the last thing on my mind was an encounter with a jellyfish, especially as I checked into a hotel on the beautiful Californian coast. My room was on the fourth floor and had a magnificent view of the Pacific Ocean where I could see dolphins splashing down below. After going to my room I got changed and went to the beach. I walked around on the beach for about an hour and then started swimming. I loved being thrown by the waves and swimming against the current. I was about to come on shore to eat dinner, when it happened.
I can remember this indubitably just like yesterday. I was swimming back to shore when I felt a few dozen brisk stings and something beginning to wrap around my right leg. I immediately called out for help. A couple of people came running out to help me, only to find a humongous jellyfish wrapped around my leg. They pulled me out of the water and on to the beach dragging my ensanguined leg on the sand. I lay throbbing in pain as a lifeguard and some people tried to pry the jellyfish off of me. I can remember looking at the transparent jellyfish dithering as it tried to grab my leg tighter as people were cutting off its tentacles. Every time the jellyfish moved its’ tentacles it would sting people’s hands, as my leg swell. The jellyfish finally started to tire and let go of my leg after about ten minutes of pulling and cutting the jellyfish.
The paramedics arrived by the time the lifeguard and the other people had nearly all of the sixty-five feet of tentacles off of my leg. The paramedics poured sterile water over my leg to wash off the sand and the remaining tentacles. The paramedics told me to put vinegar on my wounds along with some meat tenderizer and that the wounds would heal in a couple of days. Needless to say, I did not get back into the ocean water for the remainder of the trip. To this day, if something touches me in the water I swim as fast as I can to get back on dry land.
As you can imagine this was an intense time in my life. One moment you are just enjoying the surf and magnificent waves, and the next you are lying on the beach with people severing tentacles off of you. This experience can define a person for the rest of their life. For me, it was the little voice in my head that told me that I will survive this; I have often heard that “What does not kill you makes you stronger.” I feel that I had that experience from the jellyfish; I now know that this was a defining moment as I did not panic and was optimistic that I would come out of this event relatively unscathed. It is my true understanding from going through an experience like this and surviving, I now know that I am capable of enduring other situations in my life. In everyone’s life there are defining moments from life and death experiences, or just a bad day, this was a true defining experience in my life.
Works Cited
"Jelly Fish Terrorise Phuket." Jellyfish, Jellyfish Facts, Jelly Fish, Jellyfish Species, Jellyfish Safety, Jellyfish Pictures. 25 Apr. 2010. Web. 01 July 2010. <http://www.jellyfishfacts.net/news/jelly-fish-terrorise-phuket-nid-20.html>.
