One of the oft-repeated pieces of cruiser advice is to always do the 'stingray shuffle' when you are walking in shallow water. Stingrays nestle down into the sand becoming invisible, just waiting to be stepped on by the unsuspecting swimmer. By shuffling your feet along the bottom you are supposedly able to clear your path of any hiding stingrays. Unfortunately, it turns out this is not 100% effective. Take the case where you happen to shuffle up on a stingray whose barb is pointed at you, and instead of shuffling into his body (sending him gliding safely off) you bump his business end sending him lashing away.

Well, that's how our lovely hike ended today, after we decided to avoid about a half-mile of scrambling over rocky hills by wading through several hundred yards of crystal-clear warm chest-deep water. I managed to shuffle right into the sharp end of a stingray, who flicked his barb, cutting me on the side of my middle-toe (not exactly sure how he managed that). The pain was shocking, and it literally knocked me off my feet, soaking the backpack I had been carrying on my head. It was really remarkable how much pain those little guys inflict, and as I stumbled out of the water, my whole body was shaking and I could barely put any weight on my foot. All this within the span of about 60 seconds. I was able to limp along another hundred yards or so, until Julia was able to get back with the dinghy and rush me back to Pisces. At this point my whole leg was aching, and my upper leg had begun twitching periodically. Oh yeah, most of my toe turned a nice color purple too. That was encouraging.

We got back to the boat and realized that although we were well prepared with medicine, we had slacked a bit on staying organized with the 'how-to' guides. Thankfully we were able to dig out "The Waterlover's Guide to Marine Medicine' by Paul G. Gill, Jr., M.D. It's really a great book, and following the treatment guidelines in it we were able to quickly get the pain down to a manageable amount and get everything cleaned up. One of the nice things about this particular book is that in addition to the clear step-by-step guides to treating everything from Bristleworm Rash to Toothache is that Dr. Gill doesn't hesitate to sprinkle in some nice descriptive adjectives ('stings cause immediate, agonizing, pulsating, or burning pain') as well as a good helping of anecdotes to help lighten the treatment-crisis mood. Take this one prefacing the section on stingrays:

'While exploring Chesapeake Bay, Captain John Smith hopped out of a boat barefoot onto a stingray, which had the temerity to stick its dart into his leg. It was a foolish act on the part of the fish, for Smith was no common man. Instead of trying to get clear of it, Smith held it to the bottom with his foot, drew his hanger, hacked the fish to pieces and ate several collops raw. - from Horace Beck, Folklore and the Sea

Nice. So not only am I in agonizing, pulsating, pain, but now I get to read about this guy killing and eating the offending stingray and compare that to my reaction which was basically to yelp loudly while getting knocked on my ass. Anyway, so far everything looks fine, the swelling seems to be going down quickly, the pain is very manageable now, and the purple color is quickly receding. It'll probably be a swimming-free few days for me though while I let my toe (and pride) recover.