11-year-old recovering after being stung by stingray

Author: wink news
Published: Updated:

MANATEE COUNTY, Fla.- An 11-year-old Palmetto boy is recovering after he was stung by a stingray over the weekend.

The sting left a barb in the boy’s foot, and required surgery to remove it.

“It felt like a big pinch, just a lot harder and pointier, it just felt like that and it started stinging really bad because of the salt water,” said J.D. Delesline.

Delesline says he knew something was very wrong

“So I just looked down and I started freaking out because there was something stuck in my foot.”

He adds,”It was bright, it looked like a bow and arrow head, but on one side, it had like points on the side of it.”

The barb was several inches in length.

“That long sticking out of my foot, and then it was three inches or two inches deep in my foot, but it went at an angle so it didn’t go through the bone, it has two holes through it.”

His mom, Monica Delesline, thought the stingray barb was a stick.

“I’m like what in the world, and as I got closer, I could tell it was not a stick, by any means. It was definitely a large barb from a stingray, I was assuming, because it had little teeth on both sides,” said Monica Delesline.

She says her husband wanted to pull it out himself.

“And I’m like there’s no way we’re pulling that out on our own.”

The 11-year-old was taken to All Children’s Hospital.

“They were shocked to see it as well, took him right back to a room. Said they’re going to give him an IV and pain medicine.”

The half-hour surgery to remove the barb was a success.  J.D. is now on his way to healing and has a message for other young people concerned with stingrays

“Watch out where you’re walking and if you’re going to go swimming stay in the water where you can actually see instead of going into blurry water.”

He says he will absolutely swim again, but with a slight modification to his warm up.

“I’m going to make sure I do the stingray shuffle. It’s like where you have to move your feet like shuffling them, so it creates the sand to scare away it, the stingrays.”

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