One of the deadly stonefish’s long barbs was forced out of a man’s foot months after he had survived walking on one and had dulled the agony with booze.
After posting a video of himself casually discussing how he walked on a stonefish and was numbing the pain with wine and whisky, Adam Clancy, 31, received widespread media attention.
On the evening of April 22, a professional photographer from the NSW town of Tenterfield was wading off Moreton Island in Queensland with a camera in hand when he stepped on the cunningly disguised stonefish.
Mr. Clancy snapped a photo of the fish swimming away even though he wasn’t sure what he had trodden on to show a buddy who was with him.
The most poisonous fish in the world, stonefish can cause lethal paralysis, breathing problems, and heart failure with the help of their 13 long bristling spikes.
Anyone impaled on their barbs is advised to take an anti-venom course.
Mr. Clancy asked permission to keep snapping pictures from his pal.
Mr. Clancy told Daily Mail Australia, “My friend confirmed it was a stonefish and warned me to go ashore as I’m about to be in a lot of agony.”
“I walked inside, took a bucket of hot water for my foot from a buddy, and waited for the paramedic,” the speaker said.
Despite the agony being a high eight out of 10, he told me I was ludicrously at ease about it as he checked my vital signs.
In retrospect, Mr. Clancy laughs that he turned down the paramedic’s offer of painkillers.
Yes, taking pills would have been preferable, but two glasses of scotch and a bottle of Shiraz helped him fall asleep that night.
The paramedic also advised Mr. Clancy to visit a hospital on the mainland the next day, but he chose to stay on the island and resume his employment.
In a TikTok video that he shared, Mr. Clancy confesses that he just walked on the “most deadly fish in the world” in a deadpan manner while holding a glass of red wine.
The paramedic just informed me that most patients pass out from the severe agony and go into shock, the patient claims.
Apparently, I’m the most at ease person ever experiencing excruciating pain.
According to the title of the movie, “POV you may die within an hour,” but “you know that pain is temporary and fretting doesn’t help.”
Over nine million people have seen the post, which resulted to Mr. Clancy being featured in Newsweek, a US publication.
Mr. Clancy held the belief that physical discomfort lessens with time, which he discussed in a TikTok video earlier this month.
Okay, to be honest, he admitted, “It was fairly f***ing agonising.”
However, I believed at the time that I had experienced agony previously and that it had subsided.
You’ve had heartbreak, you know, and sometimes that’s gone away.
Even though it has taken years, bodily discomfort eventually fades away.
“It will vanish.” For now, it’s there. It will take a few hours or maybe a few days.
However, the discomfort persisted, and Mr. Clancy, being “a staunch Aussie bloke,” continued to shuffle along without seeking medical attention.
Months after the injury, Mr. Clancy recalled, “I was still having difficulties walking properly on that foot, and that’s when I became serious about finding whether anything was still in my foot.”
performing some home surgery with a face razor Mr. Clancy was shocked to see a 2 cm long transparent stonefish barb in his foot that looked like a splinter of clear plastic.
He described the encounter in a different TikTok video that was published on July 14.
“I’ve had issues because I felt there was a little piece of the barb from the stonefish left in me,” he said. “It’s been bringing me a lot of discomfort lately.”
So, I used one of my face razors to make a small incision last night, but it didn’t really help.
However, I honestly simply f***ing squeezed my foot today in the shower, and this f***ing thing popped out. Observe the f***er.
“I did not anticipate hearing a barb that f***ing enormous,” I said.
It was vertical in my bone, sort of.
In the Northern Territory, Mr. Clancy, who is staying close to Uluru, claimed that his foot was finally getting better.
Now that the barb was removed, he said, “The foot is recovering beautifully.”