This month our lodging consists of 3 rooms that each have 6 bunk beds (12 beds per room). The rooms aren’t air conditioned so each room has little openings near the ceiling that allow for a lovely breeze to pass through the rooms. The airflow is assisted by two high speed fans that work wonders as well. Anyways, I sleep on the top bunk.
I’m sleeping. It’s about 2:30am. I’ve been asleep for a few hours now. I don’t remember dreaming anything specific, but I remember feeling a pain on the back of my arm. Since our room is open to the outside, mosquito bites are expected. However, this was more than a mosquito bite, so I woke up.
Once I was awake, I had an instant intuition about what caused the pain. I just knew I had been stung by a scorpion. I grappled for my phone or headlamp—anything to light up the dark room. With the light on, I riffled through my sheets, and there it was: the two-inch long scorpion. In a slight panic, I got off my bed as quickly as I could. Once I reached the floor I paced the room for at least a minute trying to figure out what to do next.
Everyone was still asleep (but some were slightly stirring as I had accidently shined my light in their faces—sorry friends). I went and woke up one of the team leaders so she could help me treat it if needed. She asked me if I had killed the scorpion and I realized it was still in my bed, so I climbed back up on my bed, armed with a book to kill it. I cautiously and hesitantly shook out my sheets and then my pillow but found no scorpion in sight. With the disappointment that the scorpion had escaped, yet the relief that I didn’t have to encounter it again, I climbed back down from my bed and the team leader and I plodded to our host’s house to have the sting treated.
Luckily, the scorpions in our area are not poisonous and their stings are really similar to a bee sting. To treat the redness and reaction of the sting, I iced it and took a Benadryl. Another common treatment for scorpion stings is to soak the sting in a diluted solution of bleach, but since my sting was on the back of my arm, it wasn’t a good spot to soak it.
Another fun fact about scorpion stings: your tongue and the inside of your mouth get numb and tingly. I began to feel this sensation shortly after being stung and it lasted for most of the next day as well. Sometimes my tongue even felt a little swollen in my throat, like an allergic reaction.
By the time we had finished treating the sting it was about 3am or 3:30am and we needed to head back to bed. As I got back to the room, I riffled through all of my bedding again, making sure the scorpion was really gone. With no scorpion in sight, I laid down but I could not fall asleep. My heart was still beating hard and I was a little fearful that the scorpion would come back.
In this moment of physical stillness, yet internal chaos, I was reminded of 1 John 4:18, which says: “There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts our fear.” As I laid in bed, I prayed that God would fill me with His perfect love so this fear would flee and I could fall asleep. In less than an hour, I had dozed off to sleep and rested perfectly until the morning. Thank you, Jesus!
