Woman stung by Man-O-War provides cautionary tale

TOPSAIL BEACH, NC (WCTI) — A local woman stung recently by a Man-O-War at Topsail Beach shares her experience.

Jennifer Knaack said it’s the worst pain she’s ever felt.

“I stepped in the water just briefly,” she said. “Like within minutes I started intensely burning around my right ankle.”

Officials at the North Carolina Aquarium at Fort Fisher say it’s weather like the heavy rains of the past few days that tend to bring out the Man-o-Wars to the beaches and close to the shoreline.

Knaack said she was taking a typical morning walk down the beach when she was stung.

“I looked down, really didn’t see anything at first and brought my leg out of the water and saw what looked like a spaghetti, a brownish spaghetti wrapped completely around my ankle,” she said. “Almost instantly my chest started feeling heavy and hurting. I started sweating really really bad, got really nauseous.”

Knaack went to the hospital where the doctor gave her lidocaine gel to help knock down the pain.

Aquarium officials say if you do get stung by a Man-O-War, the first step is to ash out the affected areas using salt water and then apply apple cider vinegar to help with the pain of the sting.