MSreefdoc
New member
Last night I decided to do a quick water change. At around 8:00pm I decided to move a rock of unknown palys(was a hitchhiker) so that I could put a piece of new SPS in that spot. A few palys had grown down on the base rock where I was to put my new frag. I thought about it for a moment and decided I didn't like these brown palys enough to save 2 polyps when I have 50 others in the colony. So I made the horrible mistake of pinching them off the rock(had to use my short, freshly cut fingernails to remove them). SPS is in place, all is good; time for me to go study for my medical school exam block next week! At 9:00pm I begin studying. At 11:00pm I notice I cannot think clearly, and learning my material is 10x harder and taking entirely too much time. Feeling frustrated and cold, I get up and to turn the heat up and take a bathroom break. It's about 12:30am now; studying has slowed even more, I feel colder, I find it hard to take a good breathe(like a mild asthma attack-for which my daughter's albuterol inhaler did nothing), and I have a few tingles randomly over my trunk and extremities. I figure the tingling is from sitting too long, and once I stood up I was surprisingly dizzy. In general I feel crummy and decide to take my temp. At 1:00am I have a fever of 101.1 F. My heart was beating well over 100bpm, and I felt worse and worse as each minute passed. By 2:00am my temp had reached 102.4, the tingling over my body was worse and I felt kinda disoriented; my vision was also blurry, but not too bad. After replaying my day over and over in my head I had nothing. The food I had eaten was cooked by me and nothing was raw, I went to school from 8am-11am and came home to an empty house(the wife took the kids to the beach for a couple days). Finally I remembered the tank and simply googled "things that can make you sick in a reef tank". One of the first things to pop up was Palythoa grandis- apparently the worse paly to touch and guess who just dug his finger into a couple of these guys, scratching them off the rock. Upon inspection my hands had no cuts, but there was a an itchy bump on my arm that I scratched not thinking about it before washing my hands. At 4:00am I decided to take some ibuprofen, get a shower, and then face the question of whether not to go to the ER. I have been in the hobby for 3 years now and never heard of this toxin(although after looking it up I see there is some information on it.) As I type my fever is at 101.0 F. I feel much less badly now(probably due to the ibuprofen), but still not too great. Since I have 3 exams monday and I need to go to class and study, I have decided not to go to the ER. Hopefully this will wear off with adequate hydration and time.
