A woman said the worst pain she experienced was from a plant's sting, and giving birth didn't come close to it. The mother of four was referring to the stinging plant locally called gympie-gympie.
Stinging Plant Gives a Mom of Four The Worst Pain in Her Life
Naomi Lewis, 42, a resident of Cairns, Australia, was mountain biking. However, she fell and slid into the stinging plant, also called stinging trees, suicide plants, or Queensland Stingers, a native to rainforests across Malaysia, Indonesia, and Australia.
Her legs were stung, and her pain was reported as "100 percent the worst." Recounting the event, Lewis said the pain was "beyond unbearable."
She told ABC News Australia that her body got into a pain threshold, and she started vomiting. Lewis said she had four kids - three caesareans and one natural. However, none of her childbirth experiences came close to her pain when the plant stung her.
After the incident, Lewis' husband took her to a nearby pharmacy to purchase leg wax to remove the plant's hypodermic hairs from her legs. Lewis said in a statement the Queensland government released that everyone helped wax her legs to remove the stinging hairs off her while waiting for an ambulance.
She said the pain was just beyond terrible and horrific. She thought she was done because the pain was so bad.
What's in the Stinging Plants?
Stinging plants resemble nettles on steroids since every part of them, including the stem, leaves, and flowers, is covered in microscopic toxic hairs.
The neurotoxins in these tiny, hollow hairs are reportedly identical to those in spiders, scorpions, and cone snail venom. They are considered more painful to touch than any other plant worldwide. The hairs embed in the skin, separate from the plant, and can stay there for up to a year.
Entomologist and ecologist Marina Hurley wrote in a Conversation article that being stung by the said plant could be the worst pain ever. She likened the experience to being burnt with hot acid and electrocuted simultaneously. She encountered the stinging trees as a postgraduate student at James Cook University.
Ernie Rider, a senior conservation officer with the Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service, also had a close encounter with the suicide plants in 1963. It slapped him in the face, arms, and chest. For him, the pain was unrivaled, Australian Geographic reported.
During the incident, he felt like a giant hand was trying to squash his chest. Just like Lewis, he said the pain was unbearable, and it was the case for three days. He couldn't work or sleep at the time. Worse, the stinging continued for two years and recurred whenever he had a cold shower.
He said the sting from gympie-gympie was ten times worse than scrub ticks, scrub itch, and itchy-jack sting. He added that stinging trees are real and dangerous.
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