My 13 year old daughter was stung on the eyelid last week while weeding our garden. It swelled like crazing! The swelling not only shut her eye, but went down her face to her chin, over the bridge of her nose and started puffing her other eye!She is not allergic to bee stings. She has been stung before with no reaction at all. However being stong in the very sensitive eye tissue reacted quite differently for her! (I suppose it would for anyone!)
When she was first stung we chewed up fresh plantain from the yard and put the gloppy spit wad of weeds on her eye and held it there. This relieved the pain of the sting - but the swelling was fast and furious. We tried ice...to little avail. I even resorted to Benedryl (can you believe it??? I can't!) Then I remembered chamomile... (dah! I had JUST prescribed it to someone else for swollen eyes do to allergies a few weeks before. How could I forget??) We'll I put some chamomile in a tea bag (a store bought one or two would work well too), activated it in some hot water for a few minutes, and then took it out to let it cool. I gave her the tea to drink and then had her hold the bag over her eye. We noticed results right away. It soothed her and swelling started to go down. It wanted to swell back up when she layed down at night, it also wanted to swell between compresses. The second night, we had her sleep upright in a recliner chair with a tea bag on her eye. The next day she was back to normal. It was healed.
I talked with a friend who was stung in the eye by a bee when she was a child. She went into great description of the trauma and said it took a LONG time for her swelling to go down untreated, about a weak. I think we did pretty well with the chamomile, even though we started late - it only took 48 hours for the time of the bite.
So remember chamomile is a soother and good for swelling. Even in sensitive areas like eyes. It is safe for infants too!
p.s. The picture was taken by Hadassah and I had her permission to use it! :-)
Shared at Simple Lives Thursdays
Poor Hailey! Glad she is on the mend now. Thank you for sharing about the chamomile! I'll be writing that down in our natural recipes section of our Family Planner for future reference (hoping we won't ever need it!)
ReplyDeleteMuch love x
Good job! I have been healing a little broken toe and in the mean time my back has taken the brunt of it by compensating with my walk. Anyway, my back has been hurting badly and almost going out on me. So I turned to the antispasmadic & relaxing nervine of chamomile in a new tea blend I made with other mints. It's working great with much relief!
ReplyDeleteThanks for this info, I don't know that I would remember to use chamomile in this situation, either. The eye area is so tender- when we were younger someone threw a wad of gum (yes, just a wad of gum) at my cousin and it hit him in the corner of the eye. It was swollen for months. Yes, months. From a wad of gum. It was crazy.
ReplyDeleteWow, that is a stunning photograph! I am so glad she is feeling better. Wow. I'll keep this in mind for sure! Popped over from Simple Lives.
ReplyDeleteI'm fairly amazed by this! I remember being stung by a bee on the elbow as a child. I still have scars from it and I think it took a week to go down (plus a trip to the doctor to proscribe me medicine; I am allergic.) Now if only I had known about the chamomile. :) I drink it to destress and cool down at night, but I've been impressed by its many other uses lately. Yah is so good. :).
ReplyDeleteHi Pamela! My gorgeous sister in law was stung by a wasp yesterday and the swelling was intense! I remembered this post, showed it to her and we applied the first round of chamomille this afternoon. Thanks for writing this; I knew it would come in handy down the track!
ReplyDeleteMuch love to you and your beautiful fam,
Lus x
Lus,
ReplyDeleteI am so glad to help!
Much Love, p