Here’s one for Carin. As we’ve mentioned, she loves these. Make her day, they do.
A 20-year-old man nearly lost his life getting stung thousands of times by bees after accidentally cutting into a nest while tree trimming.
Austin Bellamy remains on a ventilator in a medically induced coma at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center, as of Tuesday night, WXIX reports.
The 20-year-old was up in a lemon tree trimming branches Friday morning with his grandmother, Phyllis Edwards, and his uncle, Dustin Edwards, standing below. At some point, Bellamy unknowingly cut into a bee’s nest.
“When he started cutting them, that’s when the bees came out, and he tried to anchor himself down, and he couldn’t,” Phyllis Edwards said. “He was hollering, ‘Help! Help me! Help!’ And nobody would help him.”Bellamy’s family members watched the entire episode unfold from the ground, unable to scale the ladder because they themselves were under attack.
I can’t imagine feeling so helpless.
Somehow, the mental imagery only gets worse from there.
“It was just too much for me to take,” she said. “It looked like he had a black blanket on his head down to his neck, down to his arms.”
Bellamy was stung at least 20,000 times, according to an online fundraiser set up by the family. Carter said he ingested around 30 bees as well.
“So he had bees inside of him, and they suctioned bees out of him until Sunday morning,” she explained.
And to think I felt a little twitchy watching Doug Ford swallow *one*.
Happily, since that first story was published, Bellamy has woken up, although recovery is going to take some time. He says he still has breathing problems, and it could take more than a year for all of the toxins to clear his system, according to doctors. And that’s just the physical stuff.
“I tell you, you just get one bee around me, and I’m creeped,” Bellamy said. “I’m ready to run.”
Just as triggering are the sounds—not just the bees swarming in and around him, but the tool in his hands and the work he was doing.
“My emotions, I got to buckle them up just to try and run a chain saw,” Bellamy said.
I too am ready to run if you get just one bee around me, and I have never had the experience of being mauled nearly to death by thousands of them. You’re a stronger man than I, kid.
