Tourist paralysed from sea urchin sting

A man has been left paralysed from a sea urchin sting. Picture: Marco Busdraghi/Wikicommons

CALLUM Hall was on a dream holiday in Greece when his life changed forever.

Mr Hall, 20, jumped off a boat while on the island of Skiathos and stepped on a sea urchin. Initially he wasn’t too concerned about the injury, The Sun reported.

“It felt like a bee sting,” Mr Hall, a trainee PE teacher, said. “I pulled three black spines out of my toe and thought no more of it.”

However, three weeks later while back at home in the UK he developed a rare, agonising and deadly infection.

An abscess twice the size of a tennis ball had grown on his spine and burst, damaging his spinal cord. He was told he had just hours to live.

“My legs just stopped working. The infection was compressing my spine.”

He underwent life-saving surgery to remove the abscess but was left paralysed from the chest down.

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However, he’s glad to be alive after suffering such a rare injury.

“There is only a one in 50,000 chance of an abscess like that on your spine and it’s almost unheard of for a sea urchin to cause it.”

Mr Hall is determined to prove the doctors wrong after they told him he had a small chance of walking again.

He left hospital last week and has regained some movement in his abdomen and can wiggle his toes.

He plans to take part in the 2016 Paralympic Games in Brazil.

“There is still time and hope… but I will need financial help in order to get the right equipment, physio and resources I need to walk,” he said.

The common sea urchin is found at low tide levels in pools and gutters around southern Australia. If you are swimming and stand on one, its spines may stick into your foot and break off, being very difficult to dig out. You may need to seek medical attention. Another variety, the thickened sea urchin, is found along central NSW.

Tourist paralysed from sea urchin sting