To whom it may concern,
I don’t know how this got so out of hand. This isn’t even my area of medical expertise. It was just a joke I made with my friends that, I guess, ended up changing the way people around the world think about treating jellyfish stings. Apparently, peeing on a jellyfish sting doesn’t help with the pain—it can actually make it much worse. My bad.
In my defense, I started this joke on a vacation on the Gulf Coast with some work friends. One of my friends, Dr. Grayson Pollock, was being a total douche the whole time. Like, he was so annoying. Everyone else on the trip would agree with me on this—even Claire, and she doesn’t speak badly about anyone.
Anyway, he was stung by a jellyfish while we were scuba diving because he didn’t want to wear the wetsuit like we were supposed to. He thought he looked cooler just being in his swim trunks. Such a douche. He spent the whole boat ride making fun of how stupid the rest of us looked in our wetsuits.
Well, guess who really looked stupid, Grayson? You did. Crying on the boat with your legs covered in jellyfish sting welts.
His pain didn’t seem like enough payback, so I decided to take his humiliation further. I made up a fake scientific study that said peeing on a jellyfish sting numbs the pain. I mentioned something about the ammonia in urine to make it sound more legit, and he totally fell for it. Pretty soon, he was begging me to pee on his legs.
I got pee shy, so everyone else looked away while I peed on Dr. Pollock’s leg. He instantly looked relieved—which I still find weird, because it shouldn’t have helped. Maybe it helped him because it’s something he’s into? Who knows. But everyone got off the boat and started sharing the “pee trick” with anyone who would listen.
Since we were in Florida, it didn’t take much convincing to get more people to spread it around. I thought it was funny—thinking of all these people in Florida peeing on each other during jellyfish season. I didn’t know it would actually spread further and become something people believed was real medical practice all over the world.
So again, I apologize to anyone who has been peed on or peed on someone else because of a jellyfish sting. If it did help you feel better, you might want to examine the fact that you like getting peed on.
Sincerely,
Dr. Geoffrey Hillstein, DDS