Pauanui resident's bee sting led to Westpac rescue helicopter flight

Peter Watson takes his EpiPen everywhere after a very serious reaction to a bee sting at Pauanui. Photo / Supplied

Peter Watson is a bit hesitant about the flight he took in the Westpac Rescue Helicopter – but only because he knows how important the service is.

Watson was stung by a bee after a dip in his spa pool in Pauanui on May 1, 2020, and suffered a severe allergic reaction.

By the time the chopper arrived he had been injected with an EpiPen and had started to recover.

An EpiPen is an auto-injector device that has a pre-filled syringe fitted with a needle and contains a single dose of adrenaline, or epinephrine, for rapid injection into a muscle. It is used in an emergency to quickly treat anaphylaxis.

The Westpac Rescue Helicopter attended 10 missions last year in which people had suffered anaphylaxis.

Most of the time they involved wasp or bee stings.

Watson believes the helicopter rescue service is so vital that he was "annoyed" he'd used up the space.

"I felt annoyed that someone had taken me when someone might have needed it more. I just felt so guilty."

Watson had hopped out of his spa when he was stung by a bee, and asked his son – a driller in Western Australia who's knowledgeable on first response – to pull the bee out.

That's when things got weird for Watson.

"I started hallucinating and I remember being an absolute d***head. My whole body and my throat started swelling up, my speech was getting slurred and I was talking garbage.

"My son knew I wasn't in a good way, I knew I was mumbling and wasn't right and my airways started swelling up."

An ambulance was called from Tairua and nothing could be done until he was assessed.
Watson worked as a greenkeeper previously and had an incident that he believes may have led to his allergic reaction later in life to bees.

I started hallucinating and I remember being an absolute d***head. My whole body and my throat started swelling up, my speech was getting slurred and I was talking garbage.

Peter Watson

"I was cutting down a huge stump on a golf course and cut through a big wasp nest. I got stung probably 30 times, I was getting smashed to pieces."

A golfer with a cart picked him up and got him help. He took a cold shower and two antihistamine tablets and says by the next day he was back at work.

"That might have been the tip-over to have [this reaction from] the one little sting, but I don't know."

In the Pauanui incident last year, once Watson had been injected with the EpiPen he says he recovered quite quickly.

"The helicopter crew said 'hey jump in, enjoy the ride'. I'm the sort of guy that thinks there's someone more important that needs this service more than me. They flew to Thames and I had an assessment, and the doctor said the thing I did right was get there."

Watson now takes an EpiPen wherever he goes.