'Is this the end?': Jaun-Paul picked up a shell at a Sydney beach. He was soon fighting for life

Recently, there have been multiple reports of swimmers being bitten by blue-ringed octopuses at Balmoral Beach in Sydney, sparking concern among local residents. Some expressed skepticism, suggesting that a bite would likely be fatal.

However, a 43-year-old man named Jaun-Paul "JP" Kalman personally experienced a blue-ringed octopus bite and recounted his near-death experience to 9news.com.au. On February 5th, at approximately 1:00 PM, Kalman was swimming at Balmoral Beach near Mosman on Sydney's North Shore. He was standing about 20 meters north of the beach's swimming enclosure, in waist-deep water.

He picked up a shell with his left hand, looked down, and noticed a blue-ringed octopus firmly attached to his thumb. "Its little blue rings were flashing blue incredibly, which meant it was angry, and it was annoyed, and it was biting me," Kalman recalled. He shook off the octopus, initially feeling no pain.

After getting ashore, Kalman sat on his towel and began searching for related symptoms online. Subsequently, his thumb started to go numb. As a precaution, he decided to go to the hospital. About 30 minutes after the bite, he called his ex-wife, Courtney, to inform her that he couldn't pick up the children from school. Kalman had planned to take a 1 hour and 20 minute bus ride to Royal North Shore Hospital himself. Courtney immediately called back, telling him to stay put and that she would drive him to the hospital. "If it wasn't for her, I would have died," Kalman said, "I completely owe her my life."

They arrived at the hospital before 2:00 PM. "By then, I could barely talk, and all the strength had been drained from my body," Kalman said. By 2:30 PM, he was completely paralyzed, lying in the intensive care unit. "I could hear everything, I could see everything, I could feel them touching me. I was just completely paralyzed," he said, "I was thinking, oh my God, is this the end?" "I really remember saying, I don't want to die, I have children."

As the paralysis from the octopus venom intensified, Kalman said he began to feel an immense weight pressing down on him, and he could feel his breathing slowing. "The simplest way to describe it is, imagine you're lying in a flat press, and all of a sudden an elephant slowly pushes down on your entire body. I could feel myself stop breathing," he said, "In my head, I was telling myself, 'Breathe, you idiot.'" "I could hear people talking around me." "My eyes were closed, and my eyeballs were rolling back, and I could hear them saying, 'JP, open your eyes.'" "But I just – I couldn't."

Lying in the hospital bed, Kalman was fully aware of everything around him. "They would open my eyes, and I could see everything, I could hear everything, I could feel them putting all sorts of drips and cannulas into me." He felt a breathing tube being inserted into his throat. "Then I heard the heart rate monitor slowing down, incredibly slow," he said. Doctors administered the sedative ketamine, inducing a coma. He said he heard the doctors clear the room. "After they gave me the ketamine, I went on the worst mental trip you could ever imagine," he said.

Still conscious, he described a sensation of swimming in colored light bricks before everything turned black. "I accepted that I had died," he said, "That this was the afterlife, and I was going to be stuck here forever." He fell into a coma and woke up the next day, alive but extremely weak. In the hospital, with tubes and syringes attached to him, Kalman held tightly to one of his children's toys. "They reminded me to keep fighting, to live for them."

He was discharged from the hospital on February 7th, but experienced another episode of paralysis the next morning while walking in a store. On February 8th, Kalman was taken back to the hospital by ambulance and saw the same doctors. During his second hospital stay, he spent another four days recovering. In the week following the incident, he experienced two more brief episodes of paralysis, each lasting about 20 minutes. Speaking to 9news.com.au, Kilman had just returned to Balmoral Beach, his first time back since the bite. He said it was to "conquer it before the fear festers."

Blue-ringed octopuses live in tide pools and coral reefs around Australia. The blue rings only become easily identifiable when they feel threatened, so it may be too late by the time a person realizes the creature is a blue-ringed octopus. Most of the time, they just look like regular brown octopuses. They reach a maximum size of 20 centimeters when stretched out and weigh approximately 100 grams. Symptoms of a blue-ringed octopus bite include a painless mark with visible pinprick bleeding; numbness around the mouth, lips, and tongue; muscle weakness; and difficulty breathing. It is recommended that anyone who is bitten seek immediate medical attention.