4 year old stung by stingray

My (35m) daughter was stung by a stingray and I don’t know how to reassure her, here’s the story: Our 4 year old daughter was stung by a stingray when I was playing with her in the surf on vacation this past week. She was in immediate pain and screaming hysterically, but we had no idea what happened! I quickly scooped her up and we saw the blood on her ankle and thought she must have stepped on a sharp shell. But the crying and screaming did not stop; assumed she was hysterical because of the blood and continued to try and calm her down to no avail. Poor thing. Said she wanted to go get PJ’s on and get in bed. 2 hours later she was still very upset, alternating crying and hyperventilating. We were finally able to get a good look at it again and her whole ankle was swollen and bruised. At this point we thought she rolled it or even broke her ankle. Packed her up for a trip to urgent care. When nurse saw it she immediately guessed it was stingray, based on looks of cut, location, and the situation (we were playing in the surf). Only thing that helps is putting it in hot water. Within 10 seconds of submerging her foot she was a different person, an hour later we were home, and the next day she was running around with no problems.Long story short, she is now (understandably) scare of going back into the ocean. Thankfully that was our second to last day of vacation, but as far as next time goes…. I feel terrible that we let her suffer for so long, not knowing it was a stingray. And secondly I’m looking for advice on how to reassure that this very, very likely will never happen again. She is the first person I know to ever be stung. So how do you provide a reasonable explanation and also support to a child her age? She is amazingly strong and mature and sure handled it like a beast. With how much she loves swimming, I want to reassure her that the ocean is (mostly) safe. via /r/Parenting http://ift.tt/2ax4cmU