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Armed only with tissue paper, Brewers general manager Doug Melvin tried to get rid of a bug inside his condominium Wednesday. The bug turned out to be a scorpion, which stung him.  Melvin told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that he spent several hours being treated at a Scottsdale, Ariz., hospital. The sting, which occurred on the middle finger of his left hand, sent numbness spiraling up his arm, the newspaper reported. "My arm is still totally numb," Melvin told the Journal Sentinel on Thursday morning at the Brewers' spring training complex. "It stung me right through the Kleenex. My arm started swelling, and then the numbness started going up my arm, like when you hit your funny bone. I was wondering if it might go all the way up my arm and go to my heart. I got nervous when it got up to my shoulder, so I went to the emergency room." Melvin said that when he started to feel numbness spread up his arm, he Googled "scorpion stings." Whatever he discovered was enough to persuade him to go to the hospital. "They gave me [pain medication] and just watched me for a couple of hours," Melvin told the Journal Sentinel. "They said your vision can go blurry from that. It was more an education on it, but my arm is still numb. First off, they tell you it's not fatal. But you can have an allergic reaction to it and need an anti-venom injection." Melvin was back at the team complex Thursday, where he could get back to work dealing with the team's rash of injuries, including Aramis Ramirez's strained left knee, Corey Hart's recovery from right knee surgery, Mat Gamel's torn right anterior cruciate ligament and infielder Jeff Bianchi's strained groin among them. Melvin's experience calls to mind another eight-legged encounter in the sports world. In February in Australia, Swedish golfer Daniela Holmqvist was bitten by a spider and used a tee to extract what she thought was potentially fatal venom. Holmqvist was hitting out of the rough during qualifying for the LPGA Tour's season-opening tournament when she was bitten. People nearby told her that it could have been a black widow, although a tournament official later said it more than likely was a redback, another species of widow spider. Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.
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