Wednesday, August 8, 2018

SNAKE BIT

Not for the faint of heart,
but this past Wednesday 
I was bitten in the upper back side of my leg by a Copperhead Pit Viper.
It's one of the lesser poisonous snakes in the San Bernardino Mountains.
Did I live to tell the tale?
Yes,
 I'm fine,
 but itchy,
and very ugly & swollen.
It happened when I stepped on it's nest when I was raking a bunch of leaves.
It jumped up from behind me and gave a good old bit.
The Internet says they are nesting with their babies right now,
so I must have really pissed it off.
(keep in mind these are really ugly shots of my leg.
I hope I look better in person ha ha)
This pix is night one after the bleeding stopped and the fang marks got too swollen to see.
Did it hurt?
Oh my YES!!!!
Like a thousand bee strings at one time.
And then it pounded and throbbed all night long.
But I had no other typical snake bite symptoms.
This is the next morning above,
still very mad and swollen.
By afternoon,
for my piece of mind and my children's  hee hee,
I went to Urgent Care to be sure I was gonna be ok.
The Doc put pen marks around the swelling 
and told me to come back if it grew larger or if I got any of those other snake bite symptoms.
Well,
the next morning it looked  this,
a bit smaller in some areas but spreading a bit in others.
But I was fine and anyways the Doc gave me an Antibiotic just in case.

It has now been exactly a week since I received the bite and it's barely noticeable.
So I'm gonna live.
But the coolest thing about it is that the poison in these types of snakes 
cures rats with cancerous tumors,
but has not been tried on humans yet.
So my philosophy is that this happened for a good reason 
and now I have a magical elixir in me in case I might develop cancer.
I feel very lucky this wasn't a rattler.

6 comments:

  1. Oh. My. Wow! And here I was complaining about being bitten by so many greenhead flies. Hope it clears up soon. Glad you lived to tell.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Me too. And I hate snakes!! I'm going to be so much more careful from now on.

      Delete
  2. Wow, Debra! That is one scary snake story! I'm glad you could find a silver lining and that this was not a rattler bite.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'm so thankful it wasn't a rattler as well. Funny on the way up to the cabin I asked my husband if we have snakes up there and he said yes. And that afternoon I got bit. Crazy!!

      Delete
  3. Wait, what? You waited to go to the doctor after being bitten by a snake? You are incredible! And I hope you are fully recovered at this point.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. LOL, I hadn't finished my leaf raking or my watering ha ha.

      Delete