Being Bit By the Big One

You have heard of the phrase biting the big one. Well how about the big one biting you? Back in February 2001, My Zoology class took a field trip to site in south Texas. It was to be a cross Botany and Zoology outing. My field is Herpetology and I've been at it for twenty years. Sometimes even experience needs a little reminder.

By midday our class started to a new location to monitor alligator drag marks. I was driving with my wife and former Botanist professor when I spotted a large Western diamond back crossing the road. Actually it was very hard to miss, seeing that it looked like a moving speed bump with a rattle. I stopped the truck immediately to get a better look and decided to catch him to show the class. I figured since we were there, and the class was to go to Mexico in a few weeks, I could give some pointers on what to look for and expect if we ran across something venomous in Mexico.

Now, I have caught over two hundred large atrox well over six feet with very little problems, but this one was different. He was right out of hibernation, hungry, grouchy, and I found him in the middle of the day. I usually see the monsters at night during breeding season, so this was totally different. I had no grabbers or hooks with me and all I could use was a shirt to give him a target. Usually if you can cover their heads they'll calm down long enough to get a decent pin. This big boy had no intention of giving up or going for the shirt routine.

So I had him distracted with the shirt long enough to grab his tail with my left hand and move him to the road where every one could see. With his tail over my head and his head a few feet on the ground he actually turned to the left struck up in the air, and as I was moving back to avoid being hit in the face, my left hand simultaneously came down. He got it. Both fangs right on the top of my hand, and injected a large quantity of venom. I had a small audience of about fifteen people who were now needless to say, quite shocked. I looked straight up at my zoology friend and said, "This one is going to hurt in the morning." Not the brightest thing I've said, but I almost felt like laughing. Well, at first I did.

I've been bitten before and am certainly no stranger to what might happen next, but I did not know I was going to have to calm everyone else down too. As I tried to herd college students one way and my wife and friend the other, I was sucking out as much venom as I could. Trying to get it to bleed harder to wash out as much venom as possible. I got in the truck, wrapped my hand in the shirt I was using and basically ordered to be taken to the nearest hospital.

It took thirty to forty minutes to get to the first one, but while this was going on I was trying to keep a mental log of what was happening to me and trying to keep my wife sane. Not easy when the driver is have difficulty trying to put an automatic in different gears. With in seconds my hand doubled in size and color. The fingers were taking on a grotesque figure, like the wicked witch of the west or something. My hand was still bleeding very hard, and I was feeling sick to my stomach. I happened to look into the rearview mirror and noticed my eyes were yellow. I mentioned this to my wife, who at this point told me most of my skin was turning yellow too. Pain, Pain, and more Pain, but I kept silent for the most part, and the nausea was really kicking in now. So far I had suppressed gong into shock, but I felt I would go into it any time now.

After my friend missed every light and a few corners, we got to the first hospital. I'm not sure how I did it, but under my own power I got out of the truck and walked into the emergency room. By this time certain motions became extremely difficult, like speech and walking. Right off the bat this hospital had no antivenin. My first thought was, "Great I'm dead. But okay now what?" Then some young EMT thought it would be a good Idea to ask me if I was sure it was a snake. I can't repeat what I said, but it was something along the lines of a garden hose.

Anyway, vitals were taken and my blood pressure was at 60/38 and I was going into respiratory failure. So I was intubated. Fun, fun - hoses in places hoses do not go, but we are just getting started. Now we are off to the next hospital, only fifteen minutes away. Keep in mind that during a bite of this magnitude, seconds count. As we pulled into the next emergency bay I had already gone into shock, but I was still conscious. Hard to describe the chaos next, still remembering bits and pieces.

In the thick of dying someone thought black widow antivenin would be appropriate. Why? Who knows, but I fought off five of them and pulled the IV out before they knocked me out. Some thirty hours later I woke with a tube in my mouth, a catheter, and IV lines in just about all major veins. I was pretty sure I had died and went to hell. My new doctor was a trauma specialist and had seen snakebites before, just not one like this. It is still unclear of how many viles of antivenin if any at all I received at the second hospital, but I did get five at the third. My Doctor says he has no idea how I survived the initial part of the bite, but I speculate that having been bitten before has a lot to do with it.

Copyright, Bret Welch 2001-2002

Basically I fought off the bite for almost forty hours. The atrox that bit me was a little over seven feet and its bite measured at six centimeters from fang to fang. It was estimated that I received well up to two hundred milligrams of venom from my buddy. No one has ever seen an atrox bite cause the eyes and skin to turn yellow. I have lost most of the use of my left hand, but I've still got it! And believe me, certain doctors tried to take off!

For all who read this: There is nothing in the world that will deter me from my love of venomous snakes, but I will no longer try to pin them without the proper equipment. A lesson I still learn every time I try to pick something up with the left hand. No harm was done to the snake. If it had, I would have been far more dangerous than the rattler to who ever hurt it. Life is funny sometimes. Mine keeps telling me to slow down a bit. And to my mom, who said if I had died, Here lies Bret, who did not bite the big one, the big one bit him. I still love ya!

P.S. I believe the class that went to Mexico developed a very healthy respect for snakes! ;-)

Being Bit By the Big One

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