Chris Howarth, a man from Idaho, was visiting his parents’ home in Oroville, California, when he felt a sharp puncture. At first he thought he had stepped on a thorn, but when he looked down, he discovered that he had a rattlesnake at his feet.
«He bit me twice. One of the bites was quite superficial, but the other hit a vein,» Chris told the Californian media. SFGATE. «I walked into the house. My wife thought I was joking,» he recalled.
But when Chris showed him his leg, his wife and young children «panicked.» Chris had just gone out to his parents’ backyard to check the water line when he was bitten on May 26.
According to the aforementioned media, the episode occurred in a context of increased rattlesnake activity in California during the spring, after a heat wave recorded in March. As of early July, at least three people had died from bites from these reptiles and at least 249 attacks.
His wife Jenny Howarth immediately took him to Oroville Hospital, about 15 minutes from the scene. Before arriving, Chris was already showing symptoms of a reaction to poison: numb tongue, swollen glands and difficulty breathing. He received the antidote in approximately an hour, but the situation worsened as the days passed.
The deeper wound had injected poison directly into the bloodstream, Jenny explained. During the first few days, Chris described his condition as a roller coaster: the antidote would relieve the symptoms for hours, but then they would return.
On the third day he developed disseminated intravascular coagulopathy, a condition that put him in danger. risk of dying due to internal bleeding.
The hospital ran out of medication on the sixth day
The most critical point came when the Oroville Hospital exhausted its reserves of antidote and platelets on the sixth day of hospitalization.
«I started to feel very bad. My leg was very swollen and it was a scary situation. I didn’t know if I was going to get ahead. At one point I wrote letters to my kids to make sure they had one last letter from dad,» Chris said.
That same day he was transferred to Stanford Hospital, where doctors tried a different antidote that finally managed to reverse the condition. In total, Chris received 36 doses of antivenin in Oroville and 18 in Stanford, adding up to 54 vials throughout their hospitalization.
Rais Vohra, medical director of the Fresno-Madera division of the California Poison Control System, said most patients don’t need more than a few doses. «It sounds like a really unfortunate case,» he said of Chris’ injury.
The couple also warned about a little-known danger: humidity and mud can silence the sound of the bell, eliminating the most characteristic warning signal of these animals.
They discovered it when Chris’s father went to kill the snake and found it shaking its head. bell without producing any audible noise. «It’s like the rattle gets wet or muddy and it doesn’t sound, or it sounds very muffled,» Jenny explained.
The family returned to their home in Meridian, Idaho, in June, but Chris still cannot return to his job as a mail carrier and has symptoms six weeks after the bite. A friend started a campaign in GoFundMe to help with expenses
