DAILY COURIER (Prescott, Arizona) 10 October 07 Ready to strike: Apparent rise in severe snake attacks puzzles experts (Joanna Dodder)
Two severe Mohave rattlesnake bites on humans in the past few months have Chino Valley Fire District officials puzzled.
One victim, 63-year-old Jackie Ledwell of Paulden, died earlier this week, and the other victim, 49-year-old Dave Martin of Chino Valley, nearly died in August.
Chino Battalion Chief Garry Young said he's been with the district 20 years and it has never responded to a snakebite before August.
Dr. Michelle Ruha, a medical toxicologist at Banner Good Samaritan Medical Center in Phoenix who treated Martin, said for some reason her hospital has been seeing more cases of anaphylactic shock from rattlesnake bites over the past few years, and she's not sure why.
The National Institutes of Health describe anaphylactic shock as a severe, whole-body allergic reaction. Both Ledwell and Martin suffered such a reaction. Past bites can cause subsequent reactions to be more severe, Ruha said.
Good Samaritan hasn't treated anyone who died from a rattler this year, but doctors there treat 50-75 snakebite patients annually, Ruha said. Arizona has 17 species and subspecies of rattlesnakes alone.
But out of approximately 8,000 snakebites across the U.S. each year, only eight to 15 people die, estimates the University of Arizona College of Pharmacy's Poison and Drug Information Center. The likelihood of a venomous snake or lizard killing a person in the U.S. is one in 1.9 million, according to the latest statistics from 2003.
Mohave rattlers tend to have an especially bad reputation because some carry neurotoxins (poisons that attack the nervous system) along with the more common hemotoxins (poisons that affect the blood), Ruha said. However, in her 10 years at Good Samaritan, she's never seen a victim with neurotoxin poisoning. Mohaves in this state don't carry that toxin, except for some in the southeastern corner, she said.
Some people become deathly ill from snakebites while others hardly feel anything, she said. It depends on how much toxin the snake deposits and other factors, she said.
For example, Martin told The Daily Courier he didn't have any kind of bad reaction to a western diamondback rattlesnake bite when he was younger.
"I really think it's the luck of the draw," Ruha said.
However, Ruha has noticed one pattern that people surely can do something about.
"I'd say most of our patients pick up snakes," she related.
She and other authorities advise people to stay away from snakes and, if they find a poisonous snake in their yard or home, call the local police or fire agency for help.
Sure enough, in the case of Martin and Ledwell, both approached the snakes instead of staying away from them.
Ledwell died Sunday, a day after a Mohave rattler bit her in her yard outside her Paulden home.
Ledwell apparently tried to stab the snake with a knife and it bit her on the foot, Chino Valley Fire District Battalion Chief Garry Young said.
Chino authorities responded quickly when Ledwell called about noon Sunday and became unable to talk, Young said. She was on the floor and swelling up from anaphylactic shock when they arrived and tried to give her medication. She died the day after a helicopter flew her to Flagstaff.
She had recently retired from the Yavapai County Assessor's Office, Sheriff's Office spokesperson Susan Quayle said.
"I've had so many people calling me in terror" after hearing about the death, Quayle said Thursday.
Martin said he's always been the guy who moved diamondback rattlesnakes out of harm's way when others wanted to kill them.
Unfortunately, when he tried to move a rattlesnake away from a construction site Aug. 14 in Chino Valley, things went horribly wrong.
He thought it was a diamondback but it was a Mohave rattlesnake, although Ruha said a diamondback can do just as much damage. And he thought his son had the snake's head pinned, but it had just enough room to turn around and bite him on the hand.
He originally tried to drive to a Chino Valley doctor's office but when he saw his hand turning black, he went back to the construction job site where the snakebite occurred so his son could drive him.
He estimates it was only 12 minutes after the bite when he became extremely disoriented in the back of the truck while trying to ease the pain with ice in a cooler.
He collapsed while trying to walk into the doctor's office about 20 minutes after the bite, and felt like he couldn't breathe.
The doctor gave him morphine, not knowing he was allergic to it. He swelled up and suffered a stroke. The doctor couldn't get a breathing tube into him because he was so swollen. Ruha said a snakebite is more likely to cause such a reaction, not morphine.
An ambulance crew somehow kept Martin alive as they took him to Yavapai Regional Medical Center in Prescott, where a doctor finally got a breathing tube into him before he flew to the Banner Good Samaritan Medical Center in Phoenix.
A reader speculated on the Daily Courier's website comment section that YRMC had no antivenin, but YRMC spokesperson Robbie Nicol confirmed that both the Prescott and Prescott Valley locations have plenty of it.
A helicopter took Martin to Phoenix where he could get more advanced toxicology care. Officials didn't know why a private emergency helicopter company took Ledwell to Flagstaff.
Doctors told Martin he almost died, but he made it through five days of intensive care, then three days in rehab and another three weeks of outpatient occupational and speech therapy. He's close to normal now.
He has no plans to ever try to pick up a rattlesnake again. And he now has a warning about his sensitivity to snakes and allergy to morphine that hangs on a tag around his neck.
He hopes that what happened to him and Ledwell won't prompt people to go out and start killing snakes.
"I'm still not afraid of snakes," Martin said. "If I saw a snake tomorrow, I wouldn't kill it just because it's there."
Apparent rise in severe snake attacks puzzles experts

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