PRESS-ENTERPRISE (Riverside, California) 14 June 06 Rash of snakebites hits home - The toddler son of an Inland venom expert is among a high number of victims this season. (Paul DeCarlo)
Loma Linda: After a busy day treating five rattlesnake-bite victims at Loma Linda University Medical Center, an exhausted Dr. Sean Bush was ready to head home.
Then, just after 7 p.m. last Wednesday, he got a "911" page from his wife.
Jude, the 2½-year-old son of the snakebite guru made nationally known by the television show "Venom ER," had been bitten by a rattlesnake in the backyard of the family's Yucaipa home.
Bush rushed out to the hospital's helicopter landing pad to carry his son into the emergency room.
"It was a surreal experience," Bush said Tuesday. "I knew I had to keep it together so I could take care of him."
Within the past week, the hospital's emergency ward has treated at least seven rattlesnake-bite victims, Bush said.
Only three months into snake season, the hospital has tallied more than 25 bite victims -- halfway to the annual average of 50, Bush said. California Poison Control System officials estimated there have been more than twice the normal number of snakebite cases so far this year.
Experts said they're mystified.
"We figured if there was a bumper crop it would have been last year," Lee Cantrell, director of the San Diego division of the state poison-control system.
"I think we might break a record," Bush said Tuesday from the emergency room, where he had brought his son for another dose of the antivenin he worked to improve. "It's early for that many bites."
The victims have come from a backyard in Chino Hills, a golf course in Temecula and a regional park in Cherry Valley.
The injuries have ranged from venomless "dry bites" to near-fatal episodes. There have been no deaths, so far.
A Chino Hills man is still recovering at Loma Linda after stepping on a rattlesnake nearly a week ago in his backyard. The man scored a 17 out of a possible 20 points on the venom-severity scale, Bush said.
"I've seen only a couple of bites that bad," he said.
The man declined to be interviewed, hospital spokeswoman Julie Smith said.
A 59-year-old man was bitten by a rattlesnake just before 3 p.m. Saturday near Temecula, while searching for his golfball in tall grass just off the 16th green at Cross Creek Golf Club.
"He told me he thought a branch or a stick had hit him in the back of the leg," said Randy Shannon, course general manager. "It was very much a grazing blow."
He declined to release the man's name.
Bush, who treated the golfer, said no venom entered the man's bloodstream.
It was only the second snakebite reported in the course's five-year history, Shannon said. He offered a bit of advice for golfers.
"It's probably not worth a two-dollar golf ball to go look for it," he said.
On Sunday morning at Bogart Park in Cherry Valley, a Riverside County groundskeeper was struck by a rattlesnake while clearing brush.
Supervising park ranger Ruben Rodriguez said the volunteer maintenance man, who he declined to identify, was bitten as he cleared brush from a horse camp alongside a creek bed. The man was taken to San Gorgonio Memorial Hospital and later to Loma Linda for treatment, Rodriguez said.
The experts said the best way to avoid being bitten by a snake is to never reach or walk where you cannot see. At home, they advised clearing low-lying brush and keeping yards free of rodents, which snakes eat. But there's no way to guarantee a yard will be snake-free, they said.
Most significant snakebite victims in the Inland area end up in the care of Bush. The physician led an Inland rattlesnake symposium last year and was a featured expert in four of 10 episodes of Animal Planet's cable television series "Venom ER."
At Loma Linda University in January 2005, the emergency-room physician presented research on a sheep-based antivenin, comparing its results in patients with a more commonly used serum extracted from horses.
Just 15 percent of patients exhibited allergic reactions to the sheep-extracted antivenin, he said. The horse serum led to life-threatening reactions in 25 percent of patients and mild long-term reactions in about three-quarters of patients, Bush said.
In Jude Bush's case, a Southern Pacific rattlesnake bit his left hand between the thumb and forefinger. The boy had tried to pick it up after finding it in the yard of his family's Yucaipa home, near the foothills of the San Bernardino Mountains.
"He reached down to pick it up because he wanted to put it in a cage," said Bush, an avid collector of reptiles.
"I guess when you're 2 it's kinda confusing," Bush said.
A university Web site says Bush's home contains an "undisclosed number of snakes, lizards, spiders and scorpions."
By the time Jude reached the hospital last week, the swelling extended from his hand to his elbow, Bush said.
Back in the ER on Tuesday, the boy received another shot of antivenin serum while his father used a computer to check his blood-test results.
The blonde-haired boy, wearing a gecko-print T-shirt, got plenty of attention.
"You had my adrenaline pumpin', Bubba," cooed Brandi Percy, a registered nurse as she rocked a grinning Jude on her hip. "You feel O.K.?"
"Yeah," he answered.
Soon, Jude's father and doctor arrived with good news.
"Your lab looked perfect," Bush told his son. "Everything's fine."
Rash of snakebites hits home

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