CHARLOTTE OBSERVER (N Carolina) 10 August 06 Chaplain tries to move rattler and lives to tell - He describes glancing bite and how it felt as poison spread in body (Dan Huntley)

The timber rattlesnake that minister John O'Kain wouldn't kill nearly killed him on Monday at a mountain summer camp.

O'Kain, 33, of York is working as a chaplain this summer at Camp Harrison in Wilkes County. The camp is operated by the YMCA of Greater Charlotte, which also runs Camp Thunderbird on Lake Wylie.

On Monday morning O'Kain was riding his bike through a wooded area near the camp's health center when he saw a thick-as-your-wrist rattler, maybe 3 1/2 feet long, sunning itself in the middle of the path.

"My immediate concern was to remove it before a camper came by," said O'Kain, an experienced outdoorsman who has hiked a 1,600-mile stretch of the Appalachian Trail. "I figured the best thing would be to catch it and move it to another part of the mountain, away from the campers."

He trapped it and was attempting to pick it up when it bit him near the nail on his right thumb.

"It was more of a glancing blow with one fang, at first I couldn't even tell it broke the skin," he said Wednesday from a bed at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center where he was airlifted Monday afternoon. "I began to feel the pain almost immediately."

Within a minute, his lips and face began to tingle.

Within three minutes, his arms and legs began to stiffen.

In five minutes, his stomach began to cramp and he vomited.

In 10 minutes, his lungs and throat began to tighten and he had trouble breathing.

"Twenty minutes after the bite, I could feel the swelling in my lungs and I knew I was going downhill," he said. "I wouldn't say I panicked -- that I thought I was going to die -- but I realized my health was no longer in my control."

Emergency personnel gave him anti-venom medication. But because of his breathing problems, doctors had to also perform a tracheotomy. He was in and out of consciousness.

Dr. Eric Lavonas, a toxicologist with Carolinas Medical Center, said O'Kain's reaction with breathing problems was extremely rare for a snake bite. He's treated about 100 snake bite victims.

"Snake bites here in North Carolina are not rare. We average more than 400 a year, but mostly copperheads; we're ground zero for copperhead bites," said Lavonas, who also works with the Carolinas Poison Center. "It sounds that if without quick medical care, this man could have certainly died. We have only one or two deaths a year. He's lucky."

Lavonas said the majority of poisonous snake bites in the Carolinas result in body pains and limb swelling but that anti-venom medication has relatively quick effect.

"Our experience has been if you're going to die from a snake bite, you do so fairly quickly," he said.

He said the best advice for snakes in the Carolinas is "Don't."

"As in `Don't pick up a snake, and if bitten, don't ice it, don't tourniquet it and don't cut and suck the bite,' " he said. "Get yourself to an emergency room quickly and you'll likely be OK."

O'Kain's wife, Kelley, is a math teacher at Clover Junior High. It was her first day of school Monday when two YMCA staff members arrived to drive her and her car to Winston-Salem.

"It was so unreal about John being bitten by a snake, but when they told me he was trying to catch it and relocate it, I knew that is exactly what he'd do; he hates to kill anything," she said from his hospital room late Wednesday shortly after he was moved out of intensive care and his condition was upgraded to stable. He may be able to go home by Sunday.

The snake was later killed and brought to the hospital for identification and later frozen.

A friend who visited O'Kain in the hospital said they had joked about using the snake's skin as a strap for O'Kain's guitar. "A decision has not yet been made on the snake's remains," O'Kain said.

However, he's already looking to the future. The former youth minister at River Hills Community Church is set to begin a new job next week as campus minister for Oakland Avenue Presbyterian Church in Rock Hill.

"I hope to at least be able to make an appearance August 18 to welcome back the Winthrop students," he said with a laugh. "And next summer I plan on being back at Camp (Harrison). A snake is not going to keep me from working with those kids."
Chaplain tries to move rattler and lives to tell

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