DAILY TIMES (Harrison, Arkansas) 01 July 07 Boy bitten by snake not afraid of river (David Holsted)
Stephen Widner was having a great time on a Buffalo River outing three weeks ago with his family.
Stephen Widner was having a great time on a Buffalo River outing three weeks ago with his family. The 12-year-old Alpena boy was body surfing near the Hasty access when his foot slipped on a rock in some willow weeds.
"I felt something grab onto my foot," he said. "I tried to shake it loose."
Then, Stephen felt what he described as a fiery pain shoot through his left foot.
He immediately told his father that he had been bitten by a snake.
"At first, I didn't think it was a snake bite," said Stephen's father, Scott Widner. "The marks were too far apart. I thought maybe he'd hit a stick."
It was only after squeezing the wound and seeing what looked like two bee stings that the awful realization hit Scott Widner. His son had been bitten by a cottonmouth, also known as a water moccasin, a venomous water snake.
With Stephen complaining that his foot hurt, Scott picked him up and began to carry him to help.
"There was prominent swelling within a minute," said Stephen's mother, Kim, who is a nurse.
While waiting for the ambulance to come, the Widners ran into someone at the Hasty access who had a snake bite kit. The widely spaced fang marks on Stephen's foot required the largest suction cup available to suck out the venom, said Scott Widner.
Stephen was in such excruciating pain on the ambulance ride to Harrison that he required three rounds of morphine.
When Stephen got to North Arkansas Regional Medical Center, Scott Widner said, hospital personnel there took one look at Stephen's wound and said, "We've got to get you to Children's right away!"
Another ambulance ride took Stephen to Arkansas Children's Hospital in Little Rock, where he spent four days recovering from the snake bite. Kim Widner said that her son was on a morphine pump for 48 hours to relieve the pain that had spread throughout his leg.
"From mid-thigh on down, it was swollen," she said. "You couldn't even touch his leg."
The widely spaced fang marks, combined with the large amount of venom found in Stephen's body, led doctors to believe that it was a very large snake that had bitten the boy. Kim Widner said she was told that the water's current had probably caused the snake to latch onto Stephen's foot for a longer time, allowing it to inject more venom.
Much of the swelling has gone down in Stephen's foot and leg. The puncture wounds on Stephen's foot today are barely visible, although a dark splotch on his ankle indicates where the venom started to rot the tissue. He still walks with a slight limp.
The only concern that doctors have, Kim Widner said, is how the venom might have affected the muscles. However, overall, Stephen has made a good recovery.
According to Stephen, his experience with a cottonmouth has not frightened him away from the river. He's ready to go back.
http://www.zwire.com/site/?brd=1815&pag=461&dept_id=516928&newsid=18537941&rfi=15
DAILY TIMES (Harrison, Arkansas) 01 July 07 ER doctor says snake bites risen (David Holsted)
You've seen it in television or movie westerns. A cowboy gets bitten by a rattlesnake. One of his friends uses a knife to cut an "X" over the bite, then sucks out the poison.
"It sounds good," said Dr. Matthew Walter, "but frankly, it causes more damage than good."
Walter, who is an emergency room physician at North Arkansas Regional Medical Center, is a former Boy Scout who can recall when the cut-and-suck method was the accepted technique for snake bites. The thinking has changed over the years.
Most snake bites occur from April through October when both humans and wildlife are more active outdoors. According to Walter, there seems to be an increase in venomous snake bites this year. Whereas last year, there were only two or three snake bites in the area during the period, the number is already up to five this summer.
Thanks to better and safer medicine, very few deaths now result from snake bites. While about 8,000 people in the United States will be bitten by a poisonous snake, only five will die as a result.
In Arkansas, there can be found six species of venomous snake - the cottonmouth or water moccasin, the coral snake, the copperhead, the pygmy rattlesnake, the timber rattle snake and the western diamondback rattlesnake.
Though rattlesnakes are responsible for about 95 percent of snake bite deaths, Walter said he had not heard of any reports of anyone being bitten by a rattlesnake in the area.
"But then, I'm no Steve Irwin," he said with a laugh, referring to the popular Australian naturalist who was fond of getting up close and personal with venomous snakes.
While opinions may differ as to which is the most deadly snake (one study done with mice has shown that the eastern diamondback rattlesnake has the most deadly venom), most snake bites will exhibit similar symptoms.
Walter said the area around a snake bite will show a swelling. Because the venom will break down the blood, the victim will start to hemorrhage in the surrounding tissue, turning the skin black and blue. There might follow such symptoms as nausea, vomiting, dizziness and tingling around the mouth.
Time frames for symptoms will vary, according to Walter. A small child bitten by a large snake might start to show symptoms within 15 minutes, while an adult might not show any for hours.
Like cutting and sucking a snake bite, placing a tourniquet around the wound is an outdated, erroneous action. A tourniquet is meant to stop bleeding from an arterial cut, Walter said. If the bite is wrapped, he continued, it should only be tight enough to allow a finger to be placed between the fabric and the skin.
Above all, Walter said, the victim should be kept as calm and motionless as possible.
"While everyone is panicking, running around trying to find the phone to dial 9-1-1," Walter said, "the person who is bit is panicking, causing the circulation to increase and allowing the venom to spread. Circulation is the big enemy. You want to keep (the venom) localized."
Most snake bites occur on the arm or leg.
"That's good in a way," Walter said. "You can wrap that. It's difficult to wrap a torso. You can apply first aid to an extremity much easier."
Get a snake bite victim to a hospital emergency room as quickly as possible, where if needed, anti-venom medicine can be administered intravenously.
Many snake bites can be avoided by using common sense. Often fueled by alcohol, some people try to play with a snake or act macho around it.
"Maybe that fear of snakes is not such a bad thing," Walter said.
http://www.zwire.com/site/?brd=1815&pag=461&dept_id=516928&newsid=18537942&rfi=15
