BUCKS FREE PRESS (UK) 19 August 03 Desperate dash after toddler's snake bite (Michelle Fleming)
Shaken dad Scott Evans has told of his family's terror after his two-year-old daughter Isabella Rees-Evans was bitten by a poisonous snake as she played during a family holiday.
The toddler stumbled upon the venomous adder in a clump of grass on a beach in the Gower Peninsula, near Swansea, last Tuesday.
Mr Evans, a stockbroker of Bledlow Ridge, said: "She started screaming when she fell but we thought that she was just overtired. It was only when we were driving back to my parents-in-law that I noticed a big bruise on her leg which was swelling up.
"She started crying in agony. We didn't know what it was but she was writhing in pain. I thought she had broken her foot."
Mr Evans and wife Sian decided to take Isabella to Swansea's Singleton Hospital's casualty unit when the swelling continued to spread up her leg.
It was only when Mr Evans spotted two puncture marks on her heel that he remembered seeing a snake on a path earlier that day.
Mr Evans said: "I just put two and two together. By this time she [Isabella] was in shock and was falling off to sleep."
By the time they arrived at the hospital the puncture marks had turned black.
Brave Isabella was given an anti-venomous injection and was put on a heart and lung monitor.
Mr Evans said: "It was terrifying. Her leg had gone solid as a rock. It was worrying the first night but then the swelling started to go down. She was lucky. It could have been fatal. There was a team of 40 medical staff involved and they did a fantastic job."
Both parents and grandparents kept round-the-clock vigils by her bedside until she was discharged from hospital on Friday.
Paul Llewellyn a retired biologist at Swansea University, who worked with snakes for 30 years, said: "It is very rare for people to suffer so badly.
"The snakes would do a runner if you went towards them but if you stand on them their first line of defence is to move you by biting you."
The Evans family returned home to Bledlow Ridge on Sunday.
Mr Evans said: "Isabella is fine now and has made a really good recovery. She has been very grown up and exceptionally brave through the whole ordeal. Her brother Jacob, who is four, has been very brave too.
"I would be careful letting children in long grass in their bare feet," he added.
Desperate dash after toddler's snake bite